> People who wanted to read it, read it from his words, but he never said it.
Sure he did. His words were not written in vacuum, he wrote them in a discussion thread about Epstein.
It's not like someone took his words from a scholarly discussion of sexual development and put them misleadingly in the sex trafficking context.
RMS proudly(!) did that. As he likes to raise trouble. Remember when he told a new parent not to mention his newborn, and everybody else on the list told him he's an asshole?
Yes he did: "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children." *
Stallman has a history of abusive behavior and opinions going back decades. This most recent email thread was just the final culminating incident. You can't argue in good faith while ignoring everything that he previously did and said.
* https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...
So he never suggested it nor he supported it.
He just didn't care enough to think it was problematic.
I didn't care if young kids spent the night out drinking with friends, I though it was ok and they were just having fun.
Until my sister gave birth.
That's the problem of being pedantically correct, people think that rhetoric can change facts.
He also changed his mind, never raped anybody and never had sex with a minor.
So what's the problem?
That he was thinking it?
Are we at the thought police already?
Is it the STASI all over again?
Are you suggesting that underage sex is not ok?
Because many people I know were having sex before coming to age.
He never suggested though that an old man having sex with a 14 years old girl was an ok thing.
People who wanted to read it, read it from his words, but he never said it.
So we have a bigger problem here: one cannot be pedantically correct or people will act as an angry mob on them and get away with it.