At no point Stallman was defending sex with minors. And yet, here you are, extremely offended at him for something he didn't say.
"I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)"
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] 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."
- Richard Stallman
Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pione...
> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
Just ctrl+f for necro. You'll find it.
While I'm sure it wasn't your intention, a casual reader of your post might get the impression that they were all part of the conversation he appears to have been fired for.
He was cancelled because of a email thread related to Epstein that media outlets lied about. If the blog statements were enough to cancel him, why now and not a few weeks ago or a year ago?
Probably because people just noticed them?
Saying “he’s been doing this unacceptable thing forever and appears to be consistent” is not really compelling either.
It just wasn’t considered enough whereas media headlines (falsely) stating he defended Epstein resulted in immediate action
> Our culture has made a very bright line decision that being an atheist is unacceptable. Expressing doubt about this cultural norm, or especially advocating against it, is considered unacceptable. Of course one can argue with the merits of those two facts, but they are plainly true and fairly widely accepted.... While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for not believing in God" to be particularly compelling."
Does the problem become clear now? (Substitute abolitionism, suffragism, civil rights, etc. for atheism if you like.) Ironically, much like the conservatives they oppose, progressives are arguing that it is acceptable to crucify people who say something that is agains the status quo and tradition.
1) There are social norms
2) They change sometimes
Neither of those is relevant though here.
Are you arguing that no social norms violation should ever result in being fired?
Assuming we agree that advocating for some things may get you fired from your job, it’s then possible to follow up with my observations:
1) Saying it’s cool for adults to fuck minors is definitely on that list
2) I’m ok with that
The very concept of statutory rape reinforces how clear this judgment is. The reference to "statutory" means that the mere facts of the act taking place mean that the conduct is off limits. Things like "consent" or even a misrepresentation of the person's age are generally considered irrelevant.
As a society we've decided that there aren't really exceptions to this. If sex with minors occurs it's not OK, there isn't much need to further investigate why it happened.
Stallman, and anyone else commenting here, has really no basis to claim ignorance of this phenomenally clear social norm, which if broken will result in being fired from just about any public facing institution. It's on a pretty short list of such norms, alongside things like displaying your genitals in a board meeting.
While I appreciate the efforts to make this into some kind of principled argument, I don't find "first they came for the people advocating for sex with minors" to be particularly compelling.