His judgement in making these statements, in a public way, was extremely poor. As a representative of FSF and MIT, he stepped far out of the boundary of what's considered reasonable. Leadership means knowing how to lead, and that includes not demoralizing your organization with controversy.
He didn't step down. He was fired with the option of keeping his dignity.
Or for them to disagree with each other?
What universal age do you think everyone in all jurisdictions should be forced to accept, and how do you intend to enforce your moral superiority on them?
Legitimately, what age do you think should be the limit in the jurisdiction you live in? Before you make any compromises. How old?
Juries are supposed to use the very harsh letter of the law, no exceptions.
These laws are bad and should be reformulated to handle real life, which has corner cases (e.g. interstate romance between minors, what about it?) and where prosecution could cause more damage than it helps.
People deserve to have a clear law.
Everyone always hates thresholds. That's just a fact of life.
These laws are good. If you can't wait for someone to be legal, then you shouldn't be having sex with them in the first place. Find a different partner.
> prosecution could cause more damage than it helps
How about no. It's already incredibly difficult to convict someone of rape, because consent comes down to he-said / she-said. Keeping statutory rape on the books makes it much easier to convict people who went after children, at least.
PS, I am not a lawyer, or a child psychologist, and I highly doubt you are, either.
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
When you dig into every case where you see this, there's almost always reasonable context.