Why Are We Surprised With the Push for ‘Pedophile Rights’?

Last year, many Americans were shocked by reports about a pro-pedophilia conference in Baltimore, in which psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, representing institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, sought to present pedophilia in a sympathetic and even positive light. Now, a sympathetic article on the struggles of pedophiles is also causing shock waves. But why should we be surprised?

Academic articles in scholarly journals have been presenting pedophilia in an empathetic light for years, and, as Matthew Cullinan Hoffman noted, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a report in 1998, “claiming that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from their child sexual abuse experiences.’ It even claimed that large numbers of the victims reported that their experiences were ‘positive,’ and suggested that the phrase ‘child sex abuse’ be replaced with ‘adult-child sex.’” Others have coined the more disgusting term “intergenerational intimacy.”

The APA’s report was so disturbing that it drew an official rebuke from Congress, yet the pro-pedophile (or, pro-pederast) push continues. In fact, some psychiatric leaders, like Dr. Richard Green, who were instrumental in removing homosexuality from the APA’s list of mental disorders in 1973, have been fighting to remove pedophilia as well.

Consider, for example, this statement from the late John Hopkins professor John Money: “Pedophilia and ephebophilia [referring to sexual attraction felt by an adult toward an adolescent] are no more a matter of voluntary choice than are left-handedness or color blindness. There is no known method of treatment by which they may be effectively and permanently altered, suppressed, or replaced. Punishment is useless. There is no satisfactory hypothesis, evolutionary or otherwise, as to why they exist in nature’s overall scheme of things. One must simply accept the fact that they do exist, and then, with optimum enlightenment, formulate a policy of what to do about it.”

Now, go back and reread that paragraph, substituting the word “homosexuality” for “pedophilia” and “ephebophilia.” How interesting!

To help flesh this out, let’s picture a homosexual man making his case to a heterosexual man:

1. My homosexuality is not a sexual preference but a sexual orientation, just as much as your heterosexuality is not a sexual preference but a sexual orientation.
2. My homosexuality is just as normal as your heterosexuality.
3. Since my behavior is genetically determined and is not a choice, it is intolerant and hateful to suggest that it is wrong. And to call my sexual behavior illegal or immoral, or to refuse to legitimize same-sex relationships, is to be a moral bigot of the highest order.
4. I deeply resent your attempts to identify areas of my upbringing and environment as alleged causes for my homosexuality.
5. I categorically reject the myth that someone can change his or her sexual orientation. Rather, such statements only add to the anguish and suffering of gays and lesbians, and attempts to change us often lead to catastrophic consequences, including depression and suicide.

Now, let’s turn this around and have a pederast making his case to a homosexual, substituting the words accordingly (thus, “My pederasty is not a sexual preference but a sexual orientation, just as much as your homosexuality is not a sexual preference but a sexual orientation.”)

In point of fact, all the principle arguments commonly used to normalize homosexuality have been used to normalize pedophilia and pederasty, as I documented in painstaking (and painful) detail in A Queer Thing Happened to America, where I also made clear that I was not equating homosexuality with pedophilia but was instead comparing the arguments used to normalize both.

Here are the eight principle arguments, all of which (in modified form) are commonly used in support of homosexuality:

1. Pedophilia is innate and immutable.
2. Pederasty is richly attested in many different cultures throughout history.
3. The claim that adult-child sexual relationships cause harm is greatly overstated and often completely inaccurate.
4. Consensual adult-child sex can actually be beneficial to the child.
5. Pederasty should not be classified as a mental disorder, since it does not cause distress to the pederast to have these desires and since the pederast can function as a normal, contributing member of society.
6. Many of the illustrious homosexuals of the past were actually pedophiles.
7. People are against intergenerational intimacy because of antiquated social standards and puritanical sexual phobias.
8. This is all about love and equality and liberation.

But none of these arguments should surprise us. After all, the age of increasing sexual anarchy in which we live is a fruit of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and the seeds of sexual anarchy were sown already by Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s, as Professor Judith Reisman has tirelessly documented. And it was Kinsey, after all, who relied on the research of pedophiles to document the sexual responses of infants and children.

All this, to be sure, is utterly unspeakable. But it should certainly come as no surprise. In fact, we should expect this and more.

Michael Brown is the author of The Real Kosher Jesus and the host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire on the Salem Radio Network. He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience.