Why Pedophilia Is Evil

However it is defined, pedophilia is wrong; but beyond that, it is evil. In a deeply disturbing trend in the last few decades, pedophilia apologists have tried to soft-pedal the condemnation of this horrible crime and criminal ideation. They are very wrong. Here is why.

Prefatory notes, July 13, 2019—I wrote the first draft of the following essay about the horror of pedophilia in late 2016 or early 2017 and posted it on Medium and Quora, where it got quite a bit of attention. Since I deleted my accounts on those sites last winter, this essay (and a number of others) have been unavailable. But I want this and a number of other essays to keep circulating, so I will be posting them here on my blog. The following essay in particular seems important in light of the Jeffery Epstein imbroglio.

But it was not the Epstein case, or any particular case, that originally led me to write about pedophilia. It was, rather, a long-standing interest in applied ethics in general, together with the (to me) jaw-droppingly incredible fact that people defend pedophiles. (As was the case with philosopher G.E. Moore, a lot of my philosophical writing is basically in reaction to absurd positions that other people take.) When I first encountered this rhetorical phenomenon in 2002—that was when pedophiles first descended upon Wikipedia—I simply could not believe it. My naive incredulity disappeared through repeated encounters with pedophiles in connection with Wikipedia. In fact, I came to believe I had an obligation to do at least a little something about it, which is why I reported Wikimedia Commons’ pedophilia pages to the FBI in 2010 (which took no action that I know of).

All that said, this is no more a pet cause than any others in applied ethics. I have also written about the evils of murder, racism, antivitism (a neologism of mine), censorship, violations of privacy, and other topics in applied ethics. I especially like my essay on “Our Moral Abyss.”

I have rewritten the essay slightly, and follow it with some replies that I made to comments by real, live pedophiles (they are online and quite shameless, in fact) that I hope will clarify my arguments.

Updated again December 6, 2019.


The word “pedophilia” has two senses. I want to defend the thesis that pedophilia in both senses is not just “bad” but deeply evil. This is not a thesis about either psychology or the law, but instead about morality.

Everyone seems to agree that the word can mean (a) sexual attraction to prepubescent children (or, sometimes, any children below the age of consent). This is the clinical definition. But we often more colloquially use the word to mean (b) actual sex with children, i.e., what is more correctly described as child sexual abuse or (these mean the same) child rape.1

It is distressing how poorly the evil of pedophilia seems to be understood. When I first sat down to write this essay, I was shocked at how little was available online explaining why it is evil. So I wish to make this quite clear, beginning with (b) actual sex with children. The evil of the act is easier to explain, and the evil of the criminal ideation ultimately depends on the evil of the act.


The moral horror of child rape

The rape of children2 is a horrific evil because it traumatizes the child for life. In this regard, it may be compared to torture and rape of adults; even after the act is over, it continues to wound. It fills the child with undeserved shame and low self-esteem for life. For some adult survivors, this pain becomes so unbearable that they take their own lives. It can permanently alter—pervert—the child’s understanding of sex. Some suffer, and that is the right word, from hypersexuality (sometimes called “nymphomania”), and some become completely closed off to all sexual relationships. Horrifyingly, it also makes victims more likely to become abusers when they grow up—perpetuating what has been called a “cycle of abuse.”

Child sexual abuse is an act so damaging and degrading, and at the same time so shockingly selfish, that it deserves to be called evil, if anything is evil: for some moments of pleasure, the adult causes the child life-long trauma.

