What Romeo and Juliet Laws Mean for Teens

When Shakespeare brought Romeo and Juliet to life, he was intentional in choosing two young characters as his protagonists. Then as now, two teenagers having consensual sex is perfectly understandable. On the other hand, an adult molesting a child is reprehensible. The difference between the two situations would seem obvious. But in many states across America, from a legal standpoint, there’s little distinction between Romeo and Juliets mutual decision and the abusive actions of a child molester. An older teen who has sex with his younger girlfriend can be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for the act. Even worse, they may carry the stigma of being labeled a sex offender for the rest of their life. The problem typically arises when the male is 18 or 19, the female is between 14 and 16, and the parent of the younger teen presses charges. (Even Romeo would be labeled a sex offender today, as he was believed to be 16 and Juliet 13 when their relationship began.) Consent and Advice Though the age of consent (i.e. the age at which an individual can legally agree to have sex) varies from state to state—and often splits along gender lines—it is definitive in one aspect: it refers to sexual acts between heterosexuals. In over half the states, sex between homosexuals is either not addressed by existing laws or is considered a crime. Recent changes in the laws governing consensual sex between minors or an adult 18 years of age and a minor 14-16 years of age have acknowledged that this intimacy is not the same as molestation. The new laws, named â€Å"Romeo and Juliet laws† after Shakespeare’s tragic teenage lovers, attempt to correct overly harsh penalties and prison terms meted out over the years. In 2007, these laws went into effect in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, and Texas. Several other states have followed, with about half the states currently having some form of Romeo and Juliet law. Accidental Sex Offender In Florida, a 28-year-old man who’d been placed on the state’s sex offender registry was able to remove his name after the passage of Florida’s Romeo and Juliet law in July 2007. At age 17, Anthony Croce began having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend; when he turned 18, the girl’s disapproving mother pressed charges and Croce pleaded no contest. He was then legally compelled to register as a sex offender. Florida’s new law still regards underage sex as a crime, but a judge may now determine whether to strike the sex offender designation from those previously convicted. Cases that may lead to an overturned designation would involve a victim who is age 14–17 and has agreed to consensual sex; the offender would have to be no more than four years older than the victim and have no other sex crimes on their record. Gay Bias in Rulings For teenagers who are gay or lesbian and engage in consensual sex, the laws are much tougher. A 2004 case heard by the Kansas Supreme Court had civil libertarians and gay rights groups protesting the existence of a double standard. Matthew Limon was a mentally disabled 17-year-old when he had consensual sex with a 14-year-old boy. Under the Romeo and Juliet law enacted in Kansas in 1999, Limon would have been sentenced to 15 months in prison if the boy had been a girl. But because the law states that partners must be members of the opposite sex, ​Limon was given a 17-year sentence. California state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill in 2019 to add same-sex relationships to the states Romeo and Juliet law. The law seeks only to bring equality to gay and lesbian offenders and still would bring sex-offender status for adults to have sex with underage teens of the same sex or for a teen to have sex with anyone of the same sex under 14. Papa Dont Preach and Dont Press Charges The Romeo and Juliet laws are frequently enforced unfairly says Mark Chaffin, a researcher with the University of Oklahoma-based National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth. In many cases, they are enforced largely by how angry the parents of the younger party are. 2-Year Difference 10-Year Sentence One well-publicized case demonstrating the need for Romeo and Juliet legislation is that of Genarlow Wilson, a 17-year-old who was imprisoned for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old female. An athlete and honor student, Wilson was videotaped at a New Year’s Eve celebration engaging in oral sex and was sentenced to 10 years for aggravated child molestation. After serving jail time from 2003–07, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Wilson should be released; and this decision was followed by a change in state law that reduced consensual sex between teenagers to a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of one year. Sources Man shed sex offender status under new Romeo and Juliet law. Associated Press. Aug. 6, 2007.New Laws Take Romeo Into Account https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2007/07/16/new-laws-take-romeo-into-accountReynolds, Dave. Court to Decide on Discriminatory ‘Sodomy’ Law. The New Standard. Sept. 1, 2004.Why Is Gay Underage Sex Criminalized When Straight Sex Is Not? https://www.advocate.com/crime/2019/1/23/why-gay-underage-sex-criminalized-when-straight-sex-not

Metamorphosis in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye - 2179 Words

