Iowa Jury Decides Assault Just Fine for Pastors

That isn’t what the headlines read, of course, but it’s hard to read it any other way.

The confirmation student testified earlier Friday that the incident started when he wouldn’t stop using his cell phone in class.

The Mason City High School student said he was using his cell phone in class to text a friend about the Mason City High School homecoming football game.

He said Nelson told him to put the phone away and when he didn’t Nelson allegedly snatched it out his hand.

The boy said he responded by saying “What the (expletive)?”

The boy said Nelson punched him in his upper right arm eight to 10 times with a closed fist.

The only differences between the teen’s testimony and the pastor’s are that the pastor says it was six times with an open hand and that the teen swore twice instead of once. That’s right. The pastor admitted before the jury that he repeatedly hit a young teen (confirmation is generally at age 14) to deal with the immediate threat of…what was that again?

Nelson said he also wanted to “protect the church from such abuse.”

When the boy used the expletive again, Nelson said he hit him three more times.

“It was extremely repulsive. I never ever remember hearing anyone use that word,” Nelson said.

Right. That was it. The entire church needed protecting from a teenager’s vocabulary. This house of God was going to crumble upon the introduction of the word, “fuck”, a word so powerful no one had ever used it around this 61-year-old pastor before. This exculpatory crime was brought up again by the defense attorney in closing arguments.

“He used the expletive in church. That’s how upset he was over his cell phone,” Tompkins told the jury.

He said the boy didn’t suffer any injuries as a result of the incident.

Tompkins said young people these days lack respect and discipline and parents only want to be friends with their children.

You see, the pastor was simply refusing to spare the rod, the way the boy’s parents should have done. Because everyone knows that parents can–and should–entirely control a child’s swearing in every aspect of their lives.

I will say, though, that the parents made one mistake in this mess. They appear to have sent a child to be confirmed in a faith he doesn’t care much about. It’s a common error, but hopefully they and some other parents will reconsider it after this. While the jury may have bought the argument that the church was more deserving than the child, I’d like to think that parents who have seen this trial through would get the idea.

Someone who finds the football game and the cell phone more compelling than the details of his faith is not ready to be asked to make a commitment to that faith. Someone who has to strike a child over words has no authority in this world, either on his own or through a deity.

Beyond that, a jury that finds in the favor of that pastor doesn’t have much faith that the church can stand on its own. I don’t either, of course. The difference is that I don’t think it’s the jury’s job to help the pastor prop up his church through violence.

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Iowa Jury Decides Assault Just Fine for Pastors
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58 thoughts on “Iowa Jury Decides Assault Just Fine for Pastors

  1. 1

    My take on this is “fuck Rev. Nelson and the horse he rode in on.”
    We damn sure would have had a hung jury if I had been chosen for it…..

  2. 2

    I am interested if some feel he brought this on himself which I of course do. If I was his parent I would have dragged my son in to apologize not only to the pastor but also the entire class for causing such a disruption. It does not sound like the boy or anyone was traumatized other than the disrespect for others in class caused by the boy. I know all of you will all disagree and that is fine but parenting needs to start at home such that being disrespectful to your elders is considered non-acceptable behavior.

  3. 4

    I think there is a big difference between a hit or slap on the arm to get the attention of the disrespectful boy and a hit or slap on the face. We as parents have become to complacent in allowing schools to teach our children what is means to be respectful and disrespectful to teachers, elders and persons of authority. Teaching of your core values should start at home.

  4. 5

    Dan-o, if someone asks you, “What the fuck?”, you have their attention. This isn’t about getting attention. This is about punishment. Nor is it a slap on the arm. It is at least half a dozen slaps and possibly up to ten punches. The fact that you have to minimize it in order to be able to justify it should tell you something. You shouldn’t like what it tells you.

  5. 6

    Stephanie, while I understand what you have said I do not agree as per my last 2 posts. Had this happened at a public or private school I will be honest my answers would be the same. Children should not be using phones in class and apparently this young boy seemed to have forgotten this. I do not think it will happen again but I could be wrong.

