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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

How are his views not important when the entire mission of the FSF is to spread a very particular point of view?

When RMS is advocating for zoophilia and necrophilia (he's finally relented on pedophilia, though, after many years of also defending "consensual" pedophilia), it hurts the advocacy for his other causes. You can't effectively simultaneously champion two such disparate causes without one cause seeping into the other.

Edit: Sigh, here it is, let's trot it out again, 2006 is when he was defending pedophilia:

> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily 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

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

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Please refrain from libelous statements. I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia, rather objections on the extremal formal definitions the US judiciary has for the status of “child”

> I’ve never read anything from Stallman that defends any behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia

Stallman defended legalization of pedophilia by name (and in the context of an overt political effort to eliminate age of consent entirely) and only recanted that support after the controversy over Minsky erupted in 2019 (which, given the somewhat related subject matter, also brought heightened, though not the first, attention to that advocacy.)

So, now you've read what I quoted about Stallman defending pedophilia, right? He calls it pedophilia, he says he's skeptical it's harmful. That's a defense.

Now you have read something you had not read before. I am glad to have shown you something you didn't know.

> He directly addressed child pornography by saying that “making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.”

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

Did you read what you quoted?

The point Stallman made, in the most deliberately urticant and confrontational possible way, is:

Are you willing to incarcerate people for drawings? However disturbing the subject?

> 26 October 2014 (Prison for cartoon) A man in the UK has been sentenced for prison for having a cartoon depicting a fictional child in some sort of sexual situation.

The advocates of this kind of censorship started by saying they were trying to protect real children from being abused in order to take their photos. Making such photos should be a crime, and is a crime, but that is no reason to prohibit possessing copies of the photos.

However, they have already gone far beyond that. No child was harmed in drawing the cartoon.

To criminalize possession of copies of anything published — no matter what it is — is oppressive, and leads to many other forms of tyranny.

The part I quoted is clearly about photos, not drawings. I think arguing that possessing child pornography should be legal is “defending behavior a reasonable person would identify as Paedophilia.” Your reference to the formal definition of “child” made me think that you were unaware that Stallman had argued for this, and were attributing his cancellation solely to his remarks about statutory rape.

This is a subtle ad hominem. There are many reasonable people who would describe Stallman's particular pedantry around the definitions of "child" to be pedophilia-apology. Describing anyone who disagrees with you, including the person you're replying to, as "not a reasonable person" is unbecoming of hacker news.

It's also absolutely not libel, and it's rather silly to throw such terms around.

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