The Guardian published a story about pedophilia last week. You would expect such a story to offer strong moral condemnation against such a practice, but you would be mistaken.
The story begins by emphasizing that experts on pedophilia are not even sure that “consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm.” Really? A ten year old child is capable of making informed decisions about their sexuality and sexual relationships? And how consensual can a relationship be between an adult and a child? Children naturally submit to the desires of adults, even if deep-down they do not want to.
I found this article so appalling not only because of its sympathetic voice for pedophilia and pedophiles, but because it uses the same talking points used by the homosexual lobby to break down the moral and emotional barriers the public once held against homosexuality. For example, the story begins by talking about the number of people who experience sexual attraction to children. The author claims that as few as 1-2%, but possibly even up to 20% of men are capable of being sexually aroused by children. Why bring this up? The idea is that if so many people experience this, it can’t be so bad after all. This same tactic was used by the homosexual lobby. They once claimed that 10% of society was homosexual in an attempt to normalize homosexuality (we now know it’s closer to 2%).
The author also mentions that pedophilia is classified in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a non-psychotic mental disorder. Why bring this up? The author never made any point from this fact. My guess is that it was mentioned because homosexuality was once classified as a disorder in the same manual. Could it be that the author is suggesting that we should remove pedophilia from the manual just as we did homosexuality?
Like homosexuality, the question of causation is raised. And just like homosexuality, it’s argued that the cause may be biological. Indeed, it is suggested that pedophilia should be classified as another sexual orientation, just like heterosexuality and homosexuality. Can you see where this is leading? One of the reasons homosexuality has come to be so accepted in our culture is because people are under the mistaken impression that same-sex attraction is biologically determined, and because it is classified as a fixed sexual orientation. It’s reasoned that since these people cannot change, we must normalize their sexual preferences and approve of their behaviors. If pedophilia comes to be viewed as just another sexual orientation with biological causes, society will move toward much greater acceptance of it as well.
The story ends with these words:
For Goode, though, broader, societal change is needed. “Adult sexual attraction to children is part of the continuum of human sexuality; it’s not something we can eliminate,” she says. “If we can talk about this rationally – acknowledge that yes, men do get sexually attracted to children, but no, they don’t have to act on it – we can maybe avoid the hysteria. We won’t label paedophiles monsters; it won’t be taboo to see and name what is happening in front of us.”
We can help keep children safe, Goode argues, “by allowing paedophiles to be ordinary members of society, with moral standards like everyone else”, and by “respecting and valuing those paedophiles who choose self-restraint”. Only then will men tempted to abuse children “be able to be honest about their feelings, and perhaps find people around them who could support them and challenge their behaviour before children get harmed”.
I know what you are thinking: “There’s no way that society will come to accept man-child sexual relationships as moral.” The same thing was once said about homosexual relationships. But casting them as victims of their biology, making consent + love the only prerequisite for healthy sexual relationships, making the issue out to be one of freedom, and castigating all who disapprove as intolerant bigots changed the way people viewed homosexuality. There’s no question that it would take a long time for the majority of society to approve of sexual relationships between adult men and prepubescent children, but if the talking points that appear in this story get repeated enough, people will eventually capitulate their moral common sense.
HT: Wesley J. Smith
Thinking to Believe 
January 9, 2013 at 11:30 am
The normalization of pedophilia began at least a year and a half ago at the B4U-ACT Symposium (Aug 2011). B4U-ACT has been around for over a decade. Their recent progress (as evidenced in your article, Jason) is likely attributable to the advancement of the gay agenda. They are riding on the coattails of their sexually-deviant companions.
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January 9, 2013 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the info Andy. And for the record, I use “begun” quite loosely. As the article itself notes, there was lobbying for acceptance of pedophilia decades ago. It’s not new. What I think is a bit new is the mainstreaming of it. The Guardian is a popular British newspaper. This didn’t appear in some obscure academic journal. It’s intended for the general public.
