Much of the most interesting information to be gleaned from the New York Times appears in its middle pages and is likely to be overlooked except by avid readers.
The below article, “Ex-Officer’s Conviction in Cannibal Case Shouldn’t Be Reinstated, Appeals Court Rules” distinguishes between playing with sexual fantasy and actually doing things.
According to the Times: “A federal appeals court declined on Thursday to reinstate the conviction of a former New York police officer who was accused of plotting actual kidnappings when he exchanged online messages about abducting, torturing, killing and eating women.
“Saying they were loath ‘to give the government the power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions,’ a majority of a divided three-judge panel wrote that ‘fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime.’
“The case against Mr. [Gilberto] Valle touched on a fundamental question of the digital era: When does a plot discussed in Internet chat rooms cross the line into actual criminality?”
If we are to be judged by man and God for our fantasies, we are all in big trouble. Fantasies usually reflect basic drives, in the case above, to have sex with someone.
To borrow an apropos comment from a different article, “Sigmund Freud famously remarks, ‘The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.’” (The Interpretation of Dreams).“
