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."
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?"