So the immediate moral horror, the physical shock, and the pain of the act itself often give way to a lifetime of psychological suffering and dysfunction. The act of child sexual abuse is horrifyingly harmful. It is an act so damaging and degrading, and at the same time so shockingly selfish, that it deserves to be called evil, if anything is evil: for some moments of pleasure, the adult causes the child life-long trauma.3

I want to assert very clearly and forcefully that anyone who presumes to evaluate the morality of child sexual abuse without discussing the horrible facts about these consequences is, by that omission, perpetuating the evil. The proper moral evaluation of child rape absolutely requires confronting its appalling consequences. That is why we must condemn those pedophile advocates who want to speak only about positive experiences with children—as if such were really possible—and who do not discuss the more typical and probable trauma the act causes. Even if the probability of trauma were relatively slight, the severity of the harm can be so extreme that the act is simply not justifiable.

Indeed, one of the most shocking indications of just how extreme the trauma caused to children by rape is the fact that it can result in dissociative identity disorder (once known as “multiple personality disorder”).

In any event, every discussion of the subject should make unequivocally clear that sex with underaged children is a horrific evil and is intolerable. Unfortunately, ignorance has meant that pedophilia is not understood widely enough to be the terrible evil that it is. But, however defined, shameless advocates of pedophilia really do exist and can be found all over the Internet, as I will explain below (and, I am afraid, as can be seen in the comments section of this essay; but I respond point-by-point in every case). So, for the sake of those who might be at all confused on this point, it is incumbent on the rest of us make it quite clear.

Another shockingly incorrect stance on this topic is that sex with prepubescent children is wrong only when the child “does not consent.” We may reply that legally, children cannot consent, of course. Sex with prepubescent children is always to be considered rape. This is for good reason: children are not capable of consenting, because they do not understand the nature of the sex act or its consequences. But I think a stronger reply is this: the trauma described above will happen whether or not “consent” seems to be given by the child. Anyone using such phrases as “if the child consents” is using the language of pedophilia apology and is very highly suspect. It is, after all, the design of many confirmed, repeat pedophiles to groom children to win their “consent.” No one ought to credit what a child says in such a sickening situation; blame falls every bit as much on the raping adult as in the case in which the child says “no” and resists.

Some philosophers and theologians might take issue with what I have written so far, in a subtle way, and I want to tip my hat to them here.4 While they agree that child rape has horrible consequences, they would insist that reference to those circumstances is hardly necessary to establish that it is evil. To bring this point out, I invite you to imagine the case of an older child being “in love” with an adult and, after much grooming, she is just starting to be seriously abused, believing herself to enjoy it—just as an asteroid destroyed the world. There were no bad consequences. So, was any harm done to the girl?

It seems obvious to me that a harm was done. The act itself is harmful, independently of the consequences. We, assuming an ahistorical, God’s-eye perspective on the situation, need not consider the consequences as we consider what (mercifully briefly) transpired; imagine the girl’s parents (in heaven, since the world is gone) considering it. They would be horrified on her behalf. It hardly matters what her attitude was or whether she was immediately psychologically traumatized. To the question, “Why is it considered wrong?” they answer, “It just is.” That, anyway, is the approach of deontologists to many moral questions: right and wrong are so independent of consequences, and it is simply obvious that sex is wrong if a person lacked the maturity to consent.

As deontologists might well point out here, this is why the law punishes statutory rape regardless of actual consequences, after all.

There are other (consequentialist) reasons why sex with children is wrong. Children can be physically injured by sex—there are cases in which small children died of injuries sustained from abuse. It can result in pregnancy among pubescent girls as young as 11 or 12. STDs can be contracted by both boys and girls, which only compounds the horror. Child rape is one of the most egregious violations of the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit. It deeply damages families and family life. And of course it is against the law, and age of consent laws exist for very good reasons, as I hope I have explained.

But it gets worse. There is a dimension of the evil of child rape that bears special mention: as with young women, children can be and are enslaved and sold for sex throughout the world. In general, the practice of child rape as well as the defense of pedophilia have the horrible consequences of supporting this slave trade. It is estimated that perhaps hundreds of thousands of children—many young teens—are sold into sexual slavery, incorrectly described as “prostitution,” every year in the U.S., and two million globally.

Child sex trafficking pedophiles: the wealthy Jeffrey Epstein and the famous Jimmy Savile.

