To be fair, saying that someone’s argument is intellecutally dishonest is not quite the same thing as accusing them of lying.
I should mention, as the person who started this thread, that no, I don’t think the “DePasto” defense (to coin a name from Animal House) should be used by Mr. Taylor. His scandal is so filled with obvious tipoffs that he deserves whatever he gets.
He neither called people specifically liars nor did he call specific people anything. He’s probably in the clear.
Conversely, even if he COULD credibly prove he had reasonable belief she was 18, he’s STILL going up the river (and I don’t think such a reasonable belief could exist in the situation in any case).
Pretty sure he got told to stop calling everyone who disagreed with him wannabe child-rapists, and that wasn’t directed at anybody specific, either.
It may be an anecdote, but I’m pretty sure the data backs you up here. I wish I could find a cite, but there was a study about this just a few years ago. IIRC, it found that kids and teenagers who were sexually abused suffered the long-term emotional consequences you might expect, but that teenagers who entered into “consensual” sexual relationships with adults–not in the legal sense, but in the sense that they were willing participants–didn’t really have any negative sequelae at all.
That doesn’t mean it’s OK for a 23-year-old to fuck a 15-year-old, necessarily. But I think it does a huge disservice to everyone involved to lump that in with a 40-year-old who diddles 5-year-olds. You don’t have to approve of either to say that one is way worse than the other, or that they merit different sorts of punishment.
Told by who? I didn’t see that.
I just checked the thread. I can find no such warning. You must have dreamed it.
He was probably thinking of this, which which blanket-categorizes the activity as off-topic and disallowed, but was not directed at you personally but rather at someone on ‘your side’.
So only somewhat a dream.
Yes, that’s the post I meant. And I forgot that it wasn’t directed at Dio, but rather at someone else exhibiting the same behavior. Still, the meat of the matter was that it was made absolutely clear that blanket statements accusing everyone you don’t like in a thread of something nasty aren’t allowed.
Nitpick: “**She **was probably thinking of…”
Sorry! I have a hard time distinguishing the gender of people on message boards. It’s a personal failing of mine.
And nobody seems to like being referred to by my shortened version of she/he/it (“s/h/it”) for some reason…
How about this: Let’s remove the sexual angle from this question for a moment, since that tends to get peoples’ emotions up. Diogenes, you say that you can reliably determine age from someone’s conversation. If he never specifically told you, how old would you have guessed Curtis LeMay to be? Many folks here have been surprised when they learned how young he is, and he’s not even trying to fool anyone: He’s just being himself. If he did want to fool people, and told everyone he was 30, would you have doubted him?
I tend towards gender-neutral usernames and I’m abrasive. *Most *people online assume I’m male. 
That wasn’t directed at me, and I haven’t broken any rules in this thread or been warned.
This notion of being able to tell someone’s age from conversation or even on sight is largely bogus. What if it’s someone who is three days short of being of age? The birthday itself does not magically transform the conversation or appearance of an individual. Someone who was jailbait yesterday but not today will look and speak the same today, the day he or she turns of age.
Dio would respond that you shouldn’t waste your time with someone who could potentially just be an older-looking minor. Which means that 18 year old men shouldn’t date.
It means that 18 year old guys are assuming the risk if they bone chicks they don’t know.
Assume 100% get caught, convicted and incarcerated - like you said, for life, and get sterilized too.
Realise that this would entail locking up at least a third of the male population.
Is this a good idea?
Obviously not. So if you’re not going to lock up every “guilty” guy, what you are in fact doing is cherrypicking a couple of scapegoats. Do you think scapegoating is a good idea? Is it fair to the scapegoat? They get locked up for life and neutered, while their friends are still out having sex with strangers every weekend?
You need to get over your fear of teenagers having sex. I would say in 99% of cases, no harm is done when a 16 year old has sex with an 18 year old. Certainly the 18 year old doesn’t deserve life in jail, or any punishment at all as far as I’m concerned.
But if you’re going to be consistent with what you’re saying - do you think everyone who had sex with someone under the age, when they were also a teenager, should be locked up? Are you in favour of locking up a third of the male population?
*average age for losing virginity in the US seems to be 16-17, so it stands to reason that at least one third are breaking the law the first time.
A third of the male population? What about the 18-year-old girls with 16-year-old boyfriends? Presumably we lock them up, too.
Oh of course.
But Dio hasn’t said anything about them - he did, however, say that any guy who had sex with an underage girl should be locked up for life and neutered.
I guess girls could have their wombs removed, although that sounds kinda messy. .