He’s being forced to resign from an advocacy organization for being a shithead who defends child rape. It sets the precedent that you can’t defend reprehensible acts and still be considered a community leader. We are all better off for it.
That precedent creates a stigma when discussing such topics. Let's say that you don't quite understand a particular viewpoint (doesn't have to be this - another good topic is racism & discrimination). Where do you go to learn more about the topic? Especially when you're aspiring to be a leader, this stigma incentivizes holding on to half-baked ideas that you simply can't discuss with anyone. That, in turn, creates a culture of double-speak.
So, in other words, good first-order effects, but bad second-order effects.
I find this argument to be so bizarre it’s hard to imagine it’s sincere. In what world is writing dumb and offensive rants to a CS mailing list a good way to learn about the legal, psychological, and moral aspects of sex slavery?
Where do you go to learn more? Maybe you could go to the library. You could enroll in classes. MIT is famous for technical subjects but I’m sure they have good classes about psychology, law, and ethics too. Or you could find stuff online, I’m sure there are plenty of good resources out there.
Legitimate questions to understand and active defense of a specific viewpoint look remarkably different. It’s possible to write in a way that successfully communicates something like “I want to understand racism more” and not “what if white people were like the dominant race tho?”