  6. 9

    I disagree that this is about punishment. Violent displays like this are reactions to a perceived loss, or threatened loss of power. It is not at all for the benefit of the boy, it is for the benefit of the priest.

  7. 10

    You’re right Dan-o. There is a difference between a punch to the face and a punch to the arm. I’ll tell you what isn’t different though…they are both wrong, illegal, chicken shit ways to deal with that situation. The pastor in question proved in that one moment that he isnt’t an authority worthy of respect just as you have proven yourself morally bankrupt by defending him.

  8. 11

    I agree that we dissgree. I see no reason to prosecute based on what I have read here and that also would be the case if my son was in an after school class on Atheism (hopefully not the case but he can choose his own path).

  9. 13

    I’ll say this, dan-o. I would be very disappointed in my daughter if she swore in class, any class…and I would prosecute the living hell out of any sad bastard of a teacher who dared to lay hands on her for such a trivial offense.

  10. 14

    Josh, I can not agree that using an expletive in any class is trivial. Perhaps we were raised with different core values.

  11. 15

    Dan-o, you may not realize this, but you’re telling everyone who reads your comments that one of your “core values” is that a swear word is more important than not hitting a child. You really might want to step back and think this through.

  12. 16

    Please do not twist my words Stephanie. What I said was that using an expletive in any class is not trivial. I also said in Post 4 “I think there is a big difference between a hit or slap on the arm to get the attention of the disrespectful boy and a hit or slap on the face. We as parents have become to complacent in allowing schools to teach our children what is means to be respectful and disrespectful to teachers, elders and persons of authority. Teaching of your core values should start at home.”. At no time did I say what you inferred from my posts. Cheers!

  13. 17

    I question whether texting on a phone in class is really such a huge disruption. The same adults who would demand total respect and attention from children (no texting in class, look at me when I talk) tend to think it’s fine to give children less than their full attention. I can’t speak specifically for this particular adult here, but I think that it’s a general rule.

    But a cell phone? People sent texts on cell phones all the time while I was in college and the professors weren’t throwing hissy-fits over it, but it might have been that they were secure, psychologically healthy adults rather than insecure control-freaks. Don’t send texts while driving, riding a bike or performing surgery, but in class is just making a huge deal over nothing.

    As far as a slap or hit and what the difference – if I playfully ‘slapped’ a total stranger the law calls that assault regardless of the lack of risk of injury. The only people who can get hit with no penalty are kids.

    I also get nauseated at the ‘this is discipline not hitting’ – everybody who agrees with corporal punishment has some ten rules of doing it right, which is different from all the other rules of the other corporal punishment proponents. Given that nobody can come up with a set of clear rules, it might as well all be dropped.

    Also, I have worked with children and young people for quite a while, and I have never encountered a single situation where I could imagine hitting kids would have solved everything. Just too many adults are narcissistic, insecure control freaks who have to make a big deal out of nothing.

    As for the word ‘fuck,’ I wouldn’t use the word in front of five year olds, but I just don’t see it as so shocking. Sometimes you need the right word and the right word is fuck.

  14. 18

    smrnda it sounds like you were raised with vastly different core values than me. Explatives are never the right word in any situation unless you are trying to escalate the debate to a higher level of “I don’t give a damn so F### you”.

  15. 19

    Hitting a child on the arm is still hitting, exactly as I expressed it. You say the child brought it on himself, which is saying hitting is a proportional response. You don’t want to prosecute, which is saying hitting is a proportional response. You were the one who declared this to be about core values. Live with what you’re saying, Dan-o, even if you haven’t managed to say it outright.

  16. 20

    I come away with two perspectives of this. The first is that NO ONE has a right to hit a child. Discipline is not done with fists, or even with open hands.