The transition from childhood to adulthood is not as clear cut as the physical traits would suggest. The female transition is no exception. Culture has a major role in deciding when the change occurs. Some mark a specific age as the point of passage while others are known to acknowledge physical changes. Regardless, cultures around the world understand that there is a distinct difference between the two. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye tells a story in the perspective of a young black girl, Claudia, as well as the perspective of her as a woman. Morrison uses a shifting narrative perspective to show that the abilities to understand and reflect are what separate the educated woman from the innocent girl. Morrison shows that a proper†¦show more content†¦She shows fearlessness when she stops the bullies from harassing Pecola and she has a presence that demands attention wherever she goes. Once the boys feel Maureen’s presence, they are suddenly â€Å"not w illing to beat up three girls under her watchful gaze† (Morrison 67). The reason that Claudia and Frieda are drawn to Maureen stems from the fact that they do not have the same carefree attitude. Morrison establishes the worry free attitude in order to show how status in society has a major effect on the development of girls. Maureen has money and attention and most likely will crave such as an adult. Claudia and the others have minimal expenditures in this novel which signals that they will likely think of spending as a privilege and not a necessity in their adult years. An important part of being a child is being accustomed to the way people interact with each other. This curiosity is universal among all girls. Girls in Morrison’s novel are constantly trying to solve problems on their own. One such incidence comes with Claudia’s knowledge of puberty. By experience, Frieda urgently tries to assist Pecola, while Claudia is ordered to hide the evidence from their mother. Claudia, however, has no idea of the circumstances and rushes her tasks insisting that she â€Å"had to stay behind and not see any of it† (Morrison 29). Many would stay behind and clean instead of watch the operation that was necessary. CuriosityShow MoreRelated Compare racial and cultural struggles in Alice Walker’s The Color2850 Words   |  12 PagesWalker’s The Color Purple as well as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In African-American texts, blacks are seen as struggling with the patriarchal worlds they live in order to achieve a sense of Self and Identity. The texts I have chosen illustrate the hazards of Western religion, Rape, Patriarchal Dominance and Colonial notions of white supremacy; an intend to show how the protagonists of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple as well as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, cope with or crumble due to theseRead MoreThe Theory, History, and Development of Magical Realism Essay examples3188 Words   |  13 Pagesanother German and an art critic, to refer to paintings that demonstrate an altered reality. With reference to magical realism he writes: We recognize this world, although now - not only because we have emerged from a dream - we look on it with new eyes . . . In contrast, we are offered a new style that is thoroughly of this world, that celebrates the mundane. . . But considered carefully, this new world of objects is still alien to the current idea of Realism. . . it employs various techniques inherited

