I can see the great benefit of caring adults to help out kids and teens who have run away or been thrown away. I think pedophiles should be very careful providing that support to children they are attracted to, and should make sure never to let sexual activity be part of the mix.

But now we're back to focussing on your imagined assumption that kid's libbers have base motives.

It will be an attractive ideology to those sexually attracted to children that on average would skew their evaluation of its merits.

Some of the different perceptions may be that the paradigmatic children I'm thinking about are 3, 4, or 5 years old -- as my examples with shiny objects should suggest. You may be thinking predominantly of older ones. I don't know what age Ellen was when she came into your life. I was with my girls from the beginning.

"Basically decent grown men lie and cheat and contort reality to get sex with women,"

That was a careless phrasing on my part. Let me try again as "Basically decent grown men present themselves in an unsustainably positive way, lie about their long-term intentions or studiously avoid figuring out their actual long-term intentions to get sex with women."

I don't see how your assumption that some are self-deceiving ( without any proof required ) promotes anything. You single out Peds for this, without applying this human flaw to either parents or LEOs. If you believed that it extended to other adults then you would surely promote a girl's independence from their selfish manipulations of her that might cause harm or mental anguish.

This is a board of people who are sexually attracted to girls. If they go astray, the danger that posters here specifically pose is one of sexual activity. The web is full of boards where people can discuss what is best for children in other respects. People here rarely post about their parental dilemmas or career dilemmas as law-enforcement personnel.

If you never had a life apart from obeying your parents rules, and never found others to support you without acting as surrogate enforcers, then I'd have to believe you were never a child yourself.

While I ultimately found quite a bit to fault my parents for, they were quite liberal with regard to sexual matters, staying out late, drugs, etc. My peers were rebelling against restrictive rules, but I had little to rebel against. I was rather shy, so I didn't take the opportunity for significant friendships with other adults. But whatever those adults offered, I was not psychologically in a position to question my parents' beliefs until I was off at college.

As a parent my biggest strength was listening carefully to my girls and their experience of the world without judging their feelings. There were still rules that caused some friction, but not many conflicts.