Reddit has pretty much always had a laissez-faire approach to administration of subreddits. As long as it was legal it was ok. I really don't want to touch the violentacrez case, but he was given that award in recognition for serving as a moderator of a boatload of subreddits. It's not like the admins said "nice CP, here's a pimp hat".

And once again you are simply ignoring the fact that Reddit is not one entity. There is no single "reddit culture".