Your post completely misses the point, but I guess ad hominem attacks are easier than actually using reason.
If you reread what I wrote, you'll discover I'm merely pointing out either a) an uncomfortable implication of a line of reasoning or b) a logical flaw in said line of reasoning or c) an unstated premise. I took no actual position myself.
The issue is not whether the label "rape" should be applied. The issue is whether this line of reasoning is a valid argument for why something should be a crime:
"If you $X that's clearly $CRIME. If you $Y, some people wouldn't call that $CRIME (and the law wouldn't either). But I'd rather get $X then $Y. So why do we consider the latter not as bad?"
I don't think jrochkind1 was appealing to any kind of universal principle, he was just pointing out that there are many ways of coercing people to have sex, and some of the violent ways of doing it aren't obviously worse than some of the non-violent ones. That certainly raises the question of whether we'd want to make a sharp legal distinction between violent and non-violent coercion in the specific case of rape. As some other people have pointed out, it's important to distinguish times when it is and isn't useful to go into a philosophical discussion. If you want to figure out some kind of moral axiom system that makes it possible to "prove" that one form of forced sex is or isn't as bad as another, then that's best saved for a philosophy seminar. In practical terms, it's obvious that there's a danger of minimizing the significance of non-violent forms of sexual coercion due to the view that these don't count as rape.
That certainly raises the question of whether we'd want to make a sharp legal distinction between violent and non-violent coercion in the specific case of rape...times when it is and isn't useful to go into a philosophical discussion.
Take it up with rayiner then. Once you stop discussing what the law says in favor of what it should say, you've already gotten into moralizing. But when it's pointed out that the moralizing is probably flawed, it's no longer the time for moral philosophy?
I.e., I need to turn off my mind the minute it goes against your emotional conclusions. "Won't someone think of the children/women?"
It's odd to suggest that any discussion of possible changes to the law counts as moral philosophy. As for your last two sentences, there's quite a large middle ground between strict demonstrative reasoning and purely emotional argument. In general, it's rare for moral argument to be a strictly demonstrative affair. So yes, it frequently involves an appeal to principles that don't fully generalize. Aristotle has a nice way of putting it:
"Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs."
If you reread what I wrote, you'll discover I'm merely pointing out either a) an uncomfortable implication of a line of reasoning or b) a logical flaw in said line of reasoning or c) an unstated premise. I took no actual position myself.