You did not give an example of a girl who was punished for expressing pro-legalization views, just one who was punished for admitting to an illegal relationship. That's quite different. I'm not condoning Fayla's treatment.

Because extreme, absolutist laws result in extreme measures designed to end those relationships and punish the people involved. What did you expect them to do in light of the illegality of the situation? Allow Fayla to stay with him? Not take the measures they did to find out who he was? Not put her into "therapy" to coerce her into not engaging in such relationships again? That is the equivalent to supporting war, and then lamenting the fact that so many extreme things were done to win it as a result. That is what you get when you take extreme measures. And why we say there are better ways to handle situations we may be concerned about, including taking them on a case-by-case basis and listening to what younger people have to say.

And it wasn't just her illegal relationship. PJ was looking for reasons to get her YouTube channel shut down since it was created, and it didn't last for long. They lucky would have succeeded just by complaining to the YouTube administration, but they wanted more info on her. Which, sadly, they got between monitoring her channel and her posts on GC.

The sexual rights issue is extremely emotionally charged, so much so that youth liberation orgs like NYRA have found they need to stay neutral on the topic, and have no official position on it. And when arguments have erupted about that in the past, there was nary an underage member who supported the continuance of AoC laws, regardless of whether they had mesophiliac inclinations or not; it was all about choice to them, along with a general opposition to adults regulating their sexual lives. It was almost always adults who supported the continuation of AoC laws.

This issue is anything but "safe" or "acceptable" politically to discuss by adults, let alone kids!

You don't say why Ella stopped posting -- and if it was coercion then we'll ask what she might have done besides just expressing pro-legalization views.

She eventually stopped posting primarily due to becoming a parent, and being concerned that her child would be taken from her due to her views, as was the case with Kevin Brown, which scared the hell out of many people in the community; this combined with increasing attacks by PJ and Absolute Zero, who kept making posts on their blogs that they were close to finding out her real identity ("outing" members of the community was a major activity of theirs during the heyday of their power). Btw, she was NOT underage any longer when she became a parent; she was active here for several years. This further combined with various personal issues she had not connected in any way to the MAP community, including health problems. She remained a dedicated youth liberationist in general, though, which did not change after she became a parent, to her credit.