The normalization of pedophilia, therefore, supports not only individual instances of child rape, but an entire $99 billion-per-year sex trafficking industry; compare the movie industry, which earned $43 billion in the U.S. in 2017. We are battling not just an individual crime, but organized crime. Certain evil men and women do not merely rape children; they form organizations to buy and sell children for sex. That of course compounds what is already an unthinkable horror.

But it gets even worse. There are multiple instances of child sex trafficking rings not just among the lower classes, but among the richest and most powerful eschelons as well. One needs only to investigate the cases of Jeffrey Epstein, Jimmy Savile, the NXIVM cult, the DEN pedophile ring, and many more.

When I first drafted this essay, I thought pedophilia was mainly a criminal and moral issue. But I now understand it to be one of the most pressing civic issues of our age. It is crucial that we make no excuses for pedophilia. We must come to understand it for the horrific evil that it is.

One sometimes hears that the word “pedophilia” applies only to desire for sex with pre-pubescent children, and that sex with older children is better called “hebephilia” and “ephebophilia” depending on the age. One can draw this distinction, but narrowing the scope of the term has little moral import. That is precisely why the word “pedophilia” continues to be popularly used as a general term. It applies to the crime of sex with the too-young in general. Let us be quite clear. The moral horror can attach just as much—or nearly as much, anyway—to sex with teens as with small children. One ex-offender confessed, in response to this blog, to the profound damage that he had done to the life of a 16-year-old girl. Plenty of women bravely revealed the great harm done to them, when they were teen girls, by Jeffrey Epstein and his elite cadre of rapists (we still, as of 2021, do not know precisely who they are). The suggestion that what happened to them is not bad enough to be tarred with the brush of “pedophilia” is beneath contempt.

Illustration by Winsor McCay: let us agree that sex trafficking is “the shame of civilization.”

An evil mental disorder

Some writers demand that everyone use the words “pedophilia” and “pedophile” according to senses defined by psychiatrists. But, just as we may opt not to extend our everyday use of “fruit” to tomatoes, even though biologists tell us they are fruit, so we may opt to continue to use these words in their popular senses.

As a philosopher, i.e., someone trained in the definition of concepts and argumentation over how to apply words, I want to advise the opposite: you may and should continue to use these words as you always have, at least in most contexts. A pedophile, in this popular sense, is someone who sexually abuses children, or who tries to do so, or who wants to. To be clear, I am not saying that these ought to be the scientific or clinical uses of the terms. I am saying that the everyday use, which I am discussing here and which is catalogued in many dictionary definitions, need not mirror the clinical use.

The medicalization of a condition clearly does not preclude its moral evaluation. Pedophilia is the best example: it has been medicalized, and yet it is obviously a horribly wrong attitude to take, which must be stamped out.

But now let us discuss the clinical sense: the desire to have sex with children. This, too, is a moral evil.

Some will bristle at the mere claim that this “clinical condition” is evil. They act as if the fact that psychologists write about, and treat, pedophilia means that, since pedophilia is just a medical condition, it is off-limits for moral evaluation. This argument is so obviously fallacious that it actually serves better as a reductio of the premise; in other words, the medicalization of a condition clearly does not preclude its moral evaluation. Pedophilia is the best example: it has been medicalized, and yet it is obviously a horribly wrong attitude to take, which must be stamped out. Just because psychiatrists, who do whatever is necessary to eliminate a condition, adopt what sounds like a nonjudgmental stance, it hardly follows that we need do so as well.

After all, consider what we are talking about here: desiring and fantasizing about sex with children, also called child rape. The word for such thoughts is criminal ideation, as psychiatrists sometimes speak of homicidal ideation.

Others will say that mere desires obviously cannot be morally evaluated. Among the people who write about this subject, it is a less popular stance to say the desire and not just the act is evil. But in fact most of us are perfectly willing to place the label “evil” on it. No polls are available, but doubtless a large majority would find pedophilic ideation to be “evil.”

