I will say this much, Hadjuk, to both you and qtns about this matter.

Threatening to frame you with CP is wrong. Anyone taking advantage of the current hysteria to commit acts of extortion and blackmail against MAPs/MAAs is wrong. And yes, there are people - including some actual underage youths - who hang out in adult chat rooms and phone-based meeting services to try and find adults with an interest in underagers whom they can extort and blackmail. I've even written about it, as you can see in this article posted on Newgon (it's not one of my longer articles, so you should be able to finish it in a single sitting).

But that does not justify murder. There are other, less extreme ways of dealing with blackmail and extortion. Read the above link to the article that I wrote, and you will see how one of the extorted BLer's dealt with the problem the right way, and got one of the main members of the youth extortion ring arrested and indicted in court. Contrary to what many, including that blackmailer, seem to think, an extortionist will not get a free pass in court for committing a blatant act of extortion or blackmail simply because their target is a MAP. And the above incident occurred in Britain, one of the most MAP-unfriendly nations in the world.

With that noted, I'm not talking about self-defense, such as if you and/or a loved one are directly or indirectly threatened with violence, or subject to constant incessant provocation (it's against the law to provoke someone in extreme ways). This does, of course, including attempts at robbery, which is a clear act of assault and potential battery. So I'm certainly not asking you or anyone else to be a sitting duck for the threats and harassment of others.

I will also give you this: I fully understand that when you're threatened or feel pushed into a corner via frequent harassment and provocation, you can end up emotionally "breaking" and act in extreme ways to deal with the problem. I've been there, mate. And guess what? Markaba has been there too, including more than once on this very board, and he knows it. He's no stranger to what extreme emotional duress can cause someone to do, consider doing, and threatening to do; and he's had to apologize for such actions before. So I'm asking for his understanding here too.

With that said, I'm asking you and others on the board to please understand this: We cannot advocate things such as murder, bombing of buildings, vandalism, etc., as a means of dealing with our situation. We have to adopt the moral high ground, or we ultimately become no better than the antis out there. We cannot afford to adopt a reactionary "We're at war!" type of mentality, otherwise we give up the moral high ground. That moral high ground has to be our advantage, and we have to operate within its limits if we are to make our humanity accepted.

That does not mean we agree to be sitting ducks. It does not mean that we cannot defend ourselves - including with all due prejudice - if violence is initiated against us. It does not mean we do nothing against threats of extortion and blackmail. It simply means we have to handle problems the right way, otherwise we truly become terrorists.

I will now say this: There is no doubt that our detractors, both outside and within our community, are in no position whatsoever to be preaching morality and ethics to us. These are the same people, after all, who more or less fully support a corrupt status quo that causes all kinds of devastation across the world, including the shameless murder of innocents via the perpetual "war on terror." And these are also the same type of people who seriously believe that if I kissed a 12-year-old girl who wanted me to kiss her, it would constitute a far worse ethical breach than five such girls being killed or maimed as "collateral damage" in one of Obama's latest bombing raids in the Middle East.

But we cannot adopt the same mentality and methodology of the people we oppose, or of the status quo that we oppose. We have to represent higher ideals, and never adopt the expedient and self-destructive "ends justifies the means" attitude. It's certainly not easy to do when you're under extreme emotional duress, as I noted. But doing the right thing is most often not the easier choice.