Your and-ask-them-out-on-a-date qualifier is not one I noticed in the prior post where you made the same point, so I did not assume it was material.
It was included in both posts, using almost exactly the same phrasing. You explicitly quoted it in your response. Clearly you were simply looking for a chance to be glib and condescending, and leapt without looking. This was a poor tactic on your part - both because you are in the middle of pursuing a bunch of legalistic argumentation premised on careful, holistic reading of texts, and because you decided to attempt such against a much more capable troll than yourself.
It seems to me that while many romantic relationships include a sexual component, that is not the end all and be all of dating (or any relationship that is likely to result from dating).
Nobody said it was the "end all and be all of dating." Nobody is pushing any reductive view of human interactions as being purely sexual, so you can go ahead and stop addressing that strawman.
That said, dating and attraction remain primarily, overtly sexual phenomena. The tiny minority of asexual romantic relationships are the exception that proves the rule.
So, there is a mental leap from imagining going on a date to imagining sex,
But not from expressing a desire to go on a date, to expressing sexual attraction. Especially when there's an explicit indication of sexual attraction included right next to the request for a date.
As such your assertion established neither necessary nor sufficient conditions to sexual desire.
Horseshit. The fact that a troll with an agenda can pretend that it is theoretically possible to say that you find someone attractive and ask them to go out with you, but not be sexually attracted to them, does not impress. Even if you shoehorn some terms from formal logic into the inanity. There is, in point of fact, no meaningful doubt as to whether the cop in question was sexually attracted to the victim, nor whether he was intending to convey such, nor whether she understood such to be conveyed. Nor do I see you disputing that. You just seem to be looking to derail into some kind of inane "gotcha!" trolling.
I am not sure why you think I would bother to lie to you about that,
It was apparent in your previous post - and in this one - that you harbor some discomfort with aknowledging the major role of sexuality in human relations, and have erected some defense mechanisms to place artifical distance between sex and various immediately-related modes of human interaction. This was particularly visible with the father/daughter examples (obtuse revulsion at the obvious implications of describing one's daughter as "attractive"). All of which is fairly common and explicable ("if I aknowledge my daughters' sexuality, that makes me a pedophile!"), hence the ease in recognizing it. It's a bog-standard neurosis.
In fact, I realize that you, troll, have partially succeeded, since whether he had implicit hopes of having sex with the woman is not the issue. Many people harbor sexual desire in their hearts, that is not a crime, nor does the DPPA make it one.
You may have noticed that this thread is not solely about whether the actions in question are a crime under the DPPA or not (although it has become more about that since your late entrance). It is very much about whether the actions in question are morally excusable (adoucette's contention), and also whether they
should be criminal (irrespective of the text of current statutes). The specific interaction that you decided to insert yourself into the middle of, was on exactly that subject.
Meanwhile, I notice you didn't bother chastizing adoucette for bringing up this (irrelevant to the point of trollish derail, according to you) issue. Instead, you leapt to his defense on that exact point, and only developed an aversion to its relevance when it didn't turn out to be the easy chance for glib self-promotion that you foolishly imagined it would be. Meanwhile you continue to undermine this "point" by pursuing the question further.
If the court holds that the DPPA applies here, his intent is 100% irrelevant. He could have been hoping to rob her, and while that could independently be a crime (it is not, but one could imagine a law that criminalized asking a person out with the intent to rob them), that has nothing to do with the DPPA.
And his intent will remain relevant to the question of whether his actions were morallly acceptable, total irrespective of anything that anyone finds about the DPPA.
I think it is likely (but irrelevant) that he did,
On what basis? Haven't you just spent two posts arguing that nothing he said can be reasonably construed to indicate anything particularly sexual? So, whence the "likely?"
though put aside your image of his drooling over the prospect of sex.
I have advanced no such "image." There is no substantial inference required to get from the contents of his missive, to the obvious conclusion that he's interested in her sexually. His letter was a straightforward, overt communication of such. I have not characterized that desire as in any way abnormal or boorish (i.e., your "drooling"). I have simply noted that when a heterosexual man tells a woman that he finds her irresistably attractive and requests a date, it is a clear, overt indication of sexual interest. This is totally normal, expected, and in no way an attribution of poor character or uncontrolled impulse on his part (the misuse of info, invasion of privacy, etc., on the other hand, is).
