"Age of consent laws vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, though most jurisdictions set the age of consent in the range 14 to 18"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

Things just got a lot murkier, didn't they. Actually, they have always been a lot murkier. Because "our culture" isn't actually homogenous. And these things have changed a lot over time.

> Expressing doubt about this cultural norm

Well, which norm excactly? The one at 14? Or the one at 18?

"some jurisdictions may also make allowances for minors engaged in sexual acts with each other, rather than a single age."

Murkier.

"There are many "grey areas" in this area of law, some regarding unspecific and untried legislation, others brought about by debates regarding changing societal attitudes, and others due to conflicts between federal and state laws. These factors all make age of consent an often confusing subject, and a topic of highly charged debates"

Are all the people in a society that has the 14 boundary horrible beyond the pale?

Or maybe things are a bit more complicated than you make them out to be.

It’s history which has the opportunity of final judgement, and it almost always looks dimly on the moral sensibilities of their predecessors.

Somewhere is a metaphorical Bernie whose career has disappeared, but I’m glad for those people who didn’t hop on political opportunism just because as a messaging and thought leader it’s the strong move which reads the room.

Legally, frequently you are correct, but not always culturally. To leave Minsky aside, I believe a lot of people accept the misrepresentation argument even when the law doesn't, usually when the ages are close and the minor is somewhere they shouldn't have been allowed. The typical example would be a 20 year old meeting a 17 year old at an 18+ event.

Stallman is an ivory tower thinker. His inability to accept the societal rules you mention are core to him being Stallman. At some point he seems to have decided that his moral philosophy revolves around the concept of harm rather than rules. This is what led him to his earlier posts on incest, sex with minors and necrophilia, if nobody is being harmed then in what way is it wrong? The most obvious answer is that Stallman is incorrect that nobody is being harmed, however I should point out that these topics are actually discussed in related academia (the incest and necrophilia ones are more popular because they doesn't garner the same backlash).

The Minsky issue is complicated by the difference between what Stallman was defending and what now seems to be the actual case. As far as I can tell Giuffre was actually 18 (she was 17 the previous year when she was on the same flight as Minsky) and it seems she didn't actually have sex with Minsky (this isn't clear, she never actually said she did and apparently Minsky mentioned the encounter to people at the time and said he rejected her).

However, Stallman was arguing for the facts as he thought they were, which was that Minsky did have sex with her when she was 17, with her instigating things at Epstein's behest. Stallman was again engaging his ivory tower, questioning how we can call him a rapist if she was 17 but not if she was 18, and how can we blame him for things he didn't know (that she was being coerced). This is exactly how we already knew Stallman thinks. He has ignored some things here, such as what 75 year old Minsky could reasonably believe was going on when an 18 year old came on to him on Epstein's island, but they're facts that could have been pointed out to him and might have changed his opinion. Or perhaps not, if that situation happened to Stallman he might indeed think that finally, after all these years, he has found the cute 18 year old who is into geriatric nerds.

It is not at all a very bright line when you can legally have sex with a consenting 16 year old in West Wendover, NV but be a criminal for the same act with a 17 year old in what is essentially the same city of Wendover, UT.

Assuming that by "bright line" you're not referring to the boundary separating Nevada from Utah.

But all of that is just the disparity between two states in the same country! That "bright line" gets even fuzzier when you factor in the global age of consent: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Age_of_Consent.png

I wish that were true, but the sufficiently well-connected and powerful continue not to be brought to account.

Exactly. There's no need to pretend, as some other comments in here are doing, that he's being hauled off by some sort of cultural police force.

True, and when squinting, the scenario is understandable: "High profile employee repeatedly receives negative press, so the organization doesn't want to be associated."

They're free to employ and endorse, or end a relationship, with anyone at will (modulo labor laws). The worrying thing here is, despite decades of bad behavior, they didn't distance themselves until he expressed unpopular opinions picked up by social media.

It's like the saying, "The ends don't justify the means." This smacks of letting social media voices have a say in staff choices. Even if most people agree with the outcome, it's the wrong process.

Edits: removing tangents to focus on the points.

Personally I don’t think it’s ethical for an adult to sex with minors. But many countries and states have laws allowing sex with minors. Maybe those communities think it’s ethical, maybe it’s just one of those historical laws they haven’t gotten around to updating with modern ethics.

So I don’t this this topic really has anything to do with pedophilia and how terrible that is.

So you're saying that the only people qualified to be "a leader" are the ones who subscribe to your particular flavour of groupthink and no other? Nice thought policing there.