So I covered in the last post four initial arguments I could think of in terms of what pedos might try to do in order to argue for their ability to be accepted within society and eventually have relationships with children. In working on that, I found another list of arguments, so I’m going to look at them. This one comes from a Christian website ans written by a man named Michael Brown, so miracle of miracles, Pagan and Christian work together on this one.

1) Pedophilia is innate and immutable; people are born this way and cannot change.

This one is largely considered verboten to discuss since the gay community started using it. I think the science is still out on gays, but when it comes to pedos I don’t even really recall that it has been truly studied. A gap in my knowledge, and I apologize for that fact (but I’m worried about how many watchlists I’m on already for this series). Nickerson talks about this in his article, and tries to make this argument, but I think even he admitted that, well, the sample size was really to small to be definitive and that there were three theoretical causes.

Frankly, though, my own personal experience says that gender, orientation, and even what you desire is mutable. Mostly because I’ve been able to change all of them, admittedly with large amounts of will. But then, I admit I might also be insane and question how human my actual psyche is, so there is that. Maybe human’s can’t change who or what they are and what they desire, all I know is I can and have.

Of course, even if pedophilia is innate and immutable, does that really mean they have the right to engage in that activity, especially given that it does appear quite harmful to its targets. After all, many have made the argument that the things which drive serial killers are innate and immutable, but I don’t see anyone really arguing that we should just accept the BTK guy or people like him as part of a healthy and equal society. In fact, I generally see the opposite argument.

So I suppose a good way to look at it would be like the Hippocratic Oath or the Wiccan reed: First, do no harm.

Since pedophilia pretty clearly violates that based on current evidence, I’d say that’s a pretty good argument to ban it.

 

2) Pederasty is richly attested in many different cultures throughout history.

I touched on this several times in my post yesterday. Mainly the diffreences between pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia.

Despite the fact that both start with “Pede” there is a difference between pedophilia and pederasty. Pederasty was the practice of an older man and younger man having a relationship together. Typically as a rule, though, the younger man was of age to consent, meaning considered an adult by his people, even if a very young adult. This would mean that despite the similarity of name, pederasty is actually an example of homosexual ephebophilia, which is “attraction to those age 15-19.”

Given that those 15-19 have largely been considered adults in the vast, vast majority of cultures, this is a poor argument for pedophilia.

However, once again even pederasty must be viewed through the “do no harm” lense. In ancient Greece and Rome, these were considered normal and healthy relationships that benefited both the older and younger man. In fact, the Greeks put more emphasis on the romantic and platonic love in the relationship than the sex, and viewed a pederastic relationship based purely on carnal relations as a poor thing to engage in. That being said, pederasty is not always healthy, as recent reports of the practice in Afghanistan have proven it is quite harmful to the younger men involved and may have led to several “friendly fire” shootings of American soldiers (I will try to write on that another time as part of this series).

At it’s best though, pederasty is a relationship between two consenting adults with a large age gap. It is not, however, synonymous  with pedophilia or the attraction to Children.

 

3) The claim that adult-child sexual relationships cause harm is greatly overstated and often completely inaccurate.

To this I can only really say one thing: Show me your Science, so that we may question it.

It may seem odd that a person as religious as I am would insist on scientific data, but the truth is I like to approach things more or less rationally. Given that in neither of my faiths pedophilia is outright banned, and the ancient Romans who practiced the Cultus Deorum had pederasty, I will keep an open mind. That being said, something like 99% of the science presently shows taht adult child sexual relationships do cause harm.

Now, this might be an issue of lumping the three philii together. Sure, “adults” and “older teens” might not show as much harm (though there often is due to violations of consent), but when it comes to younger teens or children the numbers do seem to be extraordinarily high. As to how these numbers would be completely inaccurate is a mystery to me, given that such data would have been collected from children who had been pulled in to an ACSR.

Because as a rule, most scientists hopefully do not just pull numbers out of their asses when it comes to this kind of thing.

But hey, bring out the science. Make your case. If it is true, it will be accepted. If it is false…welll…I wouldn’t want to be a pedo.

 

4) Consensual adult-child sex can actually be beneficial to the child.

I touched on part of this yesterday with the whole “We let children who know nothing have sex, wouldn’t it be better if an adult showed them the way.” And I like to think I handled it quite well, by noting one simple change to age of consent laws (dropping the age by 2 years and declairing 16 year olds to have the rights of adults when it comes to consenting to sex) would completely blow this argument out of the water.

