I will endeavor to keep my responses concise and to the point for the sake of brevity and ease of read:

the Virped position that what science says cannot be relied upon, and thus can be readily dismissed in favor of majority public sentiment.

This is not a VP position, and I don't think you believe it is either.
It is your very controversial inference about implications. You can make that claim, but to claim the result is a VP position is dirty pool.

I think your actions and reactions to what the bulk of methodically acquired scientific data suggest, and your frequent use of emotionally-based rhetoric, makes it quite clear that you harbor a stance against paying attention to science if what it says happens to be inconvenient for your main ideological point. Granted, this is not an officially stated position, but I don't think it's unfair or a case of dirty pool by any means to say that a heavy bias against paying attention to what science has to say is a fundamental aspect of the anti-choice ideology.

VP would never endorse that statement, and I think you know that.

Not officially, no. That I understand. But it's quite clear your respect for science is low if it happens to conflict with the emotionally-based attitudes and assumptions that the anti-choice stance makes implicit.

I could as soon say, "Dissident's position is in favor of more rape of adolescents". We could argue about whether in fact the policies you suggest would have that result, but you would have an air-tight argument in rejecting my characterization of it as your position.

That is not, I believe, a comparable example, because I frequently make it clear that I'm against any type of forceful or coercive type of sexual contact that does not take the choice of the person into consideration. Moreover, I make it clear how and why I believe existing laws against rape and sexual harassment are sufficient to deal with such cases, or deter them, more effectively than any law designed to prevent choice in the first place. However, the frequent hostility and dismissal of what science has to say unless it happens to come with a surfeit of emotional, moralizing, and culturally pandering bias by the anti-choicers make my statement completely within reason. If you believe science should consistently be ignored if it goes against popular belief, then I'm sorry, you're not pro-science.

Going to the source like Rind, Sandfort, Thompson, and others have--i.e., talking to individuals who have actually been involved in intergenerational liaisons as the youth participant, either in the present time (Sandfort) or in the past (Rind, Tromovich, et al.; Thompson)--and comparing and contrasting the data under strict scientific methodology and scrutiny is considerably more reliable

I have notes I made after reading a list of references you gave me last spring, and perhaps I could share them in more detail at some point. Sandfort's study is relevant to establishing the possibility that boys will not view relationships as harmful, but it is completely useless in suggesting that very few boys are harmed.

In other words, do not pay attention to what the boys say, because they might be "wrong" in the long run. Sandort did not operate on the basis that what the boys said shouldn't be respected or relevant if it conflicted with how society feels about it. That lack of respect in what kids have to say if it doesn't jibe with the popular attitude is what the anti-choicers frequently do, and that is not a scientific attitude, but an emotional one.

From Rind:

72% of females views their sexual activity as negative at the time, and 59% continued to view the activity as negative when surveyed.

This is a textbook example of dirty pool, Ethan, because I have pointed out numerous times that Rind et al. eventually corrected this in the later, often overlooked part of the meta-analysis (pp. 31-32) when he and his two research partners conducted further research, as competent scientists will do, to try and determine if this disparity between what the girls said and what the boys said had an identifiable reason. It was then discovered, and implicitly stated, that the initial interviews had a very disproportionate conflation of testimony from girls who had been subject to coercive sexual contact--particularly due to incestuous abusive from parents or step parents, etc.--with consensual contact in comparison to the boys who participated. Once the factor of explicit consent with non-relational contact was sifted out, then the results from the girls were "much more homogeneous" in comparison to the boys.

What this indicated, if you bother to read the entire meta-analysis, and not just the initial results reported in the abstract, is that girls are likely subjected to genuine sexual abuse, particularly incestuous abuse, considerably more often than boys are. This has nothing to do with the important issue of consensual contact, which the anti-choicers seem ever determined to conflate with non-consensual contact.

I made these sections of the Rind Report readily available via excerpt in this article I penned for Newgon. Continuing to ignore it when it's been made clear numerous times is, I would say, dirty pool and selective reading in the extreme. The fact that it currently costs $30.00 or more to purchase the entire Rind Report may deter many from acquiring the entire meta-analysis, but I spent the money out of my own pocket so I could conduct a full analysis and make the specific excerpts available. The financial barrier I just mentioned is hardly an excuse for ignoring what the full report said from an academic or scientific standpoint.

The other data suggests it didn't ruin their lives, but this data still suggests it was negative. "Life-ruining" isn't a necessary requirement for saying something is wrong.

Firstly, note what I clarified for the umpteenth time above. Secondly, an event not being life-ruining may not suggest that such an action was "right" or positive, but it does suggest that a blanket pre-emptive prohibition on disallowing anyone to take reasonable risks with a certain choice is unnecessarily extreme, and results in a considerably more wrong outcome, then respecting freedom of choice would. The right to take reasonable risks, including those that public propriety does not approve of, is one of the most important of democratic rights.

