It's time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program.

No, what you now claim to be “your position” was not in fact what you were asserting when the argument began.

What you were asserting was not merely that it’s not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Sandusky committed penetrative anal rape on that boy in the shower (which is what the jury actually concluded, and which nobody in this thread ever denied), but rather that Sandusky in fact couldn’t have done so. (As a sideline, you were also opining that what Sandusky was doing in the shower “was more likely skeevy but not necessarily damaging to the child”; see below.)

The jury found nothing at all to indicate that such anal rape was physically impossible or unlikely, which is the claim that you were arguing yourself blue in the, er, face for.

So no, your position has not in the least been vindicated in a court of law.

Starving Artist, if you had merely been making the uncontroversial point “Hey, it hasn’t been proven that this shower incident involved rape by anal penetration, and we should not jump to the conclusion that must be what was going on”, then you’d be right, and you’d be justified in thinking the verdict bears you out.

Many posters including myself were perfectly willing to acknowledge that at the time:

In fact, you were trying repeatedly and at great length to persuade us that there were specific and convincing reasons to believe that the shower incident definitely wasn’t anal rape. And there’s nothing in the verdict to bear that out at all.

What you’re doing now, Starving Artist, is retroactively moving your goalposts and then declaring victory. You seem to forget that we can look these things up (if we’ve got suitable protective gear and wash thoroughly afterwards).