I hate to break it to you, but we routinely rape, pillage and murder. Because rules are just an abstraction. They’re not real. Ethics, law and morality all have something in common: they’re all just ideas that someone made up. Some ideas have utility, others do not. Typically, the philosophical standard for any good la…

The only science that’s pertinent here is basic physiology. Humans are mammals like any other. Once they’re sexually mature, there’s no intrinsic reason why they should not be sexually active. People understood that once. Society has developed some rather strange attitudes about sexuality, but they are absolutely…

Historical false analogies don’t really puncture my argument. They do colour the larger point that just because society finds a practice acceptable (or unacceptable) during a given time period, does not make it either intrinsically right or wrong. Social values are arbitrary and oft changing.

Strange the food doesn’t garner more enthusiasm for Mexicans. I say let ‘em all in so long as they can whip up a good pico de gallo once in a while.

I have a no-coffee-before-flight policy. Coffee has a way of, er, getting things moving down there. And there is no greater horror than having to lay down the law in an airplane bathroom.

And who gets to decide which voices are legitimate, and which voices are not?

So Katie, when are you going to swallow your pride and apologize to everyone whose comments you dismissed for supporting Hardwick when this story first broke? We’re waiting...

See, I think that line of reasoning is problematic too. Yes, there are lots of 16 year olds who are emotionally immature, but there are plenty with impressive emotionally maturity, and most significantly, there’s no objective measure of emotional maturity to being with. It’s all speculative. Moreover, there are lots…

Yeah, I was making a little incest joke there. Didn’t land.

Whoa. Way to up the EW-factor in a hurry. 

Right. So having established that the age of the girl has little bearing on the appropriateness of attraction (so long as they’re mature), we then have the separate matter of the age difference. Now it’s well documented fact that most men date/marry younger women; the average age gap varies from 5 to 10 years…

An adult is anyone aged 18 or older, yes? You don’t honestly mean to tell me that no one could possibly visually mistake a 16 year old for 18 or vice versa, do you? Because that is patently absurd. So if there’s no intrinsic problem with finding an 18 year old attractive, what would be the issue with finding a…

Respectfully, there are many 16 year olds who are visually indistinguishable from other young adults above the age of majority.

Counter-point: if there were no Florida, The Root would be missing about half its content. 

I respectfully disagree.

This seems like a lot of preparation over a non-issue.

Hold up. How many honorary degrees did Cosby have?!

Or one step better, ignore them completely. Avoid the area. Don’t cover it on the news. Make like it never happened.

Did you read past the first sentence? Have another stab at it. The non-rhetorical questions are at the bottom. I’m dying to hear your insight.

Just the kind of erudite and thought-provoking candidate this country needs right now.