Is Normalizing Pedophilia the Next Amoral Social Movement?

Is Normalizing Pedophilia the Next Amoral Social Movement? January 12, 2013

Father Dwight Longenecker, who blogs at Standing on My Head, wrote a duzzy of a post yesterday.

It seems Fr Longenecker read an article in The Guardian that is one of several that have been appearing lately in an attempt to gain acceptance for pedophilia. These articles follow the social-movement-tested tactic of introducing the process of building acceptance for a practice which is universally regarded as anathema by “discussing” it as something the practitioner “can’t help.”

I would like to go off on a riff of my own about this, but nothing I could say would improve on what Fr Longenecker has already written. His post, Relativizing Child Abuse reads in part:

Relativizing Child Abuse

January 11, 2013 By 

Did you think that the one moral certainty in our society that everyone agrees on is the evil of the sexual abuse of children? Think again. This taboo is the next one to fall.

If you would like a lesson in how old Screwtape works take time to read through this article from the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

The piece discusses various studies on pedophilia, and attempts to relativize this horrible issue. Here’s a quote:

 ”There are a lot of people who say: “we outlawed homosexuality, and we were wrong. Perhaps we’re wrong about paedophilia.”

The journalist doesn’t go so far as to endorse pedophilia. He doesn’t even write sympathetically about pedophiles. Oh no, it’s much more subtle than that. Instead he states that “society’s attitudes change” and “experts don’t agree” and “it’s all very complicated” and “it could be that pedophilia is simply a natural condition that cannot be changed. He opines that it may be one of many sexual orientations, and that we should seek to understand the condition rather than condemn. He goes on to say that certain studies have shown that sexual relationships between adults and underage partners are not necessarily “harmful”.

(Read the rest here.)


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