Take Two

Prominent MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman shared a bold opinion on Saturday: perhaps adults shouldn’t have sex with children.

Stallman got widely roasted last week when he made some appalling comments about Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, suggesting that the financier’s victims somehow consented to the sex trafficking scheme. But now, in the face of near-universal backlash — and scrutiny of even worse comments he’s made in the past — the storied programmer and activist is walking it back.

Are You Kidding

Stallman’s nasty comments last week drew attention to some even more appalling stuff he said back in the mid-2000s. In one 2003 post, the famed coder even wrote that “everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately.”

Sickeningly, he also opined that some kids “are ready earlier.”

Stop Posting

But on Saturday, Stallman posted on his personal webpage that he’d changed his mind.

“Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it,” Stallman wrote. “Through personal conversations in recent years, I’ve learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.”

Stallman also posted a second bizarre statement on Saturday, pushing back against media coverage that he had defended Epstein.

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