Re: Laughter is the best medicine, my friend

Laughable, sure, because anyone who disagrees with you cannot be taken seriously, right? How snide you are, Dissident.

I'm the snide one here? When you are the one who expects every single ideology on this board to be treated as equally valid, even when they are the exact antitheses of each other? I guess you also believe that Jews and Nazis can live together peacefully because both are white.

The only ones I know of at GC who post regularly are myself and kea, and I know I tend to avoid these kinds of discussions.

Kea is not a true anti-contact, but considers himself agnostic, and his posts usually prove it. Leon also posts here regularly, but he gets banned frequently, and he is flagrantly anti-contact. If the anti-contact people are so few on this board, they need to expect their ideology to be challenged by many, just as pro-choicers are challenged by many whenever they discuss their stance on a public talk show, or on a non-MAA forum.

I do sometimes repeat myself, but only because I'm responding to someone else's repeated mantra.

So who started the mantra first? The anti-contact view has been repeated ad infinitum all over the media for the past 50 years, over and over again. Yet you continue to think that the anti-contact view should be treated as compelling and "original" to the pro-choicers. We are the ones on the defensive in society, not you. You can't stand the existence of just a few tiny holes in cyberspace where the anti-choice stance isn't dominant.

But I decided to stay away from this a few years ago, because it starts to sound like: "Is not!" "Is too!" "Is not!" "Is too!" It's completely pointless and infantile. kea is a better debater than I am and I haven't seen him repeating himself much.

Because he sees the views from both stances, not just the anti-contact. Leon, on the other hand, is a one trick pony in the extreme. It must be cool to have people like him on your side.

I also don't see kea or myself getting emotional.

Your ideology is based almost entirely on emotion, not on reason or scientific validity. And actually, kea's arguments against "seduction" was highly emotional in many ways.

Yes, I used to, but I am a different person now.

Henny provided some compelling points that you haven't changed as much as you would like us to believe.

Still, we're all human and subject to failure. But I only see the emotionalism coming from the other side. To some degree you're entitled to that; I just don't think it helps your cause much.

Arguing with logic and scientifically provable rationale isn't emotionalism. Saying something is true "because it just is" is highly emotional. I am not talking about your tone, I am talking about your ideology, and what it's based upon.

In any case, even if we are occasionally guilty of this, you're arguing the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_wrongs_make_a_right]two wrongs make a right fallacy[/url] here. The point of whether they are 'highly mainstream' is irrelevant; it's a red herring. Whether a position is mainstream or alternative, that has no bearing on it's truth.

I never said all mainstream ideas are falacious. I totally agree with the mainstream belief that it's immoral to murder someone in cold blood, or to commit an act of armed robbery, to burn someone else's house down, or to commit any kind of act that inflicts demonstrable harm upon another person that wasn't in self-defense. I never said all ideas are wrong simply because they are mainstream. I and other pro-choicers are actually arguing that the mainstream isn't always right, and being on the side of the mainstream doesn't automatically make one's stance right by default. But many people seem to make the 'mainstream fallacy,' i.e., that if the majority of people believe it, then it must always be right by default.

In a word: no. This is an absurd generalization. I certainly do not use anti-scientific data, and in fact at DU I have repeatedly used data that might be described as 'pro' to make many of the same points you and others here do. I have won over a convert to my position who was quite 'anti' to begin with and whom I now consider a close friend. He is part scientific/medical community and is hardly an emotionalistic fool. He is currently reading all of the data available to him; he has even read the Rind Report and has agreed with me that it was a valid study and undeserving of the censure it received.

If you truly make the 'pro' position many times, and have won people over with it (just as I have done), then why suggest people read the Rind Report and consider it objectively, but then turn around and say that the scientific data it contains shouldn't have any effect on the laws and cultural beliefs? That is pure dogma, plain and simple, and I have debated with you enough times to know that much of what you argue in defense of the AoC laws are based upon unscientific assumptions that go against the values that American law is supposed to be based upon, mainly that guilt should never be assumed without evidence.

Not to me, it's not. And I doubt for kea either. Censure is merely officially condemning or reprimanding something. Since I do not condemn or reprimand those who engage in loving and mutual sexual contact with a child, it does not apply to me. I do think such acts should remain illegal, but I think government should recognize the difference between these cases and something else should be done with those who do not force a child or cause harm to her.

That is still supporting state intervention to censure someone who did not commit a violent act against another person. That still goes against core civil liberties, and forcibly separating a child from an adult she may love and trust when he didn't commit an act of demonstrable harm on her "just in case" he did goes against any reasonable conception of civil liberties.

I do not yet know what that should be, but I certainly do not think throwing them in jail and putting them on an SO registry is the answer.

Perhaps forcing them to walk around with a certain letter on their shirt? X number of hours of community service? A day being made a spectacle of in the public square?

In fact, if these were the only types of sexual contacts between adults and children, or even the majority, then I would have no problem with legalizing it. But that is not the case--not even close. This is because most contact is situational abusers, and it will always be that way.

