I recall making very similar arguments on pedophilia and generally being up voted. I think this is best explained by there being a stricter standard of avoiding taboo topics for main compared to the comment section.

I recall other controversial subjects such as the effectiveness of terrorism to stop Moore's law (was upvoted) and racial differences in intelligence (was downvoted) in main articles. And an article where lukeprog basically took any claim of the PUAs he found plausible and could find academic backing for and presented it divorced from the subculture, that was supposed to be the beginning of a series, but was probably seen as not desirable for the site and discontinued (despite it being upvoted).

I have made arguments about as controversial as the ones in your linked article in comments on pedophilia and they have generally been well received. The same is true of my arguments in favor of there being a hereditary component to the measured racial differences in intelligence. Alas I haven't commented on terrorism.

I think there is a general norm for things you can't talk about:

"this is ok to discuss, however opening it as a topic in itself on main makes the site looks bad and may attract the wrong kinds of attention".

The lesson I think really is to bring these kinds of topics up when they are one relevant example among several. If one wants them discussed as a standalone topics, open threads seem best or discussion section topics at most (hey we need something there besides meetup threads anyway).