What is terrifying in this story is the ease with which people’s words can now be taken down and used in evidence against them. It is technologically possible, and indeed easy, for everyone to conduct the whole of his social life as if it were a series of interviews under caution. All that is necessary is to slip one of the latest mobile phones into one’s top pocket and entrapment can commence.

Of course, there are occasions when entrapment might be justified. If, for example, I thought and had good reason to believe that a group of people were plotting to commit a terrorist atrocity, I should have no hesitation in entrapping them in the way in which Pilkington was entrapped. But it is a poor principle to allow one’s general conduct to be guided or ruled by the most extreme circumstances possible. One is still unlikely in everyday life to come across a terrorist group, for example; there is therefore no reason or excuse to record what, say, the woman behind the post office counter says to one in selling a stamp.

What this man did was dangerous, at least if it is taken as model to be followed or is in any way rewarded, because it so powerfully undermines the trust that is essential to civilised (and sincere and truthful) social and professional intercourse.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

1. St. Nikao wrote: In a sane world, the therapist should be suing this client for false representation of his motives because was not seeking help at all.  The client’s actions are part of a campaign that seeks to infringe upon the rights of people to choose to rid themselves of same-sex attraction and to receive help of professionals in doing so.  Those who actively promote the homo-bi-pansexual agenda deny that their propensities and activities are wrong, abnormal and harmful.  They claim to be happy, healthy and holy, despite a vast array of evidence to the contrary in Scripture, medicine, mental health, police and CDC statistics.  This is called denial. The pansexual activists demand that everyone else participate in their denial and approve their various behaviors.  As for reparative therapy, studies and clinical results have shown that it is not harmful and is effective and beneficial for the other commonly occurring symptoms that are statistically correlated with same-sex attraction, such as depression, suicidality, addictions to substances and behaviors (compulsions/obsessions) and other psychosomatic manifestations of distress.  Sin is harmful and always produces multiple distressing consequences at all levels of our existence. May 28, 6:25 am | [comment link]

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