Very dirty pool, Ethan, comparing the above--which all of us are against--to the notion of consensual activity.

Not dirty pool in the least. Giving parallel examples and challenging opponents to find the relevant differences if they can, and explain them to me, and then the conversation can move forward.

You frame it as "consensual activity" yet of course that is part of what's at stake, whether the activity is consensual at all and whether the consent is sufficiently informed.

All while deliberately leaving the girl out of the discussion entirely

First, you're changing the subject and not addressing the point I made.

Now if I accept the change in subject, I say not in the least. We listen carefully to what girls have to say. What they say isn't typically very profound. A lot of it is along the lines of, How can I make good friends, how can I stay in their good graces, how can I get a good boyfriend, how can I get cooler clothes? You may bring out your notion of the perfectibility of human nature that given the right information (not sure quite what that is) they will suddenly see the light and seek votes, and fewer automobile trips, and perhaps become good members of the youth division of the communist party.

I wrote a blog post, http://celibatepedos.blogspot.com/2015/08/truly-universal-suffrage-lowering.html, proposing a voting age of zero. Perhaps you're an elitist and want a higher one or some test for competency, etc. But I'll make a good prediction of what would happen if the net effect was to lower the voting age to 14 or so on average: absolutely nothing. A great many wouldn't vote, others would vote as their parents or peers vote, a few of this not-very-numerous group might vote differently than those slightly older.

many of your fellow libruls try to say what they think is best for adult women who may want to choose sex work as a vocation

Some do, but I don't.

A girl can destroy a man's life not because she has just reason, but simply because she wants to

Not at all. The man has one simple way of staying safe: never have sex with an underage girl. Human beings being who we are, some won't follow that rule, and then the other considerations come into play. The girl gets no free pass on saying sexual activity took place, only on whether she consented to it.

Human beings in general do not handle power well

Say he who believes in the perfectibility of human nature. Power differences are everywhere and unavoidable, though we can reduce unnecessary ones. For ages, men have been able to demand sexual favors from women to get what they want regarding the workplace. Now, #MeToo is fighting back at that, and it includes some women misusing power and making false accusations. Girls are just a special case of the general problem. Wherever you draw the line, people on both sides will abuse that power. I think the far greater problem in the world you would like to see is the man who has sex with the 13-year-old against her will and says she consented.

If 95% of the world still believed that tomatoes were poisonous, that would not justify us giving you a free pass for also believing that just to fit in, especially if you strongly supported legal measures to ban the cultivation of tomatoes for human consumption.

You're trying to change the subject. The question was whether I could justifiably be called DISHONEST for believing tomatoes were poisonous. As long as 95% of other people also thought that, it's extremely unlikely and requires specific evidence. You can call me wrong and try to convince me -- I understand that, but it's a different question.


We say let the girls have full access to objective information all their lives, allow them to develop as they will as individuals rather than to a forced standardized coda, and then allow them to speak for themselves, not only as a group but as individuals. Doing anything less dehumanizes them and reduces them to the status of property and forcing them to live in forced compliance with a specific paradigm.

I don't know what you're smoking, but this has virtually no relationship to reality that I can detect. Libraries have tons of stuff, and girls can go to libraries. The web has no end of viewpoints, and the girls can read those viewpoints and decide for themselves.