Indeed, the fact that you would make the leap from aknowledging the overt sexual aspect of his expressions, all the way to characterizing him as a "drooling" sex-crazed lecher, again goes to evidence of your own discomfort with sexuality and consequent erection of spurious distinctions to avoid aknowledging such.
I think it likely that he thought that a sexual relationship with her will be nice if she likes him enough to agree to it after several dates.
I do not think it is true that his principal intent was to have sex, no.
Those two sentences do not conform with one another.
I do not know if you have a daughter, but imagine a boy comes to your door to pick her up for a date. The situation is very different if he greet you by saying he has come to pick up your daughter for their date versus him saying that he wants to have sex with your daughter.
Sure, but not as it applies to the question of whether he wants to have sex with your daughter. The difference is all about his willingness to display respect for social conventions, your own authority, your daughter's various other attributes, etc. There is no question, in either case, that he is sexually attracted to your daughter. He generally wouldn't be showing up to take her on a date, otherwise.
You seem to be suggesting (although I myself like to think you do not really believe it) that those two situations are entirely equivalent.
As it applies to the question of whether the boy in question is sexually attracted to your daughter, they
are entirely equivalent. As it applies to the question of whether he's the type of person you'd want associating with your daughter (even socially, let alone sexually or romantically), it's a very different story. But, as you may recall, you are in the process at attacking my simple observation that stating you find someone attractive and asking them out are indications of sexual interest.
In fact, maybe the boy who admits that he wants sex is simply more honest, which in a funny way would be admirable (even though, obviously, as a father you tell that boy to leave, alone).
We aren't debating the level of honesty or desirability or whatever of the guy, here. We're debating whether he expressed sexual interest in the victim.
Men desiring to have sex with women is not a legally actionable threat in and of itself, nor is it when coupled with a date request, nor is it when coupled with an arguable violation of the DPPA. There could be a violation of the DPPA, but the sexual desire in logically unrelated to that.
Good thing for me that I never made any of those assertions then, isn't it? So how about you drop them, or at least start directing them at adoucette as well (this entire tangent is of his making, you may note).
In effect, painting his in the way you are seems like an ad hominem against Collins,
Only if you think that there's something objectionable about a man expressing sexual interest in a woman, in the standard, polite manner (ignoring the whole stalking part, that is). Which is seems that you do:
designed to plant the (I would say unwarranted) notion that he is some sort of predator.
Again, this is an expression of your own psychodrama and not something I'm answerable for. The fact the a man is sexually interested in a female and tells her as much (using the standard, accepted terms for doing so in our society) does not make him a "predator." The stalking and invasion of privacy, on the other hand, might, but that isn't what we're discussing at this particular juncture. So, again, I'm left with the impression that you operate under some kind of puritanical disconnect wherein any aknowledgement of sexuality is some kind of character indictment. This has you going around constructing elborately silly evasions of the obvious.
In point of fact, I was responding by an attempted whitewash by one adoucette, who is attempting to desexualize the encounter to make the guy look less predatory and creepy. Apparently he only stalked her for the purpose of developing a platonic friendship, the better to discuss current literature and trends in politics, or something. The implication there being that - even according to his most vocal defender here - it is unacceptably creepy to make sexual advances in such a manner. So we are left with this inane attempt to desexualize the whole issue, ludicrous hair-splitting attempts to separate "attraction" and "dating" from "sex," etc.
I certainly do agree that it is possible that the plaintiff thinks in the way you suggest, though, and so really did feel sexually threatened by Collins, but assuming her distress was such that it rises to the severe levels needed to maintain a tort claim for infliction of emotional distress, I am not sure a jury will find that his conduct reached the [/u]outrageous[/u] levels needed, though I am sure you disagree.
Purely on the contents of the note, no, I would not disagree. There's nothing particularly distressing or harmful about expressing sexual interest in someone. And, indeed, he's not being sued simply for leaving a note. Rather, the distress stems from his willingness to abuse his position of authority to track her down - she was confronted not simply with a man who was expressing sexual interest in her, but with a police officer who displayed willingness to invade her privacy and make serrupticious visits to her home. The distress is not at the sexual advances per se, but rather at being put in a position wherein she was not suitably empowered to refuse such.
Whether she felt threatened or not is, of course, entirely irrelevant under the DPPA, but it is relevant to her intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.
It's also immediately relevant to the underlying ethical question of whether what the perpetrator did was
morally wrong.
