Thanks for the lengthy response. I better understand the cause of the disagreement. And, I reread my response to the OP with your comments in mind, and you are 100% correct; I did sound more irritated and dismissive than I had any reason to (when I used the word “confused”). That was not my intention; I apologize for any offense caused.

In addition, I would like to respond to and/or comment on some of your other comments. You asked:

Have you read the subthread carefully, going all the way back to Clarity's question? Have you read Roosh's article?

Yes and yes. It was an interesting thread. However the point I was making was not about what Roosh may or may not have meant in his article, nor was it about Clarity’s question, nor about gjm’s comments to Clarity’s question. All of those are interesting topics, and I have opinions on them, but I did not express them. Why not? Because the discussion volume on all of those topics has been large enough that my opinion on each of the main controversial points of the thread has been stated by someone else (in some cases, by multiple people); my stating opinions that have already been stated would add little value to the conversation. However, Jiro’s post did contain a statement that had not been addressed elsewhere and that I thought should be addressed, so I addressed it.

You also said:

You can't simply single out a specific statement and attempt to grapple with its internal logic.

Actually, you can. Jiro made a propositional statement and it can be evaluated independently without rehashing the entire thread history.

Again, Jiro's response is highly contextual and only makes sense when you consider the big picture.

Agreed – Jiro’s entire response was multifaceted, nuanced and complex, and were I disagreeing with his/her entire comment, the context of the thread would be relevant. The one statement I was commenting on however was self-standing and could be evaluated as such:

If you don't want people to be convicted of rape based on evidence obtained by torture, you also "want rape to be legal"

And, no, the quotes in the original do not significantly change the meaning of the sentence; certainly they do not render my objections (stated here) invalid.

So, why did I think that this one statement was important enough to respond to? Two reasons:

1. The statement is factually incorrect – it expresses a false equivalence, as explained here

2. The belief is not only factually incorrect, it is actually harmful; if widely held, it would have a pernicious effect on the justice system. If it was widely believed that placing reasonable limits on what the state can do to win a conviction for some offense is the same as making that offense legal, you could expect to see increased demands (and eventually capitulation to those demands) to actually allow torture to obtain convictions, or to reduce the standard of proof from “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” to “guilty by the preponderance of evidence”, or even “guilty by the majority of the evidence”, etc. This is especially true for crimes that tend to evoke strong emotional responses in the public. This is not a theoretical objection – there are currently voices arguing for torture to be used in cases involving terrorism, for example.

If I sound condescending, it's because it's tiresome to argue with someone who is taking a single point as literally as possible while neglecting to look into the context of the discussion.

Understood, but as stated, my objection was to a single point; various responses to the bulk of the thread’s controversial points have been discussed at length elsewhere. Therefore, it would have been pointless for me to address the entirety of the thread.

While you didn't seem offended, you nevertheless began your reply with an emotionally charged claim that Jiro seemed "confused".

Yes, valid point. I apologize for that.

I admit that I felt a bit of annoyance right from the beginning. The emotional charge you can feel channeled through my words is a product of status-posturing emotions related to defending Jiro.

Understood, and your desire to defend a fellow LWer is noble. My feeling, however, based on Jiro’s history of high-quality, well-argued comments, is that Jiro is in no need of verbal defense. Jiro has a higher karma score than either you or I do, and has (I suspect) a history at LW longer than mine (not sure about yours). None of that of course changes the fact that my initial comment was unduly abrasive, however.