The matter isn't so "complicated" that science cannot sort out the likely facts using strict methodology.

I'd say it is complicated. For instance, the Rind studies were conducted in a social environment where adult-child sexual relationships were illegal. No one has studied an environment where they are legal -- more precisely, where a man can be free from a rape charge based on claiming consent.

Once again, you argue that the important aspect of American jurisprudence that the accused is innocent until proven guilty should be set aside if the issue is sentimental enough that you would rather put an innocent man in jail than take the chance of the guilty going free temporarily. You also make the argument that if a real rape occurred, it wouldn't leave enough evidence behind for a reasonably thorough investigation to uncover, including the acquisition of character testimonies, looking at past records of conduct, etc. But of course, if such an investigation was conducted out of fairness to both the accuser and the accused on an equal basis, that would prevent men who offended society's sensibilities by having consensual sexual contact with a willing girl from being punished. The "just in case" violation of democratic principle, and derision of the requirement for reasonable investigation to acquire viable evidence before an accused is considered guilty, insures that all men who have any kind of sexual contact with a girl, consensual or not, get punished. That is the real intention of these laws, which has a distinct moralistic basis to it.

even survivors of genuine abuse are iatrogenically conditioned and sociogenically encouraged by a certain pervasive school of thought to be "damaged" severely rather than heal, because it benefits a certain lucrative and socially influential industry.

Some of that occurs. To say that the vast majority of harm comes from that is a giant conspiracy theory.

It's not a giant conspiracy theory by any means when the evidence of it is very clearly available, including the filmed portions of the social workers and police interrogating the kids during the infamous McMartin trial, and the fact that influential proponents of this school of thought, like Oprah and a whole sub-industry of money-grubbing attorneys, made it very clear on innumerable occasions that there are both social and fiscal benefits to remaining "damaged" for life as the result of such an emotionally heartstring-pulling manner as sexual abuse.

Again, the extensive research data collected by Susan Clancy--yet again, hardly an admirer of the MAP community and a devout feminist--made it very clear that those who are subjected to real sexual abuse of the most common nature are every bit as capable of healing from it with proper therapy and support as are those young people who are exposed to the atrocities of war, life-threatening natural disasters, violent crimes of a non-sexual nature, extremely bad accidents, etc. This is not showing a lack of compassion for those who have been through genuine sexual abuse, but giving a much needed reality clause to any beneficiaries of discouraging real abuse victims from healing, and creating an entire social identity around being "survivors" of sexual abuse. Bitterness, uncontrolled anger, hatred, vengeance, and unopposed witch hunts are the end result of this, not justice and not greater understanding of any sort.

it's yet another way of finding an emotionally compelling rationale for putting moralistic values ahead of freedom of choice and civil liberties.

You assume my motives, a foregone conclusion, and a lack of integrity. I could with equal justification speculate that for you as an individual youth liberation is an emotionally compelling rationale for hoping to allow adult-child sex.

Yes, you could indeed accuse me of being only, or primarily, concerned with my raw sexual urges, and having no concern for younger people beyond that. Except that it's an old saw tactic that is no different from accusing gay people of only being concerned with having unhindered sex with each other in bath houses and little or nothing else when fighting for gay liberation, rather than having any interest in the broader issues of society. Such accusations were common in the past, but you no longer see gay activists who insist that gay people should refrain from having homosexual romantic relationships with each other being hailed by the public as noble, self-sacrificing individuals who serve as "gold star" role models that all gays should follow. This is because for the most part vanilla homosexual sex has moved beyond the degree of widespread emotional sensitivity that it once elicited. It has now been proven that society wasn't destroyed by allowing gay people to pursue relationships that are natural to them, and it's now widely understood that gay people are not ruled by nothing more than their sexual impulses, but have a fully developed conscience and capacity to care for society in general on a wide and broad basis apart from the interests of gays alone. They have proven capable of showing genuine concern and respect for their same sex partners, and that their freedom benefits society on a wide basis.

This type of widespread understanding of intergenerational romance and sexual activity has not yet reached that point, and I understand it's the goal of your ideological brethren to see to it that never happens. However, research conducted by many, including Bailey, Berlin, Tromovitch, etc., has made it clear that MAPs, like any other group of people, are not typically ruled by their loins, and only capable of selfish concerns related to that. It's become clear that as a group, we are typically capable of loving, caring for, and respecting other people, including both any younger person we may be attracted to as well as all of society as a whole. Hence, we're no more likely to be primarily motivated as a group by strictly selfish and self-serving concerns than any other group of people. Conversely, this strongly suggests that the anti-choicers among our community are no more likely to be inherently noble, or motivated by concerns outside of moralistic propriety, than the continued number of gay activists who insist that homosexual celibacy is the best choice for everyone involved. Instead, the latter have learned to accept the "live and let live" principle, however grudgingly at times, and I believe that is truly the best for all concerned in a legitimate democracy.