At different times in U.S. history, it would have been easy to find well over half the population willing to support slavery, genocide, and a number of other activities. Getting popular support for an evil idea is not the same as making the idea less evil. I am fully in support of taking steps to ensure that a pedophile has no contact with children, but when one proposes killing people for simply having urges, one embraces evil as much as the people one wants to kill. (I would propose that to fantasize about murder in reaction to information about harming children is simply another emotional response to a situation that one finds abhorent. It only steps into the realm of evil when one proposes it as a serious response to such crimes.)
mitosises’s quasi defense of pedophilia is wrong-headed on a number of levels, but proposing that the laws be changed to recognize thought crimes is no more rational or correct.
It seems to me that our culture has a continual problem with wanting to make one class of us “good law-abiding citizens” vs. a villified class. In other words, we always want someone to hate while we bask in our goodness.
Once it was popular in the United States (I’m not arguing people don’t still do this) to hate on the basis of race. This was recognized a wrong, and we worked hard to correct it, so that racism is almost universally condemned by western nations today.
Women had problems with a mysoginistic culture and that too has been recognized and corrected to a great extent.
Gays were also regularly hated and that’s getting attention.
I could go on about various groups that we’ve hated in the past (collectively in general, please no one say I am accusing you personally, I personally didn’t hate any of those groups either) but that’s not my point.
My point is that society seems to need to hang on to some kind of hate against some group. As public hate towards races and women were corrected in the sixties and seventies, hatred of hippies and drug addicts took its place.
It’s also become popular to really hate criminals of all sorts, and especially pedophiles who have had sex with prepubescent children.
Rather than correct hatred of particular groups on a group-by-group basis, I think it’s high time we started focusing on hate in general. All the activists could unite under one banner; all the various groups concerned that their group is hated, and correct mankind that we just need to stop hating period.
Of course that’s not gonna happen, but it’s a nice thanksgiving day daydream. I give thanks to all who love peace and love.
Actually, recidivism rates for pedophiles range between 10% and 50% according to the various studies noted in this Mayo Clinic article. I have no idea whether a person suffering pedophilia can be “cured,” but if we can have a rate between 50% and 90% of preventing further attacks, I see no reason to let our emotional need to protect children lead us into savage and draconian laws.
And I have no problem with setting specific punishments or periods of incarceration for differing types of assault.
Of course, this still does not get us to “97%” or “nearly all,” (since the highest number remained around 50%), and the notion of a universal death penalty, even for selected offenses, is still wrong if it is allegedly addressing the issue of preventing thought crimes–particularly if it is aimed at a group with only a 50% recidivism rate among those who actually act on their thoughts.
What are are you on about? Nothing I posted could be remotely construed as “overlooking” child rape. I was not even challenging any of your statements, simply noting that, in the context of the ongoing discussion, efforts to impose the death sentence, even on people who have never acted on their impulses, yet based on a claim of near universal recidivism, are a disproportionate response to a false impression of reality.
if you neuter a dog or horse you change their attitude. physical castration would save the sanity of countless victims. a right to the public’s safety out weights the preps rights. [felons forfeit all sorts of rights]
They can actually, its just that society has deemed them unfit to decide such things for themselves since they are rather unfit to do so. Hence why its called statutory rape. Rape by statute.
Irrelevant though. The point is not the ones that do this to kids. The point is the ones that suppress their very real desires and live life knowing they can’t have what their brain is telling them they really, really want, and how to best keep them from doing so.
If you want to call those people monsters, by all means, continue to do so. All you do is ostracize them more and make them even less likely to get any help they may need, which results in more kids being raped. Congratulations.
I don’t believe this necessarily follows. Consider the parallels between the following two statements, neither of which (it sadly needs to be disclaimed) I agree with:
“I desire to be a millionaire the easy way. I don’t desire to rob anyone, because that’s wrong. There is no other easy way to become a millionaire. Thus I cannot and will not be an millionaire the easy way, even though I want to.”