Jason
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January 9, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Thanks for the analysis. It is indeed disturbing. It makes me wonder what the West will look like in 20 years.
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January 9, 2013 at 1:14 pm
Got ya. I honestly would not be surprised if pedophilia is accepted in America faster than in the UK.
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January 9, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Reblogged this on Ferlans and commented:
God save us
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January 9, 2013 at 10:15 pm
If, for the sake of discussion, the endtime superbeast from Revelation 13, with a part made up of a leopard (commonly understood by many to be ancient Greece, see Daniel 7) is in fact at work in the world today, (and there’s no reason for Biblical Christians to think otherwise), then it should be easily understood that paedophilia, a common trait among ancient Greeks, should become apparent, even rampant here in the 21st century.
For proof, one need only look at the word symposium, mentioned in reply #1. If one reads Plato’s Symposium, they will see everything they need to see to know.
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January 10, 2013 at 12:55 pm
Many accuse the Bible of being, at best, silent on the subject of Pedophilia and, at worst, openly supportive eg Numbers 31.1-18:
“But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
This particular passage has God Himself calling for the murder of the adult women and the keeping of the girl children as sex slaves!
What about the New Testament? Surely the NT writers would have been aware of the practices of the Greeks and would have had something to say on the matter? Unless it was generally the norm everywhere.
Best regards,
Neil
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January 10, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Neil,
Here is the passage in context:
Numbers 31:7,9,15-18 “They warred against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every male. … 9 And the people of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones, and they took as plunder all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. … 15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? 16 Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”
They clearly killed most of the older women who would be of marrying age since most of them would have been married, and thus not virgins. That leaves the female children who were clearly not of marrying age yet. While Moses tells the Israelites to keep those female children for themselves – the implied purpose being for marriage – the text does not say the men took those children to be their wives at that moment. For all we know, those girls were raised and groomed to become Israelite brides at a future date. So I don’t see this text as necessarily endorsing child brides or pedophilia.
I should also add that what we consider as examples of pedophilia is somewhat culturally relative. While we tend to think any person over the age of 18 who has sex with someone under the age of 16 as a pedophile, such has not been the case historically. In other cultures (particularly in the past), girls commonly married at age 14 or 15, and it wasn’t always to a male of similar age. If a 25 year old man married a 14 year old girl in our culture, he would be jailed and considered a sicko (by me included), but that was par for the course in the past. While there is no need for us to marry so young today, there was a need back then (people didn’t live as long, there weren’t as many people to choose from, societies were in need of growing/replenishing their populations as quickly as possible, girls and boys weren’t pursuing education and careers but spent their time preparing to start their own family and survive!).
Cases involving sex with a 10 year old or younger are obviously examples of pedophilia, but cases involving, say a 12 or 13 year old, are much harder to decide because we are blinded by our own cultural glasses. I can’t say that in the historical context of the time, that if a 20 year old man married a 12 year old girl, that this is an example of pedophilia. I can say that I would not do so, and that it is shocking to my Western sensibilities, but I cannot say there is something objectively wrong with that. After all, a 12 or 13 year old girl does have the biological capability of fulfilling the purpose of marriage (children). If God thought it was morally wrong for children of such an age to be engaging in sex, I don’t see why He would have designed their bodies to function sexually at that age. Again, in our society, I see no reason for them to start families at such a young age, so I’m not endorsing marrying 13 year olds, but I am endorsing the idea that we remove our Western glasses when considering the practices of ancient peoples.
Jason
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January 11, 2013 at 1:46 am
Neil, I wrote a whole piece on that passage here if you care for it:
http://ferlans.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/numbers-31-reading-note-vengeance-against-midian/
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January 11, 2013 at 11:35 am
Tears in my eyes… I am just sick. Yes, please Lord, save us. Protect the children. Yes, things are happening, and going to continue to worsen. The tribulation will be the worst time the entire earth has EVER known…and right now, He restrains evil… so I cannot imagine how horribly bad it will be at that time. ..Except to say this is only the beginning. breaks my heart.
