Thats a serious misrepresentation of his words. He once had a page on his site saying that he did not think it was harmful if voluntary (eg, consent between people of similar ages but one being over age)
He has since removed the post and stated that its more complex than he initially thought.
No, his post[0] didn't say anything about people of a similar age. His post linked to an article about a Dutch group forming a pro-pedophilia political party that wanted to drop the age of consent to 12, and then eliminate it entirely.
RMS did not (as the parent said) directly argue that pedophilia is ok, but I don't see much distinction between directly arguing that vs. linking to something that does argue that, and him saying he agrees with it.
He didn't say he agreed with it. He said "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children."
There is a wide gap between being sceptical of a claim, and supporting its negation. Anyone who is applying critical thinking will occasionally be sceptical of things which are obviously correct. People were sceptical of the wheel. People have been sceptical of money since the creation of money. People were sceptical of soap. Many software engineers appear to still be sceptical of soap.
The age of consent in, eg, Brazil is 12 [0] so it isn't like the opening salvo of that paedophile party is so radical an idea as to be unthinkable. Stallman linking it is not an extremist position.
He dismissed opposition to it as "parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing". And he said it's "illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness".[1]
The article says what most people would call the age of consent in Brazil is 14.
Stallman routinely misjudging what other people are thinking and why they are acting is not a matter of debate. Everyone agrees that he is bad at that. Terrible, even.
If you want that to be the standard you can try to uphold it but you'll have little luck. These are political opinions and we just finished the Trump presidency. Political scepticism is frequently uncivil. There is a real and difficult skill to telling someone they might be wrong politely and Stallman does not have it.
Furthermore Stallman isn't mocking them. He is making a claim about why people are acting the way they are and is probably serious in his claim. He's also probably wrong, but being wrong and mocking someone are different things.
The full quote you're referencing is about a long list of things including "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia". Most of that is disgusting, but not anyone's business. I vehemently disagree with the idea that prostitution should be illegal, especially if my money is being wasted prosecuting it. Talk about bailing out a sinking ship trying to stop prostitution. Stallman was also probably wrong on pedophilia - even then depending on what he meant, he didn't flesh that one out very much.
It isn't exactly a damning case against the man when there is one questionable (and vague) addition in an otherwise non-notable list midway down a very long page of random political opinions. Stuff like that being a major line of attack is why he is back on the board of the FSF - the attacks are over trivialities, especially compared to the remarkable success and prescience of his life's work.
No. He made multiple statements on his website supporting sexual relationships between adults and minors. There was not simply the one statement he made, then retracted.
Here is a comment I made two years ago pointing them all out as well as the context by which any reasonable person would consider them to be in support of pedophilia.
And while it is true that he made a single comment after the controversy retracting his beliefs, almost as if he were forced to do so to try to put out the PR trashfire that he started, that does not mean OP's comment misrepresents RMS's views. It is correct that RMS was a stalwart, passionate advocate for pedophilia for decades.
No, you are using exaggerations to try to justify an invalid point. Stallman is a scientist, has an inquisitive mind, will question the world, the laws, the establishment, has traveled the world. Petty minds have never understood the language of great minds.
Yeah..no. Stallman's language is as plain and direct as his intent. We're not talking about Richard Feynman lecturing on quantum electrodynamics at a physics symposium. Even a cursory reading of Stallman's blog posts on the subject make it clear that he wasn't simply questioning the status quo as some intellectual exercise or testing any hypothesis as a scientist, he was emotionally invested.
He would see stories in the media about pedophiles being arrested and would comment on those stories, expressing outrage that society considered sexual relationships between grown men and children to be a taboo or a crime. He believed it was possible for children to give consent for sexual relationships (a view that, to be fair, he retracted, and to be completely fair, he retracted in the least convincing way possible,) and that children should be trained for sexual relationships by adults.
And you've lost the plot - you made Stallman out to be a brilliant scholar, intellectual and world travelling bon-vivant, which just makes him look pathetic in hindsight given what happened to him. But the narrative is that he's a fragile, socially awkward autistic who barely understands basic human behavior and can't operate in the cold, cruel world, and who shouldn't be held accountable for his words or behavior. Isn't that right? Isn't that supposed to be where the cult of Stallman is circling the wagons?
And he didn't change his mind for over a decade, until he got in trouble for defending Marvin Minsky. I'm still not convinced his "updated opinion" would have happened without the scrutiny brought by the Epstein case.
Looks like he moved it to the archive section and dated it 2006 to show it is a very outdated view. Stallman is a very honest person and won’t try to hide the past.
This comment used to be on one of the main info pages of the site.
He has since removed the post and stated that its more complex than he initially thought.