There are certain moralities that you hope all rational people can agree on. Stealing is bad, murder is terrible, and pedophilia is horrific. There may be gray areas in many cases, such as the parent who stole bread for their hungry child, or the wife who killed a violently abusive husband, but one thing I can never even begin to excuse is the sexual exploitation of children.

So I nearly threw up when reading an article recently that stated there’s no real academic consensus on whether or not consensual pedophiliac relationships actually cause harm.

I’m sorry ... what now? What the hell is a “consensual pedophiliac relationship”? A child does not have the cognitive development or emotional maturity to make a decision about entering into a sexual relationship, nor do they have the physical or psychological strength to resist an adult that insists that they do. To even question whether or not these cases cause harm is preposterous.

J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University claims that while the idea seems impossible, there’s no evidence that voluntarily entered into relationships of this nature have any correlation with undesirable outcomes. He admitted to being “disturbed” by the notion, but forced to admit, “persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of [pedophilic] relationships does not yet exist.”

Quick! Someone page Oprah.

Oh but wait -- it gets worse. There are some ‘experts’ that would like to reclassify pedophilia as a sexual orientation. Sarah Goode, a leading sociologist on the study of pedophilia in society, says the move would play into “the sexual liberation discourse” of the past several decades.

"There are a lot of people," she says, "who say: we outlawed homosexuality, and we were wrong. Perhaps we're wrong about paedophilia."

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to socially accept people that want to have sex with children. It’s disgusting to try to relate warped individuals with the gay community. Pedophiles don’t want a lasting, committed relationship with another person that they can share their hopes and dreams and lives with -- they want to dominate a helpless victim for their own sick fantasies.

Goode goes on to say:

Adult sexual attraction to children is part of the continuum of human sexuality; it's not something we can eliminate ... 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.

No. Just no. Pedophilia is not a normal progression of human sexuality; it’s a perversion of it. There are certain things that should remain taboo, and un-consensual sex is one of them. Sex with a child is never consensual.

What do you think: Is there any way that pedophilia could be deemed as sexual orientation issues?

 

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