Congratulations.
You got my attention.
Yelling pedophile here to get my attention is like yelling fire at the mall so you can get to the complaint counter without hassle. It's an abuse of the term, and belittles circumstances where there is a real reason for it's cry. A polite request for my attention would have worked just as well. But we took the this road, and we are now here, so lets take a look at the case.
There is a reason why we define minor as 18 and younger here. It’s not totally a legal one. It’s an arbitrary choice made by me. In the US there are a handful of states that use 18 as the age of consent. The majority of the States use 17. This includes the location of our server.
We conform to the more conservative age of 18 because trying to sort out people posting from 17 legal states from the 18 legal states would be a fools quest on the web, and there would be no way to do it. So we default to the higher age to cover all situations. It spares headaches and problems. Legal annoyances I need not. On the TMF you are an adult on your 18th birthday, like it or lump, it regardless of what your local government says.
Long ago, Max had agreed to this arbitrary choice on my part, and removed all material of his that violates the rule from the TMF, moving it to his personal site. It was appreciated. His site, his exposure, his possible legal headaches. He took personal responsibility for his material. And will deal with the responsibilities that come from his choices. As it should be.
So this issue is not a TMF one. None of the material that troubles you is here. There are not direct links to the material from here. This problem does not belong to me. But in making accusations against one of my Mod staff you created and issue that does.
You call Max a Pedophile. But there is a problem with that. In the majority of the nation, and the world also, he’s written nothing that meets the definition.
A story about a 17 and 1/2 year old is not clearly pedophilic. If it was 16 and 1/2 I’d say you have a case. But not with this age. It’s a gray. Not a black or white. Like so much about sexuality in America it’s all blurry.
I understand that many people want nice black and white sides with a solid line down the middle. Bad there, Good here. It’s not how things work. The line moves about depending on where you stand. In my state it’s at 17. Perhaps yours it is 18. What to do when a medium crosses the state line? I don't know. Congress doesn’t either. Every law they have written has gone down in constitutional flames. Technology has outpaced the law. Unless all the states can be cowed into unifying their definitions there will be no easy solution either. MY solution was arbitrary and absolute. But I can get away with that here, after all I’m the Tzar 🙂
I have no doubt that you made your posts and accusations with nothing but good intent. But you’ve gotten mired in the gray, and pulled out some seriously big weapons in an instance that is very very very undefined.
As I feel that Max has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, and I doubt that a case could successfully be made that he has, I ask that you pursue any further issues you have with him by e-mail. This is not the place for such personal matters. And this has clearly become one once it’s placed in proper context.
Myriads
