07 January 2013

Paedophilia as a Sexual Orientation

I've been reading about certain pressures by certain groups to classify paedophilia (pedophilia) as a sexual orientation, separate from heterosexual, homosexual, etc. This story in The Guardian is the latest.

There are several positives and several negatives to doing this. First, the homosexual community desperately wants this to happen. Whenever an major event of paedophilia happens, like the Penn State incidents, those in the homosexual community feel (rightly or wrongly) like their sexual orientation is to blame for the crimes against children, when in fact there's good evidence such an orientation is not to blame. The perpetrator in the Penn State case was a married man. So how are we to classify his sexual orientation?

Second, some on the far left are very concerned that this not happen.  After all, California just this winter passed a law making it illegal to use reparative therapy to try to change the sexual orientation of minors from homosexual to heterosexual.  If paedophilia was reclassified as a sexual orientation, there's no logical reason that paedophiles should not be protected from evil mental health experts who want to help them change in the same way that homosexuals are now protected. (A judge has put the law on hold for now for medical reasons...but the outcome is pretty well assured.)

So the homosexual community is left in a catch-22 situation where opposite outcomes are both equally harmful.

What isn't being factored into the equation by most at this point is this: we have already passed the point of no return on slippery sexual-moral issues. Thus, without some major intervention in culture, the normalization of paedophilia is already a guaranteed outcome. Woe is us!

So my prediction is this:  look for the homosexual community to begin to distance itself from the idea that got it to legalized gay marriage- that sexual orientation is innate and cannot be changed; and move toward the idea that sexual orientation is a choice, and a valid moral one based on the idea of what is desirable carrying the greatest moral weight in such a decision.  It is this position that will allow that community to continue to lobby for its interests without interfering in the interests of the paedophilia community, or harming itself by being associated with them.  Only after a period of time, when paedophilia is as accepted as any other sexual orientation will they allow any association between the two groups.

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