I do not, of course, present this as an argument for the claim that desire for sex with children is evil. But it does put into a sobering context the practice of some—which is frankly bizarre and disturbing—to treat pedophilia as merely a psychiatric disorder, as if it were not a very deeply serious problem for other people as well. Let us grant that pedophilia, in the sense of desire for sex with children, is indeed a psychiatric disorder; there seems nothing well-ordered about it. But most of us simply could not care in the slightest that it is a psychiatric disorder, i.e., we do not care that there is something wrong with the brains of pedophiles, except insofar as such people pose a threat to our children. Pedophilia as a disorder per se rightly strikes us as a threat, and such a monstrous threat that it is evil.

So, yes, well spotted, pedophilia is a disorder. But that is not incompatible with our condemning it as something quite evil, and not just a clinical condition like, say, high blood pressure. I do so condemn it, and so should we all.

Why are we talking about sympathy, again?

I do not mean to say I have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the psychological condition of a person who wakes up one day finding himself wanting to violate little boys and girls. It is, rather, that I prioritize the health of families and communities far above whatever pain an illicit desire might cause such a person. In fact, the priority of the former is so much greater that I can say that the only significant reason that most of us need care about the mental health of a pedophile is that, through caring, we might perhaps prevent child sexual abuse. There is no other important reason. It might well turn out in some cases that strong moral condemnation, rather than sympathy, would motivate pedophiles to rid themselves of their desire more effectively.

We may draw an analogy with people who want very badly to rape women. They fantasize about it, they watch rape porn, they might have come close at times. Some have actually done it, although others have never done it. Call such a person a rapeophile. That is a label we might place under an extreme form of a DSM-5 category, sexual sadism disorder. Now, if pedophilia is a mental disorder, I think it is safe to say that rapeophilia is one too. To be sure, being a rapeophile might cause a person great mental anguish; it certainly should. But in this situation, whom do I care more about: the rapeophile, or women who might possibly be in danger from the rapeophile? Obviously, the latter — even if the rapeophile has never acted on his desires. And rapeophilia constitutes criminal ideation, of course: would we not, in an age in which the Establishment fights against “rape culture,” deem it to be profoundly evil?

Do we care about the violation of innocent children less than we care about the violation of grown women?


How can pedophilia be evil if is beyond a person’s control?

But, some critics will say smugly, you are missing an obvious objection: how can pedophilia be evil if is beyond a person’s control? The short answer is that it is not entirely beyond a person’s control. But first I want to back up a bit.

As a philosophy instructor, I taught undergraduates the common maxim that “ought implies can”: if you ought to do something, you should be able to do it, and similarly, if you must not do something, then you must be free to resist doing it. So, if you cannot help but do a thing, then we cannot say you must not do it; if we ought to restrain ourselves, then it must be the case that we are free to restrain ourselves. Well, then—how can we be obligated to do something that is out of our power?

When psychiatrists inform us that pedophilia is a mental disorder and when certain (I think quite contemptible) activists insist that pedophiles cannot control their desires, these claims are sometimes used to draw the definitely false conclusion that pedophilia, in the psychiatric sense, is not bad.

So I deny the premise. I claim that pedophilia, or the desire to have sex with children, can be controlled.

Another mental disorder

Alcoholism too is a mental disorder and it can be controlled, albeit with great difficulty. That is why I maintain that alcoholism can be quite morally bad, in the following sense. (By the way, many recovering alcoholics agree wholeheartedly with me on this.) All acknowledge that alcoholism is an addiction, and I can concede that it exhibits features of a disease. But this does not absolve anyone caught in the grip of this addiction of any moral obligations. Few would object to the good advice that we should not allow ourselves to sink into that awful swamp in the first place, before the addiction gets that bad. Indeed, we bear a huge obligation to ourselves to avoid it, especially if others in our family were alcoholics. Even if we cannot easily stop ourselves from drinking once we are addicted, we can stop ourselves from overindulging if we are not addicted.

