Stallman's defence of Minsky wasn't in his capacity as the FSF President, and his resignation isn't the result of a thoughtful and considered process. This resignation is the result of a witch hunt.
The thing about accusations is that being accused of something doesn't mean the thing happened. There is a pretty plausible line of evidence that Minsky kept his hands to himself when confronted by a 17 year old on a private island. It is an excellent time to try and defend a dead friend when such doubts are present.
And as a particularly important point - there are no charges so horrible that people shouldn't be defended against them. That is one of the best principles we have in the Western intellectual tradition. "He's defending someone from something serious" is not a respectable counter; you should rethink your arguments.
Part of being in a leadership role is not offending carelessly speaking on topics that will bring bad might onto your organization.
RMS has been a force that has driven people away for a long time. He may be good as a thinker and coder, but he is fucking awful at being in a leadership position.
That's not what happened, no matter how often you repeat your mantra. First of all, Minsky didn't agree to the offer, as evidenced by eye-witnesses. So there was probably no rape in any case, although there could have been one at another time and another party. For all that RMS and you can know, there was none. Second, nobody of the invited people had credible reasons to believe that the girl was underage - Epstein did not tell that to people he invited, for obvious reasons. For all that they could know, she was a young prostitute or a billionaire's "groupy." This is not uncommon at parties of insanely rich people, and Epstein was known for it. Whether you personally like that or not is irrelevant. Read some AMA's by sex workers to understand how this works in reality, you can find plenty of them on Reddit.
RMS also defended the view that declaring every sexual act of an adult with a 17 year old as statutory rape is morally questionable. That's a legitimate viewpoint that has been discussed extensively by lawmakers and legal scholars. Again, whether you like his opinion or not is not important. What's important is that it is ridiculous to insinuate in any way that discussing these matters is somehow morally reprehensible, especially when they concern accusations of a good friend who - for all you know and believe - is innocent.
You are being very dishonest in your posts by distorting the actual situation and what actually happened. I've personally met a guy who lost his job and all of his reputation for a similar matter - every single accusation was ruled out and disproved in court, even with direct video evidence contradicting the accuser's testimony, yet his life remains in shambles.
You can only hope that you will never become the victim of such a witch hunt yourself.
If someone honestly thought, and had reason to think, that they were having sex with a willing 18 year old and it turned out days later that they had sex with an unwilling 17 year old then:
(1) They have committed statutory rape
(2) Their position is morally defensible, although a bit creepy for an old man.
He probably didn't know she was 17. Why on earth would Minsky be risking the law by sleeping with a 17 year old girl when he could just sleep with an 18 or 19 year old? Presumably Epstein had all sorts on tap. It is very likely he wasn't told she was 17 and quite likely that if asked she had been coerced into lying. Stallman has a point here.
And to top it off even if he is wrong it is not such a critical fact that he needs to resign over it. Even if I accept tomorrow that everything I typed today so far was wrong; this is still not an important enough point to resign over anything. It is a moral hypothetical. It is no relevant to my, or Stallman's, daily personal or professional life.
He didn't defend rape. He objected to the use of the term "sexual assault", because the "assault" part connotes the use of violence. He doesn't believe any violence was used by his friend. Based on his understanding of the situation, the girl probably acted willing to his friend, and his friend likely didn't know her true age (can you tell a 17yo from an 18yo??). So he objects to his friend being called a violent rapist when he's really likely only guilty of having sex with a legal minor, while believing she was there of her own free will and probably of legal age.
Finally, your use of the word "rape" is wrong anyway. Having sex with a minor isn't "rape", it's "statutory rape", and that's only in the US. US laws do not apply worldwide. The age of consent varies from place to place, and according to UK residents on this forum, it's only 15 or 16 there. So are you going to tell me that everyone in the UK that has sex with someone that young is a "rapist"? Sorry, no.
> Finally, your use of the word "rape" is wrong anyway. Having sex with a minor isn't "rape", it's "statutory rape", and that's only in the US.
“Statutory rape” isn't usually the term in the law, it's a common-language hedge to indicate that it was (at the time the term was coined) literally rape under a particular set of criminal statutes, but not what some people consider “real” rape.
In some statutory schemes it is exactly rape still, in others it has different formal names (“unlawful sexual intercourse” [Penal Code 261.5] in California law, for instance.)
If it is legally called "rape" somewhere, then those laws are wrong and should be changed. "Rape" is a word that carries a particular meaning (i.e., violent unwanted sexual activity), and conflating it with things that are not violent is minimizing real rape.
"Unlawful sexual intercourse" like in your California example is fine: that's a good way to word sexual activity that's illegal without conflating it with violence.
> If it is legally called "rape" somewhere, then those laws are wrong and should be changed. "Rape" is a word that carries a particular meaning
Generally, that meaning is sex without legal consent. Most state rape laws include sex with adults lacking capability for consent (due to intoxication, disability, etc.), even if they happen to carve out lack of legal capacity to consent due to age to a separate section of law, and do not require violence beyond the violence inherent in sex without consent, though they certainly include nonconsentual sex acheived through violence.
So, while it may or may not be carved out for organizational or other reasons in particular criminal codes, there is no reason that “statutory rape” does not fit conceptually within the space of “rape”. (The phrase “forcible rape” already exists for the subset you seem to want to limit “rape” to identify.)
The thing about accusations is that being accused of something doesn't mean the thing happened. There is a pretty plausible line of evidence that Minsky kept his hands to himself when confronted by a 17 year old on a private island. It is an excellent time to try and defend a dead friend when such doubts are present.
And as a particularly important point - there are no charges so horrible that people shouldn't be defended against them. That is one of the best principles we have in the Western intellectual tradition. "He's defending someone from something serious" is not a respectable counter; you should rethink your arguments.