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January 12, 2013 at 4:55 am
In response to Neil in reply #7, a few things.
In Deuteronomy 1:39, Moses reminds Israel how they had once assumed that their “little ones” were to be a prey, not realizing (at the time) that their little ones, that is, their children, were going to be the only ones who would enter the Promised Land.
Now, this assumption occurred in Numbers 14:3,
3. And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
In response to this, God promises that the little ones/children will be the ones who get to go into the Promised Land (Numbers 14:31).
But notice what God says in Numbers 14:29. He says only those who were 20 years and older (minus Caleb and Joshua) would fall dead in the wilderness during the coming forty year wandering.
This means that the little ones or children mentioned in this chapter could be as old as nineteen years.
Now, apply that to Numbers 31:1-18, especially verse 9, and voila, you have female “little ones” of the Midianites being of a similar age, possibly up to being 19 years old. The key that proves this is the fact that Israel was only allowed to take the virgins. Once a woman got into her twenties, whether Midian or Israeli, she was almost certainly going to be married. But if she was considered a “little one”, i.e. 19 years or less, she was not necessarily going to be married.
Therefore, as Jason pointed out regarding cultural differences of the ancient world, you have a perfectly acceptable moral situation regarding the age of the female captives. They were most likely all of them in their teen years. No paedophilia at all.
Apart from that, the passage never indicates that these little ones were to be kept either as wives or sex slaves. They may have just been taken captive to be used as servants. As a matter of fact, Moses commanded that all the non-virgins be killed, not so much because they were not virgins, but because they were the women who had caused Israel to stumble and fall into sexual sin at Baal Peor (Numbers 31:15-16), so Moses was obviously very keen on keeping Israel’s sexual life pure before God.
In terms of the New Testament, there is ample teaching and preaching against:
– fornication (porneia in Greek, meaning any illicit sexual behaviors, which by default would include paedophilia)
– lasciviousness (i.e. unrestrained sexual urges/appetites)
– abusers of self with mankind, a.k.a. sodomites, and
-effeminacy, i.e. catamites, or those young boys who give themselves as temple prostitutes to be used by sodomites.
So while the word paedophilia is never mentioned by name, it’s amply covered by the above four categories of sins.
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January 12, 2013 at 9:30 am
Aaron, Jason, Tracy,
Thanks for all of your sincere and carefully thought out replies.
Aaron, surely not ALL of the women caused the men to stumble and fall? Mothers with small children? Grandmothers? Were the men of Israel so desperate?
I am also unsure about your idea that ‘little ones’ would be as old as 19 years old. Didn’t a boy in Jewish society become a man at the age of 12 and the same for a girl?
I accept, however, that it is plausible that many of the Israelites would have waited until the little girls were older before forcing them to marry them.
However, not sure that they would have been overjoyed being bedded by men who had killed their fathers in battle then murdered their mothers and baby brothers:
“17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.”
So then homosexual relationships among consensual adults are unacceptable but rape, murder of babies and slavery, are all OK. Surely not?
best wishes,
Neil
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January 14, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Hi, Neil
I cannot say if ALL of the women did or did not cause the men to stumble. To go further is to speculate. Could mothers with small children, or grandmothers have helped to lead Israel astray? Yes, it is possible, but we’ll never know for sure.
Regarding boys in Jewish society, you are thinking of bar mitzvah. That happens when a Jewish male turns 12. Girls have a bat mitzvah, performed at the same age. But bar or bat mitzvah only means that they become accountable to the law or Torah, not that they are necessarily considered adults. Further, bar and bat mitzvah didn’t exist when Israel was in the wilderness during the Book of Numbers. A simple google search will bear this out (the ceremony is first mentioned in the Talmud, the codification of oral Torah written down between 200 and 500 BC or CE, if you prefer).