Desires and compulsions are not unalterable facts of nature. This is a profound feature of our lives as moral beings with free will.

Admittedly, once we are addicted, it becomes more understandable if we do not suddenly and heroically de-addict ourselves. Still, even then we bear a very heavy burden—and it is a moral burden, what else?—to lift ourselves out of addiction as well as we can, and, after the fact, we can still be blamed for allowing ourselves to become addicted. Perhaps we are less to be blamed if we are genetically predisposed to such addiction; but there are people with that genetic predisposition who never touch alcohol for that very reason. We have free will. As we exit addiction, we will bear this burden until the addiction no longer afflicts us. Then we will still bear the burden of not letting ourselves sink back into it. To deny these platitudes is to deny both common experience and the reality of free will.

Desires and compulsions are not unalterable facts of nature. This fact is a profound feature of our lives as moral beings with free will; it must not be passed over lightly, much less dismissed. It is entirely unrealistic—as well as cynical and corrupting—to deny the malleability of desire. After all, a great deal of morality and psychiatry both, as well as rehabilitation in criminal justice, are concerned with changing unwelcome desires. To treat desires and compulsions as unchangeable forces of nature is essentially to give up on moral improvement, psychiatric recovery, and criminal rehabilitation.

Universal experience teaches that intense desires rarely arrive full-blown in our heads. They creep in, as it were, experienced as mere possibilities. We consider them, perhaps briefly, musing. If something is quite taboo — for example, murder, incest, or uttering certain forbidden words and thoughts — then most of us will drop the idea immediately, and the desire has little chance to germinate.

Let us suppose there is a person who, for whatever reason, has unusually weak self-control. If this person finds himself with a desire, he has no filters to rein it in; it does not occur to him that he should not reject it. Instead, he nurses his desire. He thinks about it. He considers and discusses with himself; he imagines; he plans, but without acting on the plans.

Suppose that person is a pedophile.

The pedophile then, finally, decides that he has a problem, that it might be wrong for him to have these desires. Is such a person not morally culpable, foolish at least if not actually evil, for allowing such desires to fester unchecked? Why would he not be? Think about any illicit or undesirable desire you might have had in the past — for dessert, game time, social media, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, or whatever your vice might be. It can be hard to stop yourself from indulging in bad habits, especially if they are quite addictive. But do you not also remember when you developed those bad habits, and when you could have much more easily reined them in?

Why should the desire for sex with children be any different? Do not just claim that it is different; explain very carefully how and why it is different. It is not.

Someone might argue that I am comparing bad habits like overeating or drinking too much alcohol — and those are actions — with an undesirable desire, which a pedophile does not act on ever. If he or she never indulges the desire, why think the mere desire is bad?

The desire is horrific, because it might lead to a horrific action. Would we not also be horrified by a big man with poor self-control who confessed that he had recently started thinking, constantly, about raping women?

This is not the zinger of an argument the pedophile’s defenders think it is. The thoughts are bad, of course, because the very people who lack the self-control to order their thoughts also, often, lack the self-control to restrain the behavior that the desire would lead to. We do not leave children alone with people who confess that they have pedophilic desires, because desires might lead to action.

So there is an easy answer. The desire is horrific, because it might lead to a horrific action. Would we not also be horrified by a big man with poor self-control who confessed that he had recently started thinking, constantly, about raping women? I certainly would be. And why? Because he might start actually acting on his thoughts. Should we ignore his desires because they are “just desires”?

This is the main reason, then, that pedophilia in the clinical sense is horrifically evil: it can, and sometimes does, lead to a horrifically evil action. It is idle and sophomoric to insist that, after all, it might not lead to that action. A person who lets such an evil desire fester and grow strong has for that very reason demonstrated a lack of self-control. The risk is significant, and it is a risk of a great evil.

