But, since it seems one has to defend what one believes ..

So again, you come here with the expectation of stating your opinions, and yet not expecting any disagreements or counter opinions from others, let alone a statement of facts that may counter your opinions? If you dislike your opinions being challenged, then it's probably best to avoid discussion groups of any sort rather than telling the participants there that it's wrong for them to openly disagree with anything you say. It would be a very unenlightening discussion group indeed that practiced a policy of not saying anything in response to stated opinions.

You were around then? I wouldn't rely on any historical eveidence to support such views. Child prostitution is rife today in many countries but condemned by most civilised people so what does this mean in the context of "pedos having sex with children."

The great majority of civilized people in the Western world were against homosexuality a mere 60 years ago. Prostitution in general is rife in every country yet illegal in many of the most liberal nations. So you are saying that the consensus opinion is always right in the sense of being a universal truth of some sort rather than merely by default?

Lee Lette might see his position as reflecting reality just as much as you do GL_in_lyrics

But not all positions are backed up by provable facts. Some are inconclusive, and others are readily believed despite being empirically refuted. All opinions are not equal in terms of factual validity.

So is sexual child abuse and they seem to give a damn about that.

But only because it has that dreaded sexual component to it. More pervasive and often more damaging forms of child abuse--such as physical and emotional--are often greatly tolerated by our society as legitimate forms of "parenting" unless they get almost ridiculously extreme. And the most frequent sexual abusers of children are given "incest exemptions" by many states. The point here seems to be that our society is more interested in protecting children from specifically sexual activity in general than being beaten or psychologically bullied in ways that do not involve sexuality in any fashion.

What is perhaps regarded as "consensual" and what is regarded as abuse is not clear however.

That's because the law currently conflates the two, and the word of the underage person is never listened to unless they happen to say what society at large wants to hear, even if what they want to hear must be pulled out of a child via hours of interrogation methods by police and social workers.

Some of the vigilantes might see it differently as might the numbers involved in protecting children from such abuse. Have you actually seen any progress towards the legitimising of sexual relationships between adults and pre-pubescents over the last few decades?

Of course the vigilantes see things differently, just as racists and sexists see things differently than folks who judge people on their own individual merits only, and I'm sure the racists and sexists believe their views to be equally legitimate. They see themselves as protecting something that is sacred to them, respectively "racial purity" and "traditional family roles," much as the vigilantes seek to protect their sacrosanct concept of "sexual purity" and "innocence" of underagers. The problem with protecting concepts like that, no matter how sacrosanct, is that they invariably lead to intolerance and draconian laws that do not recognize freedom of choice and expression.

And you seriously believe that a few decades is a long period of time in the fulcrum of human history? It took well over a hundred years for women to reach the point where they were considered competent enough to vote by society at large (even among their own ranks) and decades longer than that before they started being truly viewed as the equal of men in a general sense; and it took much longer than that for homosexual love to be seen as a legitimate expression since it was first demonized by Western society. And do you know how many decades it took before the majority of people in what is now the United States reached the consensus that it was wrong to treat blacks as inferiors and that it was okay to force them to live as chattel slaves?

So, in both cases, what is your point, my newest friend? Look at all of history rather than trying to marginalize the situation of a single group of people from all others throughout history.

I seldom dream these days (not remembering them at least) and certainly see no affect of having any AOC laws as to preventing young people having sex. They have always done so it seems but there are equally just as many perhaps who regret having had early sex. Where does the truth lie?

And the possibility of regretting a certain decision--which can be any conceivable type of decision--may actually justify the criminalization of a certain type of personal decision at a certain point in your life? How many people actually regret not doing a certain thing at a certain time when they had the chance? Should they be legally forced to take a risk they didn't want to take at the time in such a case, as long as society is of the consensus that it was "right" for them to do or not to do? Personally, I completely regret waiting until I was 18 to first have sex, because I ended up feeling that I greatly needed the experience much earlier in life to help me deal with things like rejection and getting used, something many of my peers in college at the time were fully able to do by then as a result of having had such experiences much earlier in life. The possibility of regret is inherent in any type of decision we may make, including those where we decide not to do something at a certain time rather to do it. The only rational and democratic solution is to offer youths judgment free education from an early age, along with objective support and guidance to increase their chances of making the best possible decision for themselves at any given time. Refusing to offer such support, and simply condemning such decisions outright without evaluating the numerous possible individual factors that are different for every person, actually increases the chance that any decision they make will be the wrong one.

I never had any such misconceptions but my interest is with pre-pubescents and their protection not with the teenagers who might wish to have sex and essentially have no problems or perhaps do. They are entitled to make their own decisions and mistakes perhaps, essentially being adult in most things whereas pre-pubescents are decidedly not.

Then why do adults so often make bad decisions? What is it about being "adult" that automatically makes us better equipped to make personal decisions about any conceivable matter than any child, no matter who they might be, what type of environment they live in, and what the quality of their life experiences may have been even at the age of 7? And how do we reconcile this with the fact that prior to children losing their civil rights, they would routinely take apprenticeships as early as age 6 or 7? It appears that if we give them enough guidance, and not simply total prohibition when it comes to certain tasks and experiences, they often rise to the occasion. This strongly suggests that the way we raise children has a lot more to do with their competence in decision-making than anything inherently biological connected to childhood.

Perhaps it has never occurred to you that this might have formed your current views on the subject and that these experiences were atypical? The fact that you will be drawn to those with similar experiences and hence to GC is hardly a revelation.

First of all, you are truly dreaming if you think these experiences are atypical. It's been well known for ages that children regularly experiment with other people sexually, which is where the expression "playing doctor" comes from. The fact of child masturbation was once considered a major "problem" that puritanical adults in the West once took extreme measures to prevent, including spreading lies that it caused blindness. And you wonder why children to this day keep such activities secret from adults?

Secondly, whether or not the experiences are atypical or not may be irrelevant, because it's clear that individuals who were quite sexual as children developed a positive view of it as an adult, and this despite our culture trying to convince them to feel ashamed about it or "damaged goods." Of course your life experiences will shape your perspective, which is why different perspectives should be seen as equally valid to every individual experience.

From some of the sources I have quoted previously it seems that it is especially atypical to have what most would regard as true sexual experiences prior to puberty rather than just sex-play and exploration.

And your main problem continues to be this bizarre belief of yours that pedophiles typically have a yearning for adult level sexual activity with children, as opposed to activity that is "on the level of a child," i.e., sex play (no hyphen there, dude) and exploration. Insisting otherwise for no legitimate reason is a case of you turning the entire community into one huge Straw Man.

Perhaps because the "repression" is in your head and most children are not actually repressed.

Mmmhmmm, no one in our society goes batshit crazy whenever they see a child expressing themselves sexually, because our cultural mores are entirely tolerant and objective on the subject, right? A society that almost universally condemns almost all expressions of childhood sexuality, let alone actual childhood sexual activity, couldn't possibly be repressive to children in that sense, and it must be all "in the head" of someone who believes otherwise, huh? Please pardon my sarcasm, lee, but please carefully read what you often say before hitting the 'post' button, and you will see why it's sometimes difficult to seriously address your extremely wishful thinking in certain instances.

And btw, lee, I remember getting an erect a few years before I was ten. Can you prove that your experience was more common than mine?