    So the pastor was wrong and his behavior cannot be excused for any reason. He acted as much like a kid as the kid did. As an adult, he bears a greater responsibility for that behavior, and he needed to face real consequences because of it. And yes, all his arguments were ridiculous.

    But the other perspective is this: that kid needed a good, hard, sit-down-and-modify-your-behavior moment. He had absolutely no right to use the behavior he used or the language he spoke.

    Granted, I have all the sympathy in the world for a kid forced to take a religious class he has no interest in. But tough knuckles. Kids have to do a lot of things they think are boring. They’re kids. They have a lot to learn, and they should NEVER treat a teacher (or any adult, or hey – even any other kids) with disdain and disrespect just because they feel like it.

    I’ve been a high school teacher. I’m a small woman and a lot of teenagers are bigger than I am. I’ve had to face the teenage boy who gives me nothing but disdain, threats, swearing, and name-calling, just because I was the adult in charge, and he didn’t want to be there.

    This is behavior that should not be tolerated in a civil society. Even if we think the particular class is without merit (and I agree that it is), it’s a mistake to lose sight of what should be proper behavior.

    The pastor acted wrong. But so did the kid. I hope his parents read him the riot act and made him apologize to everyone in the room. Then grounded him for a month.

  17. 21

    Marlene, with respect for your experiences, a kid who says, “What the fuck?”, when something of his is taken away from him is not getting in someone’s face swearing, calling names, and making threats. What he did is not what you describe. Kids have a right to question what happens to them, even if it inconveniences you or your thoughts on polite language and even if they don’t do it with the grace that an adult might.

  18. 23

    I understand the boy wasn’t overtly threatening, but I wasn’t trying to say he was. My example was a poor one.

    But I have to disagree. I strongly suspect the kids were told the rules. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be on his phone. He knew he was told to put it away. He chose to ignore that. When the phone was taken from him, that was not a “what the fuck?” moment. He knew darn well why it was taken away, and his comment was a challenge, one that managed to both question the teacher’s authority and belittle him as a person. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of comments like that, you’ll know I mean.

    Yes, teenagers need to question what happens to them. Everyone does. But there’s a place and a method. At the moment the phone was taken away, the boy was not being threatened, hurt, or abused in any way. The poor behavior was entirely the boy’s.

    Our classrooms will never be successful places of learning if we don’t manage to curtail this kind of behavior.

  19. 24

    Josh says:
    April 2, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    I’ll say this, dan-o. I would be very disappointed in my daughter if she swore in class, any class…

    Passive-agressive parenting for the win!

  20. 25

    Marlene, you’re making an awful lot of assumptions about what happened in that class. If I were to make assumptions about the conduct of a confirmation class, they wouldn’t include the teacher hitting students.

    I get that your experience was upsetting. This is not the place to try to insert it.

  21. 27

    Marlene: I would argue that when the only way that a teacher or pastor believe is necessary and appropriate to stop a kid from texting is to grab the phone from his hands, we are already dealing with a deeply dysfunctional environment that is anything but a “success”.

  22. 28

    Dan-o, I’d be willing to bet that I was “raised” with a set of core values very similar, if not nearly identical, to your own. When I grew up I realized that the set of traditional Christian “morals” I was given were woefully inadequate. I eventually came to learn that many of the things I was taught were wrong and luckily I was honest enough with myself to admit it. I’m truly sorry that you feel you must cling to a set of values that allows you to justify physical violence to children as a valid response to mere words, trivial or not, that might offend your sensibilities. Your justifications are a better example of what is morally corrupt in the world than anything the teen might have said to that asshat of a pastor.

  23. 29

    Jarreg glad to hear you “changed” and decided you knew what was best for you. I also did some long and difficult soul searching and ended back up where I started as a christian and would not have traded my childhood or the way of was raised with anyone. Although I did have several friends say they would have loved to have my parents and their help with all activities instead of their own. Believe it not this was said to me twice. So unless they were wrong I think I turned out OK. Cheers! Christian code for God Bless.