Let me consider one final reply. What if someone claims to have this desire but that it is fully under control — that he would never rape a child, and would only ever fantasize. Putting aside worries about the risk, surely mere fantasizing hurts no one.

Well, no; it is not fantasizing per se that makes pedophilia so evil. It is, first and foremost, the risk. Anyone who is so out-of-control as to permit these feelings to fester in himself is a risk, so far as the rest of us know, no matter what he may say. And while the fantasizing considered just by itself (without regard to its consequences) might not hurt anyone, it certainly does increase the risk.

Pedophilic feelings have other ill effects. They can cause someone to go looking for child pornography, which creates a market for actual child rape. Even drawn child molestation can increase the chances of a desire for the real thing, thereby creating a market. After all, if a pedophile enjoys looking at drawn pictures of children being molested, surely he or she might get even more excitement from actual photographs.

It is also an undesirable desire because the pedophile must never act on it. It is, for that reason, in addition to be horrifically evil, also irrational.

We should not ignore the horrible effects on the soul or character of the pedophile that indulging pedophilic thoughts has. Imagine trying to have normal relationships with children, and even adults—especially adults with children—if a person is regularly imagining abuse and rape of children. Ideas and thoughts have profound consequences on character. What kind of person must you be, and will you become, if you regularly allow yourself to dream of intentionally violating the bodies of innocent, trusting children? There is a real moral horror there, a horror quite independent of external effects.

Let me clarify one last point. In this section I have been arguing that pedophilia, considered simply as a desire for sex with children, is appallingly evil. But I am not saying that psychiatrists or clergy or others who are working directly with pedophiles should be highly judgmental. I have no opinion on that; I suppose psychiatrists should do whatever in their clinical experience reduces the disorder most efficiently and permanently, while remaining humane, of course.5


Sophistry

Stop the pedophilia apology

Online discussions of pedophilia should always clarify how evil child sexual abuse is. So, do they? All too often, they do not. The more typical narrative is that pedophilia is just a feeling, and feelings cannot be controlled, so non-offending pedophiles—”virtuous pedophiles,” in their Orwellian self-description—are not bad. The horrors of abuse, and the fact that “just a feeling” can and too often does lead to abuse, are often not mentioned or quickly passed over. This popular narrative is not only wrong, for reasons I have already explained, it is also quite dangerous.

Even those who acknowledge that child rape is a great evil can unwittingly contribute to this problematic narrative, when they speak as if pedophilic desires were unalterable facts of nature. When a behavior seems to spring from a desire, maybe especially when it is a psychiatric diagnosis, modern commentators and even psychiatrists are in the unfortunate habit of treating the desire or diagnosis as a morally neutral medical condition for which the “patient” is not quite responsible.

To debunk this narrative, the services not of a doctor but of a philosopher are in order. There is a funny thing about free will: the more we believe that something is in our control, the more control we have over it. By contrast, the more we believe that something is out of our control, the less we will be inclined to do anything about it. It is as if a belief in free will gives us free will—more precisely, though, the belief in some ability gives us the willingness to exercise it. And inversely, abandonment of the belief in free will saps your motivation to act contrary to your present inclinations.

Therefore, I am afraid that those who characterize pedophilia as an unchangeable desire are contributing to the very problem of pedophilia. It would be like telling alcoholics that they are not responsible for becoming alcoholics and cannot ever free themselves of their hankering for alcohol, as if their compulsion were doomed to be as strong as it is at its strongest. If they believed that, then why would they even try to beat their addiction? If the rest of us believed that, why would we try to resist the slide into alcoholism in the first place? Just imagine saying something similar aloud to, again, those “rapeophiles”: “It is a shame that you find yourself with a strong compulsion to rape women. But it is not your fault, because it’s just a desire and desires are out of your control. Still, now that you have it, make sure you never act on it.” We cannot imagine anyone with such a complacent attitude in the #MeToo age. Why countenance such an attitude toward those who desire to rape children? Again, are children less worthy of protection than women?