“I desire to have consensual sex with children. I don’t desire to rape anyone, because that’s wrong. There is no way to have consensual sex with children (because they are not capable of meaningful consent). Thus I cannot and will not have consensual sex with children, even though I want to.”
I say this because, IMHO, there has to be a bright line between “abstract desire to perform an action that is prima facie criminal” and “desire to perform a specific criminal action”, “performance of a specific criminal action”.
The first case can likely be a normal member of society.
This is probably also the root of any reasonable disagreement mitosises has with the contents of this thread: the word “pedophile” means both “person who has a mental disorder that causes them to sexually desire children” and “person who has raped a child”, after all. Only the latter ought be punished.
There is no such thing as flying for humans, humans cannot fly. Therefore, the desire to fly is the desire to commit suicide. QED.
You really excel at logic, dont you? Shoulda try to be the new Socrates.
Really, you think that just because YOU think that children cannot consent, then a person who wants to have CONSENSUAL sex with children (even in the hypotethical case that it was impossible) wants to “rape” children, even when his desires are completely different.
Just because there are some laws (age of consent) that makes BY LAW all sex with certain persons under certain age “rape”, doesnt mean that that is actually the reality. And it certainly doesnt mean that someone who wants to have consensual sex with another person under the age of consent, wants to RAPE said person, just because the law say it.
I agree, but the desire to rape has no relationship whatsoever with pedophilia (sexual orientation towards children).
I dont judge people based on their sexual orientation, but I do care if that people commited a crime or didnt.
I dont hate a child molester for being a pedophile. I hate him for being, well, a child molester. Whatever he is attracted to, I dont care. I dont judge an heterosexual rapist for being heterosexual. That would be kinda stupid.
They are not the same thought, like wanting to fly is not the same as wanting to die from falling. Even if something its “impossible”, that doesnt mean you cant desire it.
Certainly in that case it does. It’s well-established that, for any reasonable definition of “consent”, minor children are not yet emotionally or mentally developed enough to give any kind of meaningful consent. Therefore, “sex with a child” is, in reality, always rape.
I think you may wish to use another adjective than “minor” to modify children. I mean, I had sex as a minor, with another minor who was a few months older than me. I think we were both competent to consent.
Perhaps you should say pre-adolescent instead, and add a qualification that even teenagers should not be judged competent to consent with adults.
I think you all are on the wrong track. If you think you can modify a pedophile to make him adverse to pedophilia, then you must accept that you can modify homosexuals as well. As most of you know, that is simply not possible.
What we can do as a society about pedophilia is arm our children against it. Repeatedly in the pre-schools, daycares, kindergartens, and primary grades. Forget the childhood innocence we so dearly wish for our kids. Make them aware that bad sick people who wish to do things to their private parts or have them touch the bad persons parts exist and that they should scream to the top of their lungs STOP! Have them practice screaming STOP. Do plays in the classroom showing how a pedophile grooms and operates.
Clearly, I’m no child psychologist, but I do believe pedophiles seek out the naive and “innocent” and it is our school system that can guarantee that all children are protected with knowledge. Knowledge to understand what is happening and knowledge to do what needs to be done.
And when the supply of naive children is wiped out…
I think I’d prefer to go the other way–as I understand child development, technically you were both probably NOT really competent to consent, but as a legal matter we as a nation are okay with two people who are of ages such that coercion is not a factor having sex.
Actually, most experts who deal with this issue don’t claim to be able to make the pedophile averse to pedophilia. It’s not as much about removing the desire or the attraction, per se, as it is about removing the person’s willingness to act on the desire or the attraction.
A pedophile who doesn’t actually approach or molest children is about the most we can hope for here. Many pedophiles themselves understand and accept that their desire is culturally and legally prohibited by our society. The task for those who would change the pedophile is to ensure that, while the desire for and attraction towards children might remain, the willingness to act on that desire is curtailed. It works with some pedophiles and not with others.