  24. 30

    Dan-o: Based on everything you’ve said here, I have to say yes, they were very clearly wrong to envy you. Learning the difference between right and wrong is part of growing up. Best of luck to you on that front.

  25. 33

    I find it disturbing that some people think hitting anyone, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN, is at all “okay”.

    I also find it disturbing that some people lack fundamental courtesy to others — I don’t care if you’re bored out of your skull, it’s not okay to disrupt the class and distract others with your cell-phone (or other electronic toy).

    But it’s STILL not cool to hit the disruptive kid.

  26. 34

    Exactly, WMDKitty. An adult who is actually secure in his/her control of his/her classroom would have had the following exchange:

    Adult: *takes cellphone*
    Teen: What the fuck?!
    Adult: No texting in class, you can have this back when class is over.
    Teen: What the FUCK?!
    Adult: If you swear again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You are old enough to understand appropriate behavior.

    And then go from there.

    There are only two situations in which it is acceptable to hit another human being:
    1) a sparring match or other martial arts/boxing/etc. type of competition
    2) in self-defense.

    My parents only spanked me when I was in imminent risk of physical harm (slapping me away from the stove or paddling me for venturing too close to the road as a kidlet). I have yet to swear in a classroom or, for that matter, text while a presenter is talking in any context.

  27. 35

    @Josh — If you’re trying to not get killed, yeah, I’m tentatively okay with using enough violent force to subdue and contain the threat. I’m not okay with knee-jerk grab-my-GUN-and-shoot-it-dead reactions to a threat, real or perceived.

  28. 36

    My parents only spanked me when I was in imminent risk of physical harm (slapping me away from the stove or paddling me for venturing too close to the road as a kidlet).

    And why was the paddling necessary? What is the lesson supposed to be: ‘if your parents see you getting close to the road they will cause you pain’? How does that teach safe behavior? All this teaches is not to get caught. When my daughter did such things I held her tightly. If she was upset (beforehand) and tried to run off I sometimes used a modified judo hold until she was calm enough to listen and pay attention. Then I explained.

  29. 37

    @WMDKitty: Naturally. Proportionate response to an actual imminent threat is the only moral thing there. No shooting until a gun or knife is clearly on its way to being pointed at you.

    @Anat: As I understand it, that kind of punishment is only meant to be effective with very young children who aren’t able to separate out the idea that parents aren’t omniscient–it’s only intended as a stopgap until it can be explained (at age 3-5) what “hot”, “dangerous”, etc. mean.

    That said, the anecdote was intended as honesty about the level of corporal punishment in my own early life, not as advocacy. Your methods seem superior to me.

  30. 38

    Josh, I would have kicked him out at the first use of an expletive. No second chance. So if I understand this it is not OK to spank kids when they are little but Judo moves are OK. Does it depend on whether the day is even or odd number for certain judo moves?

  31. 39

    dan-o, not judo moves, judo holds. As in, ways to keep her in place so she doesn’t run off. Effective restraint. I held her down on the ground until she wasn’t trying to escape, nor attempting to hit me. And then let her rest some more. And then asked her if she was ready to continue our walk. Lots of patience, no expression of anger or frustration.

  32. 40

    dan-o: you are a motherfucking authoritarian, child-abuse-tolerating, shittastic religious-apologist fucking asshole. Fuck you.

    And, by the way, what I just wrote is a fucking hell of a lot more moral than anything you’ve written on this thread.

    If you care more about words than respecting human being’s right to bodily autonomy, you are so fucking morally degenerate I see no point in mincing words with such a shit-for-brains!

  33. 41

    @Anat, #36–yeah, I’ve always been intensely skeptical of that “we-only-spank-in-moments-of-imminent-danger!!” claim. For one thing, I suspect it’s a rationalization of hitting, for which the threshold may be all too fluid (i.e., it’s hard to rationalize to yourself saying you never hit when in fact you do, but it’s easier to say you only hit when absolutely necessary, and then every instance of hitting becomes absolutely necessary). For another, I was raised in a strict no-spanking household, and I have never seen a shred of evidence that spanking in immediate danger is effective for teaching or protection, or that children who aren’t spanked in dangerous situations get themselves squashed/burned/electrocuted at higher rates than those who are!!

