Why According to some Turntable extremists Pitch Control and Direct Drive is Sacrilege?

My experience shows opposite.
I have used Nottingham Analog Spacedeck with Spacearm for 8 year, 
when I compared it to my friend's Lenco L75 (with a simple RB250 arm).
We played classical piano music, and I was shocked how much Lenco was more precise in rhythm reproduction. 
Piano playing had a sense and message with Lenco and it was like a set of unconnected sounds with Nottingham.
After that I bought raw Lenco L78. I added a heavy plywood plinth and vintage SME 3009 tonearm. 
I got much better PRAT, bass details, tone (especially on piano and organ), separation of instruments on complex music and musicality.
In term of dynamic Lenco and Nottingham where similar.
Nottingham wasn't a bad turntable but I clearly preferred Lenco.  

None of what you presented was evidence justifying  your former comments, just subjective listening with a ton of variables. What does "opposite " even mean?  Like I said before  well executed  versions of each technology  can compete with each other. 
Regards

I owned a Nakamichi TT for years, direct drive made as good as the Japanese could make them back then. Tried several arms, including a Forsell linear air bearing arm, it never sounded really good.  I gave up on analog for many years and embraced the new digital formats, but something was always missing. The best i heard back then was Townshend Reference and Maplenoll Ariadne, so when it came time
to find a TT that’s what i decided to buy. A Maplenoll Ariadne Signature came for sale on eBay and i jumped on it.
Air bearing, 60 lb lead platter, belt drive,and linear air bearing arm.
Very nice sounding TT with excellent bass and dynamics, especially 
with a PS audio regenerater supplying stable power.
Of course i could not leave well enough alone, a Phoenix Eagle, and
Road Runner where soon added for speed control and additional 
50 lb of steel platter was added to the mix. The now 110 lb plater
runs very stable, a variation of 0,001 rpm up and down is normal 
after warmup. I prefer the sound without the Road Runner correcting
the speed, the micro adjustments are subtle and not heard as
pitch variations, but more like a slight glazing in the treble.

Agree. I'm fond of the Phoenix controllers and used them with my tables. Too bad they are gone. 

My Notts turntable sounded way way better after I inserted a Walker Audio Precision Motor Controller into the AC supply and calibrated the speed.  However, everything associated with speed stability (e.g., pitch stability most easily detected with piano music) got even better when I replaced the Notts with a Lenco L75.  And the Lenco got better with the addition of the Phoenix Engineering stuff, including the RR.  Once the Lenco is up to speed, the RR feedback is doing very little; you can see that by the frequency with which the unit tells you it is making corrections.  The frequency of flashing goes way down to once every several revolutions, whereby the unit is making corrections on the order of less than .01 rpm, up or down. So I don't see how the RR corrections could be causing any audible treble problems, but you hear what you hear.