Progessive Caucus Convention

[Peter]

I oppose all changes to the Pornography plank:

The clarifications of things such as child porn, necrophilia, etc. are easily understood as being there as Lewis says. In fact, by creating a list of exceptions, we actually cause ourselves more problems because if we miss something out, then we have actually endorsed it as legitimate, as opposed to using the "read between the lines" understanding.

Secondary to that is the change in the age viewing requirement: I have always found it ridiculous that we set the age of consent for sexual relations and for viewing pornography at different ages. It does not make intuitive sense - If you can have sex legally, then what exactly are we protecting 16 year olds from by stopping them viewing porn?

If we are to raise the age required to view pornography then I strongly urge that we be intellectually consistent and make the same demand on the age of consent.

I will continue to support the removal of the words "under God" from the Pledge: The law has systematically discriminated against principled atheists who have declined to say those words in their pledge of allegiance - in so doing, the Law has actually stopped an entire class of citizens from legally having pledged allegiance to their country - This, to me, is wrong, and I would leave the Pledge as it is.

The death penalty is a fault line through the caucus, and the present compromise was made to stop this from truly dividing the Caucus - I cannot vote for splitting the Caucus into two.

[Peter]

Secondary to that is the change in the age viewing requirement: I have always found it ridiculous that we set the age of consent for sexual relations and for viewing pornography at different ages. It does not make intuitive sense - If you can have sex legally, then what exactly are we protecting 16 year olds from by stopping them viewing porn?  If we are to raise the age required to view pornography then I strongly urge that we be intellectually consistent and make the same demand on the age of consent.

The age of sexual consent and the age for viewing porn are two separate issues -it requires more emotional maturity to have sex than it does simply to view porn.  This should be intuitive.

Thats an argument for the age of consent for pornography being lower than the age of consent for sex - you are actually contradicting your own argument with your proposal. The vast majority of 16 year olds are emotionally capable of dealing with pornography, certainly more than they are capable of dealing with sex - I see no reason to prohibit them of the former but not the later.

[Peter]

I am sorry, but I fail to see how I am contradicting my own argument.  Could you elaborate as to how I am doing so?

You state that "it requires more emotional maturity to have sex than it does simply to view porn" - if we use a reasonable assumption that emotional maturity is proportional to age, then we must conclude that it requires more age to have sex than to view porn. Thus the logical conclusion of your argument must be to raise the age of consent for sex, instead of for porn, yet you propose the exact opposite of this.

[Peter]

I apologise, I misread your proposal.

I continue to agree with Lewis that this proposal is unnecessarily verbose. Much easier language is not something that tries to exclude things as yours does, but simply creates an inclusive relationship, thus we cannot "miss something out". There is also a strong argument that only licensed vendors should be able to sell porn - I oppose giving this right to everybody. I propose:

'The Progressive Caucus supports the right of persons of 16 years and over to buy, possess and view pornography depicting only consenting persons of at least 18 years of age.'

For obvious reasons this leaves us only endorsing one form of pornography, rather than anti-endorsing others, whilst potetntially leaving the door ajar on others.

[Peter]

I would like to remind the Chairman of his duty to hold a Leadership election if necessary and to constitute the Board as outlined under the Rules.

[Peter]

I would like to remind the Chairman of his duty to hold a Leadership election if necessary and to constitute the Board as outlined under the Rules.

Yes, I know Peter. If you read the first page I was planning on doing it after speechs.

And when exactly are these speeches starting considering that you are number one on the list?

[Peter]

I dont think we should be endorsing people who aren't in the caucus. We should be rewarding loyalties.

We should endorse those who will advance our cause the most in office, regardless of their membership. Going to the contrary would simply be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

[Peter]

Fellow Progressives,

I'll talk about the elections in a few moments, but first of all I would like to just address some general points: I would first of all like to thank you all for the loyalty that you showed me when I was Caucus Chairman. It was an honour to preside over the rise of this Caucus to the truly brilliant organisation it is today.

I call on you all to go forward to your Regional Assemblies and your fellow citizens and to call on them to reform the laws of your Region to the socially liberal view that our platform advocates. It only takes one man in each Region to start the crusade, and I hope that you will all answer this calling.

Despite my attempts to spread the crusade for beliefs such as sexual liberalism to the wider community, few have taken up this calling, your time is now. Outside of the Mideast, Regions continue to not allow teenagers access to pornography with seemingly no consistency with their own age of consent laws. 13 States continue to have laws criminalising the perfectly natural expression of love between 16 year olds, and there remain States that have laws that set higher ages of consent for homosexual relations.

This injustice must end: Anybody who wants to make my day - Here's the Mideast's version as a starter.

On to the elections:

I've thought long and hard about the coming Presidential race - I'm undecided - I think that many of the candidates on offer are well qualified to lead the country and to advocate our agenda in the country.

When I come to vote, I will undoubtedly take more into account than the simple qualification that I consider for Progressive endorsements - who will advance our agenda the most? For the Presidential race, the answer comes back as Siege/Emsworth, and I urge you all to endorse this ticket.

In the coming days we will form the Progressive Caucus board and it seems likely that I will take one of the ILP seats on it - this will be my honour and I hope that those who have had doubts of late understand that this is not a party - there is a lot of intellectual disagreement - one convention we may pass a measure, but at the next we may reverse that judgement. I ask you to stay and fight your corner, or else it will certainly lose.

Fellow delegates, good night and may Dave continue to bless our great nation.

[Peter]

Only just noticed this. So legalised exploitation is part of the platform now? Hmm... wanna know why the caucus has lost pretty much all the influence it had?

Perhaps because the people who are meant to make up the backbone of the Caucus can't be arsed to protect the values it should be standing for by voting.

[Peter]

The ILP appears to have settled on myself and Emsworth.

Preston seems to be the only Freedom member interested, so I think thats pretty much a given.

I had previously convinced Alcon to sit for the Union since Sam wasn't interested, but that they may have changed on both sides.

The only question remaining is therefore the FLP

[Peter]

I believe I had the support of the neccessary independents, Josh approved awhile back when Peter introduced the idea of a board.

If you are the Vice Chairman its an academic point: You are on that Board ex officio.