Relationships are complex. We are not born into a world where we can choose our families, and in some respects, we are not of the ability to choose to whom we are attracted.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t lines.
About 20 years ago, I attended a party at a convention in which my fellow attendees and I were required to wear colored dots on our name badges. There were three colors, each indicating a certain aspect. One color indicated that the wearer was straight, one that the wearer was gay and the other to indicated that the wearer was bi-sexual. In many ways, it made the evening very fun and easy-going because everyone knew where everyone else stood in the sexual arena. Almost everyone at the party was single, and the system was designed to promote a hassle-free environment wherein a heterosexual like myself could mingle and flirt without worrying that I might be made uncomfortable by someone of the same sex hitting on me.
Would that the world was this way. That no one had to be made uncomfortable or to deny who they were because of their sexual orientation and that it might offend another. For now, we live our lives in a tenuous web of interpersonal relationships that may or may not make us uncomfortable or self-demonizing. Generally, we live in an uneasy harmony.
There is a group asking for a seat at that table, and to be honest, I’d rather hit them with the chair than offer it to them as a place to rest.
At a recent conference, a group called B4U Act was discussing the rights of the pedophile. No, you read that right. They were holding a discussion on the best ways to normalize the attraction to minors. Jacob Breslow, a gay-rights activist and a speaker at the conference, said that there should be no stigma associated with the attraction to children. In fact, Breslow suggested that consent from a child wasn’t necessary for a minor-attracted person to perform a sex act on “it” anymore than one need seek permission to perform a sex act on a shoe. His discussion, from the firsthand accounts of those who were there, seemingly advocated that child rape was “natural” and should be condoned.
Read that again. He advocated that child rape was “natural.”
My sons, from their first breaths, have relied on me to be a protector. In fact, I feel that role is placed upon me for all children simply by virtue of being a parent. As a person who has investigated the crime of commercial sexual exploitation, sometimes dealing with children, I am acutely aware of the psychology of the predator. I am also acutely aware of the sexual development of children. I remember my own feelings around age 12 and 13 for girls who were my age and older. I get that the pre-teen years and especially the teen years are a time of sexual awakening as we discover through constant trial and error who we are as individuals and begin on our path to adulthood. But I also knew, at the age of 13, that feelings of sexual attraction to an 8-year-old would be abnormal. (Just to be clear – I have never been attracted to children) It wasn’t just because society had implanted a normative feeling that attraction to minors was a sexual taboo, but it came from an innate sense that certain milestones happen at certain ages. That our bodies become biologically available for sex at certain ages.
That those ages were not early childhood.
Courts in Texas have ruled that children who are not of the age of consent are not able to be criminally prosecuted if lured into commercial sex acts. This wasn’t done to promote the commercial sexual exploitation of children, but to shield them from the justice system once they have been victimized by child predators. But it was not an arbitrary ruling. There is a point at which we, as a society, must set limitations on behavior that is destructive.
The pedophile community argues that it is no different than homosexuals. They use the same argument that such behavior is not learned or chosen, but rather part of their inherent emotional makeup. I think the same argument could be made for a serial killer. Clearly, a serial killer is a deviant individual who takes pleasure in some way from the murder of another person. Yet, the murderer is robbing that person of their rights and without asking for any kind of consent. The child predator does the same. It seeks a sexual encounter with a non-consenting child who may or may not fully understand the concept of sex.
This group is small, but it is active. It’s active in the scientific community, pushing the boundaries of “acceptable sex.” I’m far from one to dwell on the inner workings of a couple’s boudoir, and that means if they get down while dressed up like Big Bird and Barney, far be it from me to scoff at what gets them off. Once that activity becomes a danger to children – who these pedophiles claim are rarely sexually assaulted or forced into a sex act – it’s no longer a question of what is permissible in the sexual arena. It’s a matter of protection. This is not about repression. When a child reaches adulthood, they should have the support of the community to have a vibrant and fulfilling sex life. Until that time, however, we must draw a line in the sand.
Pedophilia must never find footing in civil society.
mymanhoodisbiggerthanyours 