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Stop! You Violated the Law!
Dec. 8th, 2018 04:52 pmI’m not going to name the source for this post, because s/he’s taken more than enough mockery already. I’m just gonna quote it so I can dissect it.
“This might be an unpopular opinion, and obviously everyone should be arrested and prosecuted equally, and I get that is the point here, but you could also… not do illegal drugs? Wait for it to be legal or if its really that important to you that you would risk ending up in this situation, move somewhere where it already is.”
I see this argument in so many different forms, from “if you don’t want to risk unplanned pregnancy, stop having unprotected sex” to “if you don’t want to risk arrest under sodomy laws, stop having sex with other men.” It’s always treated as an end point, something you can’t respond to that will automatically win the argument. It never actually works that way, though, because people don’t stop.
Take teen pregnancy as an example. Educators across America have been pushing abstinence as the best way to not get yourself pregnant. Considering the failure rate for most forms of birth control, this is a pretty good idea. (The pill doesn’t count for much when you keep forgetting to take it.) But between 1995 and 2010, the nationwide percentage of teenage girls who stated they were virgins only went from 49% to 57%. I’ll avoid any speculation on reasons, but the fact remains that abstinence can’t be the only thing we push.
I see this argument as the purest expression of why deontology doesn’t work. Once you’ve created a rule for what people should do, it’s easy to divorce yourself from what people actually do. Reality should never be irrelevant to the decisions you make and the aspersions you cast.
“This might be an unpopular opinion, and obviously everyone should be arrested and prosecuted equally, and I get that is the point here, but you could also… not do illegal drugs? Wait for it to be legal or if its really that important to you that you would risk ending up in this situation, move somewhere where it already is.”
I see this argument in so many different forms, from “if you don’t want to risk unplanned pregnancy, stop having unprotected sex” to “if you don’t want to risk arrest under sodomy laws, stop having sex with other men.” It’s always treated as an end point, something you can’t respond to that will automatically win the argument. It never actually works that way, though, because people don’t stop.
Take teen pregnancy as an example. Educators across America have been pushing abstinence as the best way to not get yourself pregnant. Considering the failure rate for most forms of birth control, this is a pretty good idea. (The pill doesn’t count for much when you keep forgetting to take it.) But between 1995 and 2010, the nationwide percentage of teenage girls who stated they were virgins only went from 49% to 57%. I’ll avoid any speculation on reasons, but the fact remains that abstinence can’t be the only thing we push.
I see this argument as the purest expression of why deontology doesn’t work. Once you’ve created a rule for what people should do, it’s easy to divorce yourself from what people actually do. Reality should never be irrelevant to the decisions you make and the aspersions you cast.