Database and Data Independence free essay sample

One of the main advantages of using a database system is that the organization can exert, via the DBA, centralized management and control over the data. The database administrator is the focus of the centralized control. Any application requiring a change in the structure of a data record requires an arrangement with the DBA, who makes the necessary modifications. Such modifications do not affect other applications or users of the record in question. Reduction of Redundancies: Centralized control of data by the DBA avoids unnecessary duplication of data and effectively reduces the total amount of data storage required. It also eliminates the extra processing necessary to trace the required data in a large mass of data. * Elimination of Inconsistencies: The main advantage of avoiding duplication is the elimination of inconsistencies that tend to be present in redundant data files. Any redundancies that exist in the DBMS are controlled and the system ensures that these multiple copies are consistent. * Shared Data: A database allows the sharing of data under its control by any number of application programs or users. For example, the applications for the public relations and payroll departments can share the same data. * Integrity: Centralized control can also ensure that adequate checks are incorporated in the DBMS to provide data integrity. Data integrity means that the data contained in the database is both accurate and consistent. Therefore, data values being entered for the storage could be checked to ensure that they fall within a specified range and are of the correct format. Security: Data is of vital importance to an organization and may be confidential. Such confidential data must not be accessed by unauthorized persons. The DBA who has the ultimate responsibility for the data in the DBMS can ensure that proper access procedures are followed, including proper authentication schemes for access to the DBMS and additional checks before permitting access to sensitive data. Different level s of security could be implemented for various types of data and operations. * Conflict Resolution: Since the database is under the control of the DBA, he/she should resolve the conflicting requirements of various users and applications. In essence, the DBA chooses the best file structure and access method to get optimal performance for the response-critical applications, while permitting less critical applications to continue to use the database, albeit with a relatively slower response. * Data Independence: Data independence is usually considered from two points of view: physical data independence and logical data independence. Physical data independence allows changes in the physical storage devices or organization of the files to be made without requiring changes in the conceptual view or any of the external views and hence in the application programs using the database. Thus, the files may migrate from one type of physical media to another or the file structure may change without any need for changes in the application program. * Logical data independence implies that applicat ion programs need not be changed if fields are added to an existing record; nor do they have to be changed if fields not used by applications programs are deleted. Logical data independence indicates that the conceptual schema can be changed without affecting the existing external schemas. Data Independence is advantageous in the database environment since it allows for changes at one level of the database without affecting other levels. These changes are absorbed by the mapping between the levels. * Cost of software/hardware and migration * Problem associated with centralization. * Complexity of Backup and Recovery. 2. Explain the importance of ER modeling techniques in database development and normalization with examples. (P2. 2) A database can be modeled as: * a collection of entities, * relationship among entities. * An entity is an object that exists and is divided from other objects. * Example: specific person, company, event, plant * Entities have attributes * Example: people have names and addresses * An entity set is a set of entities of the same type that share the same properties. * Example: set of all persons, companies, trees, holi days * Rectangles represent entity sets. * Diamonds represent relationship sets. * Lines link attributes to entity sets and entity sets to relationship sets. Underline indicates primary key attributes As one important aspect of E-R modeling, database designers represent their data model by E-R diagrams. These diagrams enable designers and users to express their understanding of what the planned database is intended to do and how it might work, and to communicate about the database through a common language. The myriad of styles and conventions for E-R diagramming make it difficult to choose the best one. This book utilizes an acceptable style, but certainly not the only one. Each organization that uses E-R diagrams must adopt a specific style for representing The various components. You can be sure that the principles of E-R diagramming are independent of the stylistic details. E-R Diagram 3. Explain phases of a Database Development Life Cycle (DDLC) and analysis the importance of each phase. (P2. 1) A software development life cycle model (SDLC) consists of a set of processes (planning, requirements, design, development, testing, installation and maintenance) defined to accomplish the task of developing a software application that is functionally correct and satisfies the user’s needs. These set of processes, when arranged in different orders, characterize different types of life cycles. When developing a database, the order of these tasks is very important to efficiently and correctly transform the user’s requirements into an operational database. These SDLCs are generally defined very broadly and are not specific for a particular type of application. In this paper the authors emphasize that there should be a SDLC that is specific to database applications. Database applications do not have the same characteristics as other software applications and thus a specific database development life cycle (DBDLC) is needed. A DBDLC should accommodate properties like scope restriction, progressive enhancement, incremental planning and pre-defined structure. Keywords: Software Development, Database, DBMS, lifecycle model, traditional lifecycles Database management systems are generally categorized as transaction processing systems, decision support systems and/or knowledge-based systems. During their development each of these types of DBMS introduces different problems and challenges. Traditionally, SDLC models designed for developing DBMS followed the design-first-implement-later approach because of the DBMS were mainly of the transaction processing type [Weitzel and Kerschberg, 1989]. The authors believe, as we will explain later, that the design-first-implement-later approach does not work for the databases underlying data mining or knowledge-base systems or for that matter for any system where the requirements change very frequently. 4 . Design and develop a fully functional database by using DDLC concepts including following steps (P3. ); 4. 1 Analysis all the existing problems and outline the problem definition for the above scenario and give the database solutions to overcome the problems identified. (P1. 1) For a large enterprise, there is a very large body of crucial information. These are the â€Å"crown jewels† of the information technology part of the company. This information lasts for the whole lifetime of the enterprise. But applications come and go, like migrating birds. The next application to come along might want access data in a different way, for important reasons. The structure of the database structure must adapt well to these new and changing demands. With the older styles of data organization (called â€Å"network† or â€Å"CODASYL†, roughly speaking), sometimes the new application could not be done efficiently. Many times, for all practical purposes, it was impossible to write the application with acceptable performance. You can find the details of this in many books, but to give just one analogy: suppose you have a program with nested loops. In many cases (not 2D arrays), it’s pretty obvious which loop ought to be on the outside. Well, imagine if you forced to do it the other way, even if it made the program very much slower. And that’s just one example. To solve this, we want data organization that can do two things. First, give every application a view of the database that doesn’t change over time, so that the application keeps working. Second, have a way to change the physical organization of the data without changing any of the software that uses the database system, which may be needed to make the new applications faster without hurting the old ones, or not hurting enough that it matters much. This is called â€Å"data independence. † * The Relational Model A novel and effective solution to data independence, the â€Å"relational†, . By representing data in relations, in normalized form, you can solve both of the above problems. I won’t go over all that here; I recommend â€Å"An Introduction to Database Systems† By the way, notice that the name of the book isn’t â€Å"†¦ to Relational Database Systems,† even though that’s what the book is. Why bother with a superlative adjective, when â€Å"everybody knows† that all database systems, other than ancient ones, are relational? The relational model, as an abstract concept, is an excellent and brilliant solution to the data independence problem. Later we’ll see that that is not the only problem for which people want to store data. But in the next post, I’ll look into how well actual relational database systems implement the concept. 4. 2 Draw the conceptual model for the above scenario with possible entities and relationships. Transform the conceptual design into logical design. Normalize the data into 3 NF clearly showing the steps of normalizations. Include user interfaces) (P3. 2) 4. 3 Conduct a survey to evaluate your database development efficiency and methods of improvement. (P3. 3) You are required to prepare, distribute a feedback form for your system users and collect their feedback.