If your illicit desires are absolutely unalterable, you bear no responsibility for them—and then why fight them? This morally enfeebling message is repeated throughout those parts of our decadent culture that reject personal responsibility. Addicts everywhere hear and obey.

Heeding this message too,  many pedophiles regard their condition as just “another sexual orientation” that may be responsibly indulged (i.e., only in fantasy). One can find a sympathetic group for practically anything online, including pedophilia. I am sorry to report that pedophilia propagandists are online, active, and emboldened.

The logo of the “North American Man-Boy Love Association.”

Propaganda produced by pedophiles—and on their behalf—is disturbing. Consider:

  • Media discussions of pedophilia are dominated by pleas that we should “understand” pedophiles first and foremost. Somehow, this will make children safer. Such articles rarely give much attention to the risk of abuse, and they of course never take the position that pedophilia is evil.
  • Establishment sources have tried, over the years, to normalize pedophilia via organizations. Everyone has heard of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, which still exists and is actually online. NAMBLA’s perhaps most famous member is its co-founder, the lauded poet Allen Ginsberg, and the organization was defended by the ACLU. Incredibly, such “activists” have argued for decades for “age of consent reform,” as if advocacy to abolish one of the most horrific crimes imaginable were somehow “progressive.” Other groups online include “Virtuous Pedophiles” and “Celibate Pedophiles,” who make it their business to defend non-offending pedophiles online. Pedophiles merely have another “sexual orientation”—a position that has been discussed in at least one college course.
  • There are aggressive demands of tolerance of drawn depictions of child molestation , which are  created by and for pedophiles , because it is a “victimless crime.” Never mind that what is depicted is, for all decent people, one of the most heinous of crimes, worse than ordinary rape because it is the rape of children. Never mind that the consumers of such depictions are pedophiles, who derive great pleasure from fantasies of committing this crime, and that, afterwards, they must continue to restrain themselves from committing that crime. Wikipedia documents in remarkable detail the state of the law, globally, governing explicitly drawn child sexual abuse.6
  • Then there is the tone. The tone taken is always high-minded, as if the defenders of pedophiles were better and smarter than you and I. Writers condescendingly chide society for failing to consider that non-offending, long-suffering pedophiles really are a thing. One German program treats pedophiles as “victims, not offenders.” They seem to sneer that we are ignorant of the science, due to our hatred of what is a deep moral evil and societal cancer; the implication is that pedophilia a matter of clinical study and treatment, never moral evaluation, which would be somehow unscientific and reactionary. Of course, the proper response to this is to laugh in disdain at this tone-deaf propaganda.

Such propaganda seeks to normalize pedophilia.

There is one key reason that we as a society should insist that pedophilia constitutes criminal ideation as well as a disorder, that it is horrifically evil: it is that we must take a firm stand against those who would, quite deliberately, try to normalize it. If it is normalized, this state of affairs will embolden all too many of the weak and the malevolent to indulge their desires. Indeed, to the extent that it has already been normalized, the weak and malevolent have already indulged their desires—and they do so with devastating frequency.

Pedophilia must never be normalized. Have no compunctions about calling it evil; it is important that we do call it evil; we prevent this evil from spreading by identifying it as such.

Perhaps, indeed, we do have less to fear from those who are strong-willed enough not to act on their desires. That is all very well, but no one is going to admit to being weak-willed, and malevolence always wears a mask of lies—criminal pedophiles are no different on this score. Faced with criminal charges, many offending pedophiles will pretend to be “virtuous.” For all their talk of virtuous pedophilia, many of the activists and activist researchers writing on this subject seem curiously reluctant to mention vicious pedophiles. In this regard they strike me as being—ironically, but predictably given what they are defending—both unrealistic and irrational. A more realistic and rational view acknowledges that the world is quite filled with weak people, and with far more malevolent people than appears on the surface, and they only too readily indulge their desires when the opportunity arises. Indeed, of course, they go out of their way to give themselves opportunities.

