“There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.“
What's more interesting is the reason that Guardian article exists. It's basically an attempt to justify why Liberty (then the National Council for Civil Liberties), a respectable British political pressure group with close ties to our Labour party, was lobbying the government to legalise sex between adults and children a few decades ago. (They were also affiliated with the Paedophile Information Exchange, which was exactly what the title suggests.)
Why does something that happened a few decades ago matter now? Obviously it was relevant to the whole scandal over historic allegations of childhood sexual abuse, especially since PIE was run by pedophiles in important political positions. On top of that, one of the most important current-day Labour politicians Harriet Harman bootstrapped her political career using the important roles her and her husband played in the National Council for Civil Liberties during the exact time period where they had those ties to PIE and were doing that lobbying. She's still relevant today; various journalists and politicians are trying to wrangle her a position as Speaker or maybe even Prime Minister.
We could well end up with someone building a path to one of the most important positions in UK government on her role in an organisation lobbying in support of pedophilia a few decades ago whilst Stallman is made homeless based, in part, on his summary of the apologia for that lobbying printed in the mainstream press.
(Stallman completely missed this subtext, but that's not surprising; I don't think the full details became public knowledge until some time later.)
Except he has (https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html):
> 14 September 2019 (Sex between an adult and a child is wrong) Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it. Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.
Can you quote/link those instances since the two statements that you quoted don't say that at all.
I mean, when I was 10-12, I engaged in private circle jerks with other boys. And we "played Doctor" with girls. No sex, but feeling and "examinations". And spin the bottle games, for taking off clothes and kissing. And holding our brearh, and squeezing each others chests to pass out.
As a child, I might well have argued that.
But now, I appreciate that children are easily manipulated. So while it's possible that some particular child might have freely chosen to have sex with some particular adult, there's no way to determine that. And so the rule must be that children can't reliably consent.
Still, people have the right to say whatever they like. And people also have the right to vilify them for it. And so, recursively, ad infinitum.
He's rejecting the arguments that pedophilia causes harm to children, because sometimes it's voluntary and therefore isn't harmful.
Do I really need to explain how "Pedophilia is sometimes not harmful to children" can be summarized as "Sometimes sex with children is fine"?
No, he is not saying that. In that quote that you used he isn't even saying that pedophilia isn't harmful when it is consensual. I'm really interested how you reached that conclusion while reading the same text I'm reading.
> Pedophilia is sometimes not harmful to children
As far as I can see those are your words and not his. Where does he say that? Besides, not harmful and fine are to completely different things.
> Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.
In those words he was saying that in some cases there is nothing wrong with an adult having sex with a child. So I guess what's left is whether "fine" and "nothing wrong with" are equivalent.
I find it bad myself (I'd say: have sex after 16 and generally with people closer to their age progressively -- e.g. a 16 yo should be able to sleep with a 18 year old, but not sure with a 25 or 40 year old, it would be more manipulative. After adult age, at 18 of course, anything should go), but from what I read:
"As of May 2019, in all but two states, a minor can marry with parental consent or with judicial authorisation, with the minimum marriage age, when all exemptions are taken into account, being as low as 14, and potentially lower."
So, if judges are OK with this, how can Stallman lose their job, not because he did it, but because he merely theorized about people doing it?
That is not making it clearer. First, I was interested in how you interpreted the quote you used as you did. This doesn't make it clearer. Secondly, I don't know if the quote you are using now is referencing the firs quote or something else. I suspect that you do not either.
Also it seems that you have some axe to grind against the man. Here is the full quote:
>> Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.
>> Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.
> In those words he was saying that in some cases there is nothing wrong with an adult having sex with a child.
We are not talking about those words, are we?
Just to be clear, I agree with everything that's being said in this article. I can't understand how some people read Stallman's words and understand the exact opposite of what he is saying. But I find equally incomprehensible how can you read that quote and still need an explanation on how one thing implies the other.
Here's where it all started:
> Me: "No, but he did say that having sex with children is sometimes fine"
> You: "Can you quote/link those instances since the two statements that you quoted don't say that at all."
Here is a statement from Stallman himself summarizing his own words: "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it."
So he said himself that what he was saying back then was that in some instances there is nothing wrong with sex between an adult and a child.
This is my answer to your original question. He explained it himself.
https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
I'll also add some more context: These current thoughts on pedophilia were posted two days after the "Remove Richard Stallman" Medium post went up.
This was over a decade ago (first link), and appear to be musings on the issue. It doesn’t necessarily say (as you claim) - “I support this”