    To me it seems like parents are just trying to rationalize their taking out their panic and frustration on the defenseless child.

  34. 42

    Before someone wants to take a swat at me for being raised with ‘different values’ dan-o I hope that you were just referring to language use and not a lot of other things, since I think I was raised with pretty good values. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that it was just language so I’m not taking it personally, though the idea that expletives are horrible is, to me, a culturally relative notion. My parents taught me that you should give back to your community which I’ve been doing my whole life, so on top of working I volunteer working with kids about 14-20 hours a week and do adult literacy tutoring on top of that during the summer. I’d argue that the fact that I say “fuck” on occasion is a pretty poor barometer of my character or integrity. It would be like someone saying I’m a terrible girl for drinking bourbon on occasion. I don’t say fuck around kids but I also don’t talk about say, military history around kids. Wouldn’t want to traumatize them by talking about kill-ratios on the Russian front. It’s called being age-appropriate.

    But as for language, you should really look up General George S Patton on expletives.

    Something I was raised with is the idea that if one wants respect you should earn it, and I wouldn’t expect kids to ‘respect’ me just since I’d managed to stay alive two decades longer than most of them, I mean, is that really such an accomplishment? I’d like to earn their respect. I don’t think demanding unconditional respect and hitting people when you don’t get it teaches respect – it’s just power, domination and control and I view that as the antithesis of respect. It’s ‘whoever wields the power to hit you must be obeyed.’

  35. 44

    Years ago a neighborhood child tried to tattle to me about one of my kids swearing. I asked him if he knew what the words meant? He said he did. I then told him that since he already knew the words, obviously he hadn’t been corrupted by new exposure to them. Had he claimed he didn’t know them, then I would have told him that he couldn’t be hurt by something he didn’t understand. Either way, I wasn’t about to encourage this kid to tattle to me trying to get my kids in trouble. (Now had they actually hurt somebody…)

    Privately, later, I had a discussion with my child about his use of language and the consequences to him of other people getting upset with him for using it, as well as being ineffective communication. At no point did it occur to either of us that an appropriate response by another adult to his language, including me, would be to repeatedly hit him. And when he swears these days, I know there is some mighty reason for it.

  36. 45

    dan-o @ 38

    Josh, I would have kicked him out at the first use of an expletive.

    This would have been the ideal solution. The offending party would have been removed and the kid would no longer have to attend this worthless class. Win/win.

  37. 46

    Leftside, thank you for your honest comments but of course I have to disagree with them. I on the other hand will not call you names nor continue to insult you. It is always interesting to see in debates how some people become enraged so quickly as if the debate brings back some bad memories. I teach my children that expletives are vulgar and show the other person you do not wish to continue the debate as you in essence have decided your point is the only one that matters. Typically once children start using expletives at a young age in regular conversations it indicates a lack of good parenting at home. Cheers!

  38. 47

    Thank you for so flatly disagreeing with my comments and so utterly failing to consider them. And it is completely absurd of you to consider swearing to be evidence of being “enraged”–did it ever occur to you that those “fuck-you”s might be a deliberate choice to highlight the utter fuckery of your worldview? Consider it exposure therapy, motherfucker!

    You also have a lot of preconceived notions about profanity that tend toward absurdity in their simple-mindedness, and I strongly suggest you open your mind to the possibility that it might mean different things for different people in different situations. Moreover, it is ignorant and myopic of you to imagine use of profanity means a lack of good parenting–it may mean the parents are a lot more emotionally well-adjusted than you are, and don’t freak out about phonemes. Naturally, I would hope they’d teach them appropriateness of time and place, but as far as I’m concerned telling a priest to fuck off is eminently appropriate.

