I had sexual relations with a 23 year old when I was 16. Not by a long shot would I describe that as rape. I also then and now would not consider myself a "child" at 16.

This is a very new and very strange trend to redefine all teenagers as children and the moral panic around this is interesting to say the least. The extreme backlash against any slight questioning of this is likewise something people should be skeptical about.

Your counter-examples are historically poor choices as 50 years ago (less in many parts of the US) the majority of people would have seen homosexuality as a perversion indistinguishable from pedophilia (attraction to pre-pubescent children, not 17 years olds), and miscegenation, a word we don't even use any more, would have held the same status if you go back just a bit further.

Again, 50 years ago you could just have been one of the people who would have said "... you'll conclude that sodomy is one of the bad things" or go back another 50 and "... you'll conclude that intermixing pure blood is one of the bad things"

This moral absolutism is definitely not part of a "bright line" in our culture, and its sudden and rapid emergence needs both more questioning and more understanding. Of course anyone who proposes this is a "child rapist" in your view so we likely won't get much discourse on this topic anytime soon.

It may be unintentional on your part but your post seems to suggest that rms argued that adults raping children was acceptable.

If that was intentional the you are lying.

If it was not intentional the it's ironic that you are so sloppy and cavalier in your wording on a topic which is all about precision in language.

Please stop.

He did argue that adults raping children was acceptable, many times over the course of years. There's quotes in this thread.

Any sex between adults and minors is rape, that's what the concept of statutory rape means. He has expressed that those interactions could be mitigated by "willing" and "voluntary" actions by the children, and that in those situations there's no real harm done.

That's literally what he said. He's completely and totally within his rights to say that. I will support his rights to the death. But that saying shit like that is going to get you socially shunned, predictably, and I'm fine with a society that does that.

Society, and the groups he leads, have the right to find those statements reprehensible and cut ties with him. And I think they should.

I mean what's the counterargument that you're making, that he only kind of implied that raping kids was OK? That he merely insinuated it? That his suggestion that pedophilia was not that big of a deal fell short of actual advocacy?

Assuming you successfully win the argument that there's an important distinction here how does that change the answer?

The core point I've attempted to make is that if you write blog posts about how kids getting fucked by adults is no big deal you might lose your job.

Do you find that concept confusing? I bet you don't. Nobody really does. He knew he was going to make people upset saying that and didn't care. That, in fact, is likely why he did it.

Eventually, his actions had consequences.

>Any sex between adults and minors is rape, that's what the concept of statutory rape means. He has expressed that those interactions could be mitigated by "willing" and "voluntary" actions by the children, and that in those situations there's no real harm done.

You do understand that rape can't be voluntary, and voluntary sex is not a rape?

>Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent.

It's in the definition. If there is a consent, there is no rape.

Hence, Stallman is not advocating for rape.

> Any sex between adults and minors is rape, that's what the concept of statutory rape means.

You seem to classify statutory rape as a subcategory of "rape", and thus I am assuming you would be perfectly content calling anyone convicted of statutory rape a rapist. This is semantically unhelpful. "Rape" is widely understood to mean violent rape, and statutory rape is legally (and to most people, morally) the lesser crime.

There may be cases where even you might find it desirable to make a distinction in language between someone advocating for "violent rape is ok", and someone arguing for example that the existing age of consent in their country should not be increased, which requires acknowledging that the two are really distinct things.

Gay rights are admirable to you. Rights for minorities like Latinos or blacks are admirable to you. But you don’t speak for places like America, which is diverse enough to politically contemplate whether gay people should be married or have kids, or whether Muslims and immigrants cause no-go zones.

Those politicians which advocate for antagonism against Latinos and other minorities are reading the room too.

That's correct. They're admirable to me.

Conversely the idea of adults fucking children is not admirable to MIT. So they fired him.

Nobody's talking about censorship, or politicians. We're talking about an organization saying hey we can't have a guy that seems to think adults fucking children is OK being our leader or representative. That's definitely within their rights.

You can try to die on some hill of principle here but 10/10 times if you write blog posts saying something like "hey, so pedophilia is not that big of a deal right?" you're going to have some issues in the professional world.

Not sure why everyone is pretending to be confused.

> So you're saying that the only people qualified to be "a leader" are the ones who subscribe to your particular flavour of groupthink and no other? Nice thought policing there.

> Yes, I believe publicly advocating for certain things can severely break cultural norms and make it impossible for you to effectively hold a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting.

I'd characterize your general approach to the issue as "We don't need to debate the morality of a leader because speaking against norms is already disqualifying."

So do you want to look at a leader based on whether they simply violate social thinking, or do you want to discuss "fucking children"? But if I'm not mistaken, just discussing this matter for you is a kind of disqualification. And here you are, basically saying that other people are advocating for pedophelia and fucking kids. Is that your instinct for speech? Do you just want to talk <at> people?

Bernie Sanders spoke for gay rights at a time when it was a bad issue for any candidate. The advice for him as a campaign consultant would be to shutup, wouldn't it? Is this not a leadership sin?

Yes Bernie Sanders spoke up for gay rights. That was good, because gay rights are a good thing.

Pol Pot advocated genocide. That was bad because genocide is bad.

Richard Stallman argued that pedophila was OK.

Pedophilia is not OK. It’s really far from OK. Hence the problem.

Perhaps you think it’s actually OK as well. Then the two of you agree. If you also advocate for pedophilia in public you may find people don’t want to hire you as well.

All this talk of formerly unpopular opinions and leadership only makes sense if you think that the underlying problematic opinion will be vindicated by history, like the other examples cited.

I think it won’t.

You’re saying this:

> We don't need to debate the morality of a leader because speaking against norms is already disqualifying

Nope. Didn’t say that. I said this specific norm is well founded and valid.

You can’t debate the morality of a leader’s statements in the abstract. There’s no generic class of “norms” there’s just the facts in question.

Some statements are morally defensible, some aren’t.

Saying it’s OK for adults to have sex with children is a problem, it’s gong to upset people and make them not trust you and be leery of having you represent them.

As literally everyone knows.