thats the fact of the matter. if somethings illegal and you get caught youll suffer the consequences.
but just because its illegal doesnt mean it should be illegal, as your opinion on sex and drug laws agrees.
and if you do something thats illegal but shouldnt be, then you shouldnt have to suffer any consequences.
whether you actually do suffer the consequences or not is irrelevant to the justification of those consequences.
your previous statement "..until the laws are changed, which will likely never happen, I say you live within the law or suffer the consequences." made it osund as if you thought suffering consequences for breaking unjust laws was just, that the act of breaking a law, whether the law is just or not, was unjust on the grounds of lawbreaking alone. which i strongly disagree with.
one should certainly expect consequences if they are breaking any law, but if the law is unjust then usually the consequences do not deter the action unless they are drastic or the person is overly cautious.
Just so you know, I have broken the law sometimes. Almost all of those times, I've gotten away with it. Hopefully, I had some internal dialog that allowed me to take the risk at the time. Here's the thing, had I been caught, despite whether the punishment seemed just or not, I was subject to it. This was the chance I took when I chose to break the law willingly.
Jails are filled with folks who believe they shouldn't be there; and some of them actually shouldn't be there. My nephew has spent months in jail for making stupid mistakes that threatened nor harmed no one. He didn't think he should be there, but he was. All his logic didn't get him out of jail. Not long ago, he was on parole and as a condition of parole he moved in with my wife and me. All he had to do was report to his parole officer on a regular basis and within a few short months he'd have been done with this nonsense. But could he accomplish this? No he couldn't. When he had about a month left to go he moved in with his girlfriend in a neighboring state and failed to report to his parole officer who consequently issued a warrant for his arrest. Boom! He's picked up and proceeded to spend the next 45 days in county lock up. Now he's in work release. I haven't talked to him, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he felt he had nothing to do with any of this and it is all the legal system's fault. Who knows, maybe he is right about that, but he still is the one who suffers.
