What defines sex? The case of Donita Ganzon

[Lan Barnes]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 10:38:33AM -0800, Stewart Stremler wrote:
> begin  quoting Lan Barnes as of Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 09:16:36AM -0800:
> [snip]
> > > Why should you not be able to ride a Harley without a helmet?  
> > 
> > I don't care. Same with seat belts ... if you don't want to play the
> > odds, go get maimed. Minors have a right to expect protection (car
> > seats) but grown ups can make their own decisions, even if they're bad
> > ones. (Note that I reject the "it drives my insurance rates up" argument
> > for nanny laws.) Laws that protect us from ourselves are almost never
> > justified.
> 
> Yup.
> 
> Cars should *come* with effective seat-belts.
> 
> Use 'em or not, your call.
> 
> Of course, if you die in an accident, the poor bloke that hit you
> shouldn't be saddled with "wrongful death" or any other such nonsense.
> It should be *assumed* that you're wearing a seat-belt, and failure to
> do so is your own problem.
> 

Good point and fair enough.

> (This doesn't mean the other guy isn't at fault for an accident they
> cause.)
> 

Sure, we'd need to do some fine print. Devil's in the details. Still you
make a good point that people who skip proven and commonly taught safety
precautions give up a degree of legal recourse when things go bad.

This is what has made the tobacco suits so interesting. Smoking is
commonly accepted to be a voluntary act. Why give people damages when
they chose to do the bad thing?

Of course, this simplistic approach ignores several other factors:

1. The tobacco industry had a multi decade collusion to dissemble and
confuse about the effects of smoking

2. Tobacco advertising was aimed at children and adolescents (still is,
really)

3. Once hooked, addiction (which the tobacco industry obscured and
denied) makes continuing smoking a compulsion, not a choice.

This is why I can feel one way about the fast food industry and another
about tobacco.

-- 
Lan Barnes                    lan at falleagle.net
Linux Guy, SCM Specialist     858-354-0616