You wrote:
“However, not sure that they would have been overjoyed being bedded by men who had killed their fathers in battle then murdered their mothers and baby brothers:
“17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.”
So then homosexual relationships among consensual adults are unacceptable but rape, murder of babies and slavery, are all OK. Surely not?”
First, there is no Biblical proof that the little ones were taken to be wives or concubines. They were merely kept. They could have been used as menial servants only.
This, then, discounts your accusation of rape.
Secondly, what you are calling murder may not and I think should not be called murder. But I suppose we have to agree to disagree on that one.
Lastly, in regards to slavery, we must be careful to not take a 21st century modern Western world view and superimpose it upon the morality of the Old Testament. Our moral consciousness is forever tainted by the African slave trade. But ancient forms of slavery did not always take the same form and shape as the slavery in the Americas a few centuries ago. In fact, some ancient forms of slavery were ultimately benefitial to the slave, like e.g. indentured servitude.
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September 27, 2013 at 9:20 am
[…] the beginning of this year I wrote about an article in The Guardian that was sympathetic to pedophilia, and attempted to destigmatize […]
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April 20, 2015 at 4:34 pm
The idea that sexual abuse would be considered sexuality instead of aggression is terrifying and a commentary on just how deluded people have become with their misguided empathy. From an evolutionary standpoint, a child is only physically injured and psychologically destroyed when they are raped by sexual predators. If men or women used children for these reasons it was a way to dominate them and control them not exercise their sexuality. Anyone who enjoys inherently nonconsensual sex with a child is a sexual predator. Anyone who does that to a child is not being sexual they are being dominating and violent. Anyone who thinks these people don’t harm the children they hurt or that they are biologically wired to be what they are needs to realize that doing these things to children is a way to destroy and kill children and destroy will to live and love…the cruelest form of dominance next to infanticide. From an evolutionary perspective, this form of dominance is maladaptive because it prevents cooperation and connection between people and creates fear and distrust of adults in children. Exactly how is that natural and biological. Is not that like saying it is normal or biological to kill people and we should have empathy for murderers. Sick sick sick
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April 20, 2015 at 6:51 pm
“………..experts on pedophilia are not even sure that “consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm.”
This obviously relates to the adult being harmed and not the child…….
“…..because it uses the same talking points used by the homosexual lobby to break down the moral and emotional barriers the public once held against homosexuality.”
This is a logical fallacy comparison and does nothing but disparage homosexuality by comparison….
I thought this article was about pedophilia but in fact it is not; it is about denigrating homosexuality and comparing homosexuality with pedophilis which so disingenuous as to be totally discounted as false and an affront against normal and decent human compassion.
This is where the credibility of the article ends: the comparison of the homosexual lobby to pedophilia is so outrageous as to render the entire article as delusional and absurd if not wholly religious and screwed up in the writer’s mind.
How pathetic the writer of this article! OMG, Jason should be ashamed to have posted this ridiculously dark imaginary stupid scribbling of a fanatic, deluded by religous insanity and hatred for that part of humanity that marches to a different drummer: homosexuality. The writer is not condemning pedophila but condemning homosexuality of which there is no moral equivalency.
Jesus Christ, I slap this writer’s face for his name sake as a pathetic rodent from the ancient past.
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April 26, 2016 at 2:14 pm
The comparison with homosexuality is apt in the sense that both are perversions in the eyes of God and the same methods are being used to gain acceptance: First debate in academia as to whether the action is deviant or not. 2. Rebranding of the action. Homosexuality – same sex attraction pedophilia – genetic based attraction. fixed sexual orientation instead of a warped sense of sexuality. Incest between consenting adults is already legal in about six or seven nations at this point. within the coming decade pedophilia will be removed from the list of deviant actions just as homosexuality was. Bestiality will soon follow.
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