I think I have. My view of it is we are giving into our worse nature online when we publicly shame or go after people like this, or when we recklessly pursue a moral program of some kind in the wake of such an event. I think there is a lot of cruelty being expressed in this thread and people don't see it, because they think they are so correct. Personally I am not a big fan of cruelty.
Oh, you've made arguments, of course. None of them are
convincing, however, for all of the reasons spelled out across the posts over the last page and half. To recap just the points made in this very short post:
"we are giving into our worse nature online when we publicly shame or go after people like this"
Again, this is less about shame than it is (a) public accountability and (b) safety. I think it's fair to question, at this point, how the con would have handled this situation were the complaints
only brought discreetly to a handful of con attendees as opposed to being made public. Would the con have handled it in the same exact way? Maybe. Maybe not; I mean, the guy who made the decision knew him for at least a decade. Made him a face of the con by making him a Room Captain (this point being exactly why some people might not have felt safe going to the con organizer). Predators rely on "good ol' boy" networks to keep their dirty laundry private so they can keep being predators. That's the accountability piece. As for safety, well, I am sure there are cons where Kevin Rolfe will be more than welcome to run his games still. Are the people who would be most traumatized by his "shocking" content going to give pause to joining his games when they see his name on the listing, now? Public awareness makes people safe by giving them the information they need to avoid being traumatized by bad actors, while at the same time raising public accountability for those who might have otherwise given his behavior a pass.
"or when we recklessly pursue a moral program of some kind in the wake of such an event"
To be clear, the "moral program" in question is "rape = not acceptable". [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] has covered this in better detail, but you are bringing moral relativism to an argument that is mostly centered around sexualized violence. Call both sides equally bad in their extremism is a false equivalence of the dangerous. "People who spring rape scenarios on players and then lie about in an interview with the guy who wrote 'In Defense of Rape' should not be allowed to be in our hobby" is not the moral or extreme equivalent to "LOL great job owning the libs!" and the latter are explicitly counting on well meaning people making that mistake.
"I think there is a lot of cruelty being expressed in this thread and people don't see it, because they think they are so correct. Personally I am not a big fan of cruelty." [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] covered this in a point I see you have not responded to yet, in that:
Foreseeable repercussions for actions =/= cruelty.
I don't really have anything else to add to that.