The fact is though, that outside of teens (who are not children and thus not pedophilic attractions), Children gain no benefit from a sexual relationship with an adult or otherwise. I would love to hear how it would benefit a child to be slept with sexually, if only because then I could destroy said argument while laughing maniacally. Again, this is a danger of lumping the three philii together, but when we focus it purely on pedophilia (11 and younger) it’s going to make it harder to argue this point for the pedos.

 

5) Pederasty should not be classified as a mental disorder, since it does not cause distress to the pederast to have these desires and since the pederast can function as a normal, contributing member of society.

Again, there’s a conflating of pederasty to pedophilia, even though historically they have been different things. That being said, the argument against works equally well here.

The claim being it’s not a mental disorder because it doesn’t cause distress to the individual with the condition and they can function as a normal member of society. That being said, we’re describing something that could work just as well for serial killers, as I suspect a great number of them feel no distress what so ever about their desire to murder large numbers of people in various horrific ways. And many a serial killer has proven to be a well adjusted, normal, contributing member of society.

But we still consider people who are serial killers to be in possession of a mental disorder. Given that pedophiles do tend to leave their victims with various degrees of harm…we have to ask if the issue is really the suffering of the person with the condition, or that of the person they enact it upon.

 

6) Many of the illustrious homosexuals of the past were actually pedophiles.

I would love it if people reading this could provide me some examples. I’m sure there are a number out there, but I want to know how many of them were more ephebophiles who engaged in pederasty and how many actually slept with children. Because there is a difference here.

The only one I can think of off hand is Michael Jackson, in which case yeah, pretty much a pedo (though how homosexual he was I have no idea). But here in we can already see the argument I was talking about yesterday, where pedos and their supporters will try to paint anyone who is attracted to the 15-19 age range as no different from people attracted to the 0-11 range.

Deny them this.

 

7) People are against intergenerational intimacy because of antiquated social standards and puritanical sexual phobias.

Frankly, this one is easy to blow up. We have little to know problem with people marrying who have a 10, 20, 30, or more year age gap. Some people might look down at a “trophy spouse” and so forth, but we as a society have no problems with “intergenerational” intimacy. What we do have a problem with is the sexual use of children who lack any pubescent shift, or who are just starting it.

And in a coldly logical way, I will say we have this problem because it serves no purpose for society. Prepubescent children cannot have children of their own, and in fact may be damaged to the point where they could not have them in the future. This harms us as a species. Sex and pregnancy and all that is inherently dangerous, but we engage in it not just because it feels good, but because on a basic level we need it to survive. Children however provide no such service to society as a whole.

They provide only pleasure to the individual pedophile using them. And, given that the harm to the child can be very great, we consider it wrong to use a child that way the same way we consider theft, or murder, or any number of activities that benefit a person but harm society to be bad.

Now, is this puritanical sexual phobia? Not really. It’s a subconscious calculation. We need children to grow up healthy and mentally stable in order for society to exist. Pedophiles can physically and mentally harm children who they have sexual relationships with. Ergo, pedophiles are bad because they cause harm to the children we need to grow up healthy.

Hardly puritanical, and certainly not a sexual phobia. This has been the view across many cultures for thousands of years. Typically, the only times it was tolerated, much less accepted, might have been when the life of the child was so ruinous as a pedophilic relationship would do less harm than starving in the street. Or, in the case of some instances I’ve read about in Islamic history, where the child was an infidel captured and anything could be done to them because they were not a Muslim. ISIS provides good modern examples of that attitude.

Hardly examples of a “healthy” relationship though.

 

8) This is all about love and equality and liberation.

Here is the actual hardest argument to deal with. If straight people can be with the people they desire, and GLBT people can be with those they desire, why can’t Pedos. After all, Love and Equality are good and people should be Free.

We know how hard this argument is to fight thanks to the GLBT community. And really this one is going to probably come down not to reason, but who can shout the loudest.

Because really, we can trot out trillions of studies proving that pedophilia harms children, and the pedos will simply end up screaming “LOVE IS GOOD!!!!” “I DESERVE THE SAME EQUALITY  YOU HETRO AND HOMO PEOPLE HAVE!!!!” “WHY SHOULD I BE PUT IN PRISON/LISTED AND MENTALLY INSANE SIMPLY BECAUSE I CAN’T HELP WHO I AM ATTRACTED TOO!!!!”

Ultimately, for this one, the only way to stand against it probably isn’t going to be reason. It’s by embracing the fact that we’ll be called a bunch of hateful, pedophobic bigots. And for once, being a bigot is going to have to be a good thing, across religious and political lines.

 

The Gods have mercy on our souls, for I fear the pedos shall have none.