What I see on this board by many is indicative of a communal mentality that reinforces its own delusions, rewards those who support those delusions and punishes dissenters--in essence, a cult.

Hmm.. so now you're siding 100% with the anti claim that we are a cult and Lindsay is the cult leader. Interesting turn about, man.

I recently watched a film about a real Canadian cult leader who had several women under his thumb....

So what is the implication of this, that we are all like this cult leader just looking for a virtual harem of little girls to treat like this? This sounds like something Hellpig would have said..

There is enough self-delusion in this community alone to indicate that legalizing adult-child sexual contact would be a bad idea, but as I've also maintained, it isn't REALLY this community I'm worried about--it is the non-CLers who would pose as CLers, and you can bet they would come out of the woodwork if such things were legal.

You're right about one thing, though. Self-delusion is a problem around here, and I'm sorry to have seen you fall victim to it. As far as the rest of it.. that would be all well and good if it weren't for the fact that your own words were (and are even in this post) that we are what you are really worried about. Making statements like this only helps when they don't directly oppose what you have already said elsewhere.

The difference is, children are not generally emotionally equipped to either understand or handle such failures of character on the part of an adult. It isn't the good times that would potentially harm children--it's the bad times: the moments of anger, jealousy, bitterness, errors of bad judgment by the adult, horniness.

Children can often be sensitive to an adult's moods, as I'm sure you're quite aware, and they are eager to please. A child might give in to an adult's request for sex many times because they sense it is what the adult wants, even if they have grown to hate it over time.

I don't think that you give children enough credit. You acknowledge that they are perceptive and sensitive to moods, but you don't acknowledge the fact that they understand adults far more than adults tend to understand them (outside of our community.. and sometimes even within). Failures of character are generally all that anyone experiences of other people among their shining moments of greatness. They will get this from children and adults, relationships of every sort, be they romantic or not, regardless of what you do. They deal with it every day throughout the world and denying it won't change that.

As for what a child may or may not give in to.. not that I would seek to downplay the possible hurt, but... how is this any different than how they give in to it with other children.. or how adults give in to it with other adults? Don't try to say that adults are truly any more emotionally equipped to deal with the issues than children are, because the state of society, the fucked up view of sexuality, and the even more fucked up view of relationships says that adults generally "don't have a fucking clue".

You know quite well that the only way to even think about fixing the problem with adults is by undoing the idiotic notion that children can't handle anything and should be protected from reality. If they don't learn and experience when they themselves feel ready, they will never be able to deal with things well. Sheltered children grow up to be adults that can't handle the reality of life. That's just the way that it is.

Imagine a non coming here, seeing the people who seem to treat this whole thing as a game rather than the very serious issue that is (and such people know who they are)--would they not be justifiably horrified by that?

Depends.. would they be justifiably horrified by walking into a room full of gays and hearing them joke about what "straights" consider "immoral" and "wrong"? It's really no different. You're talking about a place that people of a type get together and know that they are all that. They open up and cut up.. relax and act far more "flamboyant" than they otherwise might. It's the same type of reaction you get with homophobia, plain and simple. The answer will always be "no, they would not be justified in that type of knee-jerk reaction".

Which leads me to expect that if the gov't recognized them as legally no different than adults in most respects, they would treat them precisely as they treat their peers here . . . meaning if a child defied their wishes, they would verbally abuse them, or at the very least, subject them to guilt trips, the cold shoulder, etc., manipulating them to get what they want.

Kind of like how you have been treating all of us since your spat with JD? To use the popular phrase around here, "Hello, Pot? This is Kettle." You have the audacity to make this claim about the people here, what 2 days after you attempted to bribe me into coming to your place where you were looking for a fight?

Myrddraal and Dante are heretics? Blasphemy! How, exactly, did you come to this conclusion? I haven't talked to Myr that much to know his stand, but I'd say that I've gotten enough from Dante to have an idea of him.. and I haven't a problem with him personally. Would you care to explain how that fits into your neat little vision of things?

No, I took issue that no one stood up and supported me when jd was clearly being abusive. It was not a flame war at that point--it was a one-sided attack and belittling on the part of jd.

Interesting indeed. JD seems to have chosen to stay out of it and not be goaded by your rantings, but I find this statement interesting. I was gone to a funeral when the "flame war" took place, but I did ask quite a few people about it, one of those people being JD. The general opinion that I've gotten was that you went over-board to JD's (albeit harsh) criticism of your StC letter and that things escalated from there. JD's personal view is that you goaded him like mad accusing him of flaming over and over until he finally did it.

You, of course, will deny it and say that it wasn't like that at all, but let's be honest about these things. These situations are almost always ones in which neither party is completely correct in how they remember things going.. and though I find JD more credible on this one, I'll still go on the common truth. You think that he was attacking and belittling you, he thinks that you were goading him into a flame war by accusing him of flaming you repeatedly when he didn't see himself as having done that at all.. do you honestly expect people to take sides in a situation like that? If so, the delusional one here isn't the rest of us. It was a flame war between the two of you and from what I've gotten, no one wanted to get involved. Does that make them immature? No, it makes them mature. The one demanding that everyone else jump in and take their side in the flame war is the immature one.