This is where you really defect from scientific validity and indulge yourself in paranoid emotionalism. Most situational abusers live in the home of the child, and are related to them, and have the most direct degree of power and authority over them. They are not usually individuals who have no power over the child, or are not related to them. It will "always be that way"? Obviously, your main failing, and that of other anti-contact MAAs, is that they refuse to deal with the problem where it actually rests, which is in the way the nuclear family unit is currently constructed, and on the fact that young people under a certain age do not have the legal right to leave an environment in which they are unhappy. The civil disempowerment is the direct cause of the greatest degree of abuse that is inflicted upon them. There is no scientific evidence or statistical information that suggests most adults who are not related to children or teens, or who have no direct power over them, engage in abusive behavior with them. That is just paranoid nonsense, and more than a bit of misanthropy. It also justifies the "we have to assume they are guilty just to make sure" mentality that anti-contact people are famous for.

We're never going to be a big percentage of the population. Even gays exaggerate their numbers--they are no more than 1% to 3% of the population. I can't see how we would be much higher than that, even if you estimate boy and girl lovers separately and equate their numbers to the gays, that gives us 2% to 6%. I'm reasonably certain that's a high estimate for primary/exclusive MAPs, and anyone else can be satisfied with adult lovers.

How big our population size is should have no bearing on our right to love as we choose. The Constitution is supposed to guarantee the rights of minorities, and just because it hasn't in the past (as is the case with the gay marriage vote in California) doesn't mean we should justify it not doing so again in the future.

I'm not upset at all. I don't mind that I'm a minority here. Hell, as a pedophile, a man with a physical disability and a liberal agnostic living in a region that is almost entirely conservative and staunchly Christian, I'm quite used to being a minority, thank you very much. I don't mind that you're all passionate about your cause. I think that's wonderful. It isn't the passion or even necessarily the cause that I find fault with. It's the way you're going about it and the elitism and provincial mindset that seems to be so prevalent here. I want to change it because I love this place and I don't want to see it become wholly corrupted by internal politics. The atmosphere here is toxic to anyone who doesn't share your worldview, and that may very well be most MAPs out there. I wonder how many potential allies/posters we have frightened away because they felt the same way I do?

Lat, the pro-choicers are a minority in this world, a huge minority. We are going to defend our green zone here. I disagree that most MAAs in the world are anti-contact, because the representational sample we get on all MAA boards suggests otherwise, and frankly, I don't care if they are scared away from here because of the predominent pro-choice viewpoint. With few exceptions, such as Sancho, most anti-contact people who have come here in the past were highly emotionally unstable, full of self-loathing, loved to sling insults at the pro-choice majority here, often engaged in deceptive behavior, and frequently picked fights. Whenever they had one of their periodic emotional breakdowns, they would make a post attacking the entire board, calling us all a bunch of "perverts" for daring to be confident about our sexuality. Look at the behavior of most anti-contact people on this board, and then ask yourself why so many of them are "driven off" the board after appearing here. The point is, the pro-choice and anti-choice ideologies are directly opposed. They are not politically compatible with each other any more than liberalism and Nazism are compatible, and you can't get pro-contact and anti-contact MAPs to see each others as "natural" allies anymore than you can expect a liberal and a Nazi to see common ground with each other solely on the basis that both happen to be white men. It's like trying to force a dog and a cat to get along with each other. This board gives support to anyone of any ideology who asks for it, but you need to expect the pro-choice majority here to challenge the anti-choice minority whenever they engage us in political debate. As Henny said elsewhere in this thread, it's ridiculous to expect all ideologies to play nice with each other all of the time, especially when those ideologies happen to be diametically opposed.

Original isn't the point; persuasive and honest is. In any case, it wouldn't matter. You and many others already have your minds made up and will use semantics tricks to make yourselves think you're always right so you can avoid cognitive dissonance.

And the fact that the scientific data, when objectively researched and compiled (as is the case with the Rind Report, The Case Against Adolescence, and The Trauma Myth, none of which was conducted by MAAs), is on the side of the pro-choicers means absolutely nothing to the assumption and moralism-based stance of the anti-choicers? Accusing pro-choicers of cognitive dissonance is actually a famous anti trope. Nice to see you duplicating it.

You're not always right, but you're right often enough to fool most people here into thinking you guys have all the answers.

I never said I am always right. I simply believe that it's correct to err on the side of freedom and civil liberties rather than erring on "caution" or the "better safe than sorry" mindset that are the stock in trade of the anti-contact moguls.

And again, you're making the 'two wrongs makes a right fallacy.'

Wrong. I always attempt to do what I believe to be the right thing. Unlike the anti-contact people, I do not attempt to justify doing the wrong thing on purpose (as is the case with making assumptions without evidence) to be in the best interests of anybody at all, let alone society in general.

It may be true that the great majority of antis are dogmatic and unwilling to accept anything that supports your position. I'll agree that many of them are. But that certainly does not describe me or kea, no matter how convenient it may be for you to try to paint us that way. But it doesn't matter, because it doesn't make you or your methodology for conveying your position any more right.

You use many of the same assumption-based and statistically deficient arguments that the typical anti-contact poster does. You are hardly a shining star among their number.

I didn't say it was. This is a straw man. That wasn't what I was talking about and you know it. And for the last time, two wrongs DON'T make you right.

I did not paint you as a straw man in this instance. Your arguments speak for themselves.