How quickly we forget ...
Quick Summary:
Suba Communications (presently a subsidiary of BeanNet),
in clearcut violation of its own guarantees in its user agreement,
censored one of its own users on behalf of a group of child molesters who
openly bragged about their preferences. They had complained about his
writings on the basis that hostility was expressed toward child molesters
in general, as well as a lack of sympathy for the position that they were
oppressed by the laws against having sex with minors.
This position won widespread admiration and support, on the
chi.* hierarchy, and elsewhere on Usenet.
Suba, one must admit, did provide a technically superb product at a
very reasonable price back in those days before BeanNet took them over.
But this technology we use to connect to the Internet does not exist for
its own sake, or at least should not. It is a means to the end of
facilitating free and open communication. In this area, Suba fell
scandalously short. One finds oneself wondering if Todd Bodenstein and
Alex Strasheim even knew what the word "justice" meant.
For those new to the story, here's what happened. I came across a group
named alt.support.boy-lovers. It is what it sounds like - a group designed
to win support for the idea that there is nothing wrong with homosexual
child molestation, and that the molesters are a mistreated minority
group, oppressed by the laws against adults having sex with eight year old
boys. God, I wish I was making this up, but I'm not.
It gets worse, and how quickly people online have forgotten how much
worse. These were the days of the Golden Age of the alt.sex.pedophilia
groups and online child pornography. Today, people will casually say "...
and of course those present were disgusted by this". Not surprisingly,
given the near universal revulsion of those offline at what was going on
online, it has become a popular bit of latter day online mythology to
hold that the pedophiles were universally hated and reviled (*).
But guess what, kids ? They weren't. People followed the path of least
resistance and principles and the innocent be damned. In those last
months before the FBI started cracking down on the online child porn
rings, there was ample public support online for the notion that child
molestation was just another sexual orientation, and that the government
had no right to get involved. It wasn't the molesters who got heat in
public, it was those who said that they were in the wrong who did. And then
the arrests came, and suddenly people forgot their newfound anarchist
"principles". But they sure didn't forget their grudges. Many continued
the effort to smear those who had opposed their cowardly efforts, by
telling - not the actual stories, but their reactions to the stories, told
in vague, hand waving terms, leaving out the now unfashionable
details.
This is the reality about the 1990s that some would sweep under the
carpet, but we should bring out into the open. The excuse that is
offered for the suppression of freedom of expression represented by
Political Correctness is that it was a reflection of sensitive concern
for those who would be upset by the arguing of sick and outrageous points.
But how much more sick and outrageous can one get than to argue that it
is OK for a grown man to have sex with a small child ? Our PCers sided
with those who argued this very point. What PC meant was that when
a group of sociopaths succeeeding in browbeating enough people into going
along with one of their sick causes, the expectation that the unpopular
views were to be suppressed meant that the outrageousness of the existing
consensus couldn't be pointed out, without people screaming for the one
doing so to be silenced. Support for common decency was the last thing
that came from this process.
continue
related pages :
1
2
3
4
5
6
 The Fred Cherry Story
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