    And by the way, knock it the fuck off with the “Cheers!” It is passive-aggressive, manipulative posturing to give yourself a sense of moral superiority, and no one is buying it. Really, we’re not that fucking stupid. (n.b., we also don’t fall for “I’ll pray for you” either…) When you say “Cheers!” I get the exact same impression as when someone says “Fuck you!” so I will respond in kind: Fuck you!

  39. 48

    I see in no way that using an expletive amounts to anything more than saying I am closing my eyes & ears & humming as you talk. It is hard to believe that any parents would say using expletives is OK if that is the only way to get your point across. Apparently debate was not one the extracurricular activities you ever tried. In that case let me tell you it is not allowed their either. I would suggest contacting your middle school to ask if they offer a remedial class for adults that were raised in an intense and do what you want method. You may also want to check with some of your local community colleges as they may offer a class into proper debate and how to understand your opponent. Best wishes!

  40. 49

    Holy fuck, you are such a fucking tone troll!! In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t a formal debate. It may interest you to know that I am perfectly capable of tempering my language to appropriate settings (and I even argued in favor of it above!), but this is an internet forum and I am making a conscious choice to swear the motherfucking shit out of you to highlight the absurdity of your obsession with profanity (and consequent disrespect for minors’ rights to bodily autonomy). If you are too stupid to understand written communication because it has a few fuckyous in it, that is your fucking problem and not mine. Furthermore, if you’re going to obsess so much about the fucking tone that’s a really good indication that your argument is shit, and that you’re not paying enough attention to what the other person is actually saying.

    Moreover, if you actually had any respect for reasoned debate, you’d understand that a strawman is a hell of a lot more detrimental to the quality of the discourse than a few well-deserved “fucks.” No one here has said it’s okay for a child (or anyone) to swear as “the only way to get your point across”–the discussion has been about the moral appropriateness of profanity in different situations and on ethical priorities. No one has said that profanity can take the place of reasoned discourse, but that it is a rhetorical tool like any other and an important component of human emotions and therefore of human communication. I have been demonstrating to you (you pompous ignorant motherfucker) that profanity is orthogonal to ethics and to the soundness of the debate–a professed opinion can be horribly offensive, mean-spirited, manipulative, etc. and not have a single objectionable WORD in it (because thinking people, unlike you, place a higher value on communicated ideas than words!), while a stirring defense of human rights, social responsibility, and fairness may well have quite a few righteous FUCKS in it. Similarly, an opinion may be totally vapid and self-contradictory but stated in the King’s English, while the presence of FUCK YOU does not magically transform sound reasoning into bad reasoning (unless you’re a pompous shallow idiot, of course), and a thorough deconstruction of an argument may very well be enlivened by some “spice in the stew,” as George Carlin said. Just presuming that because something employs a rhetorical device you don’t like means that it must be wrong is fallacious in the extreme–it can only aspire to be a Fallacy Fallacy, because your implication that profanity must be fallacious is itself a non sequitur. And while we’re on the subject of totally fucking inept debating, “It’s either ‘never allow profanity’ or ‘intense and do what you want method’ of parenting” is a false dichotomy, dumbshit!

    And, “Best Wishes!” is just as transparent a “Fuck You!” as “Cheers!” You are a pompous condescending ass with seriously fucked up values and you think you can cover it over by superficially saying some nice words. It’s your IDEAS that are disgusting, and no amount of nice words are ever going to fucking change that! Don’t bloody insult our intelligence like that, motherfucker!

  41. 51

    “I see in no way that using an expletive amounts to anything more than saying I am closing my eyes & ears & humming as you talk.”

    Perhaps you should note that people have meaningful conversations all the time that include expletives, or are you taking the Queen Victoria position that unless all the commoners use ‘proper clean words’ (which make discussion of controversial matters impossible) that they just shouldn’t talk?

