1. First, thanks very much for the calm tone. It took me a while going back and forth, reading and rereading, but I think I've finally got the point you're trying to make, and it is coherent and understandable. I'm not going to reply in this detail very often.

2. Let's start with the big picture. Often when an issue comes up, I am arguing one side and several of you are arguing the other. If I had the time and patience to reply to every point in every post, the conversation would grow exponentially and I would be making half the posts, and I believe that you mods would take a dim view of it; you would see me as trying to take over the board. As a result, I am often in the position of making posts with some key points and doing a few carefully selected rebuttals, but I have to let the bulk of what's said slip by. My main hope is that those reading who haven't made up their minds will see the outlines of a view that is different both from the consensus that rules here and from hysterical and ignorant anti-pedophile rhetoric from society at large.

This means that I'm not generally in the mode of a tight argument back and forth with a single individual. The back-and-forth Dissident and I had that he refers to here
http://www.annabelleigh.net/messages/592932.htm was an exception to that. I thought it went very well.

In the exchange you are citing, Dissident had just made a statement of the pro-contact position. It seemed a good time to make a few key points on why that position might not be right and how one could look at things differently, so I did. It's true that Dissident was replying to AK-47, but AK-47 was responding to me, so the idea that I hijacked anything seems unfair. The final comment about using sexual freedom for prostitution is an afterthought, raising an issue but making no pretense of arguing for it. Note the qualifying words "hunch" and "removed all" (versus "some") and "mostly". It's a placeholder, a reminder, and an opportunity for the genuinely curious to ask more. I don't make the full argument there as part of the restraint I use so I don't take over the board.

Given that whole context, I think your concepts of impugning motives and moving goalposts is at a level of argument specificity that's not in my mindset at all. I also don't think it's realistic. I don't think other people on the board are held to standards like that.

3. I raised this idea of prostitution before -- I have in my drafts something I dated August 3, 2013 where I made that point more fully. It's available on request.

4. "Lots of sex" wasn't the most precise wording. "Sex for lots of pedophiles" would have been more accurate. I didn't intend it as pejorative; if you're sexually attracted to someone, it's reasonable to want sex with them. But I think it's a stretch to think that explanation has anything to do with attacking Dissident. One past connection here is a post I made at some point in the last year -- I would have guessed last summer. I'm pretty sure it was on GC and not Tom O'Carroll's blog. I said that even if attitudes and laws changed, pedophiles would still for practical purposes be celibate because so few prepubescent girls would choose sex, and that we would be happier putting that possibility out of our minds. I certainly got several replies assuring me that I was wrong and that it was important to them that I was wrong. The replies were not all, "Well, maybe you're right, but if so that's fine because all that matters is that the girls have freedom of choice".

I also frequently see posts saying effectively that they know little girls who would like sexual activity and the men would happily participate if only laws and attitudes were different.

5. Here's an exchange I didn't respond to before, in my desire to pick and choose, but I raise it now to illustrate the decisions I'm constantly making:

Ethan: My hunch remains that if you really freed children sexually and removed all their hang-ups and inhibitions, they would use the freedom mostly for prostitution.

Dante: Hmmmmm. I'll just say that neither of my step-daughters were interested in prostitution. I'm not sure which girls you've been hanging out with? But I suspect that this speaks volumes about you and not at all for the expressed choices of any girls in your life.

The simple answer I didn't give: No children today are anywhere near freed of the sexual hang-ups and inhibitions that are part of our society, so we wouldn't expect to see an interest in prostitution with children we know and I certainly didn't. The hunch is not based on direct observation of children in those circumstances, but based on a knowledge of children and what would happen in an environment no child has been in so far.

It didn't make the cut. It seemed fairly obvious and I hoped it would be to other readers.

6. I want to be sure to answer your direct statement/question was: "an interpolated assumption ( one which was not present in the statement you claimed to be responding to ) makes the response both indirect and dishonest. " This can be true sometimes, as in "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" If Dissident had been asking me a direct question, I'd know what "indirect and dishonest" meant. As for the particular case, I feel no constraint to answer precisely within the framework of the person making a post. No, I don't think it's dishonest, as that implies some bad intention (at least).

7. I'm trying to think what would have made you happier. Here's a try: "My hunch is that if you really freed prepubescents sexually and removed all their hang-ups and inhibitions, they would use the freedom mostly for prostitution. But that would be within the bounds of the freedom that Dissident wants to give, so I am not suggesting any internal inconsistency on his part. I am only suggesting it as a consequence that some people might find unpleasant and they could consider it in evaluating whether they want to agree with Dissident's vision or not." I think it's wasting my limited space in unnecessarily detail.