    In the case of an expletive, if I asked someone “what the FUCK are you standing there for?” I am definitely not using an expletive to shut down discussion but to make it pretty clear that standing somewhere is a pretty bad idea and that moving very quickly might be a good idea.

    The idea that some words are ‘vulgar’ is really just watered down Victorianism, as ridiculous as the idea that it’s somehow a scandal if someone openly admits to having bodily functions, as absurd as the idea that someone should say she’s going to ‘powder her nose’ instead of saying she’s going to the ‘bathroom’ or ‘toilet.’

    Using expletives can show a lack of creativity, but so can using any other buzzwords.

  42. 53

    Yeah, you and your five logical fallacies in one fucking post can go fuck yourself about how “educated” you are.

    Oh, and nice job playing the “if-only-you-were-nicer-I-totally-would-have-listened!!” card…no one falls for that anymore. NOTHING about your posts indicates anyone with even the capacity to consider other points of view, so it should be fairly obvious that I never intended to convince you any more than I would try to change the course of the wind–I’m employing some good-old-fashioned social shaming to expose your idiocy to others (and to show you there is a social cost to proclaiming your idiocy so pompously!).

    But again, WONDERFUL job neglecting yet again to address any of the points I made while whining impotently about tone. I sincerely thank you for being so perfect an example of the mindless superficiality I’m decrying.

    And you just look stupid crowing about “very few 3 syllable words [by the way, that should be “3-syllable words,” because “3-syllable” is a compound adjective and therefore hyphenated] so you should be fine to read it” to someone who has just explained deconstructing orthogonal components of argumentation to you. I mean, really, people can just look upthread and see my pretty clear facility with polysyllabic vocabulary, so what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

    Oh, and fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and your mother too.

  43. 54

    So the question is did you actually read the stories in my 2 links or were you to caught up in your own expletive rant. I will list additional web links if you need more support to change your mind about why expletives used during an argument simply show your disrespect towards the other debater. Either way I believe I proved my point. When you are ready to discuss in a civil manor please come back to the table where the adults sit. Until then I ban you to the children’s corner to think about your language young man. Opps almost forgot….Cheers!

  44. 55

    dan-o, you do not get to “ban” any commenters here. For that matter, you really shouldn’t make any assumptions about their gender either. Time out for you.

  45. 56

    I feel like if you had half a fucking brain you could make your case yourself–I’m not impressed by fools retreating to links instead of actually addressing the points presented with their own reasoning. Links should be corroborating evidence to support an argument you yourself are synthesizing–they do not stand alone. The grand total of your “intellectual” contribution has been “I have to disagree” and whining about style instead of substance. What superficial bollocks. And yeah, now that I clicked on those precious links of yours I found them to be exactly the platitudinous bullshit I expected that fails to address the contextual role of profanity nor the utter vapidity of tone-trolling. Articles that basically boil down to “how to coax your cantankerous relatives at Thanksgiving” do not have any applicability to the performance of public debate, nor to the assessment of the intellectual and social merit of various means of self-expression.

    And I INTEND to show disrespect to you. Haven’t you fucking noticed? What part of “you are so fucking morally degenerate I see no point in mincing words with such a shit-for-brains!” did you not understand?! I find your values utterly reprehensible, and I will not show deference to your fucking bullshit religious privilege and blatant ageism. The esteem of your peers has to be earned, and I’m not going to play nice and pretend there is any validity to prioritizing language over bodily autonomy–that is fucking outside the sphere of legitimate debate, motherfucker, and espousing such a callous disregard for the well-being of others will garner you nothing but scorn from me.

    What point to you think you proved?? That you’re a narrow-minded asshole? That you value your preconceived notions over the complexities of human interaction? That you are incapable of thinking in anything other than logical fallacies? That you cannot understand that others’ values might be more deeply thought out than yours? That you think a paper-thin argument from assertion is sufficient to establish your intelligence? That your preoccupation with politeness is a mere crutch for incredibly shallow thinking?

    And, like Stephanie said, fuck your privileged presumption of default masculinity, too!

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