There is no social or individual benefit to be gained from normalizing pedophilia. If there is one thing that deserves to remain taboo, it is this. Pedophilia must never be normalized. Have no compunctions about calling it evil; it is important that we do call it evil; we prevent this evil from spreading by identifying it as such.

fin

One personification of evil

Note: what follows are some replies I made to some real-life pedophiles, who commented on the Medium copy of the above article. I’m not including the pedophiles’ replies because I did not save copies of what they wrote when I left Medium.

Reply #1

This is a reply to a teenage self-confessed pedophile who said he’d never acted on his feelings and that I was very mean for lacking empathy for his plight.

I’m writing so that unformed minds, who might be confused by the likes of you, won’t be. I have absolutely no desire to have “empathy” for pedophiles, any more than I want to have empathy for rapists. Frankly, I think child molestation is considerably worse than rape of adults; it is a truly horrific crime. “Non-Offending Minor Attracted Persons” is no more legitimate than, and no more deserving of empathy, than “Men Who Want to Violently Rape Women But Restrain Themselves.” The only reason to empathize with such a person’s pedophilia is to prevent crime; and the way that crime might be prevented by empathy is not by making the criminal (or would-be criminal) feel better about their criminal ideation but by coming to understand their patterns, motivations, and other things that allow us to (a) catch and punish criminals and (b) aggressively prevent actual child abuse.

If any teen of mine confessed to being sexually attracted to little children, I would (a) explain in great detail why pedophilia is not just a little bit wrong, but horrifically evil (and probably make them read the essay I wrote, and demonstrate excellent understanding of it) and (b) immediately seek professional help from a therapist who agreed with me that pedophilic desires must be treated as criminal ideation, with a goal of eliminating them as much as possible.

It’s silly and absurd to be accused of having a “look-how-morally-upstanding-I-am” tone as I patiently explain how evil pedophilia is. I have also carefully and patiently explained why murder is wrong, and nobody accused me of being self-righteous. That’s because normal people don’t think they’re particularly great because they don’t commit crime. For normal people, that’s just the baseline.

But I will, of course, show no compunctions about telling pedophiles directly and without regret that you are not just “sick,” but deeply morally corrupt, and I don’t mean a little bit or in a hip and edgy way (like, e.g., drug abuse seems to some people), but in a straightforward your-heart-is-black way. Pedophiles are evil. They don’t need empathy. They need therapy in the way that muggers could use rehabilitation — not because we feel sorry for the pedophiles (or muggers), but because society desperately needs them to refrain from their evil behavior. And the notion that pedophilia is a sexual orientation that needs to be normalized is horrifying and beyond obscene.


Reply #2

This is a reply to someone describing himself as a European graduate student in the humanities, who thought he was being clever by making sophistical replies to the arguments in my essay. These are my rebuttals.

Matt, as you are speaking as a pedophilia apologist, and as you are speaking to someone who believes pedophilia (in both senses defined in my original essay) is evil, you have no credibility or authority. So when you adopt a tone of condescension, you merely come across as ridiculous. I’m still laughing at you; you deserve derision and contempt. And this is why I’m not going to reply to your stupid attempts at zingers; they just make you look creepier.

Here are a few replies:

I wrote: “ ‘Non-Offending Minor Attracted Persons’ is no more legitimate than, and no more deserving of empathy, than ‘Men Who Want to Violently Rape Women But Restrain Themselves.”

You responded, irrelevantly: “Exactly how is it not legitimate? Are you suggesting that it is impossible for a pedophile to control their actions? You’ve already argued that they can in your previous article.”

“Rapeophilia” — defined, say, as the exclusive or predominant desire to rape women — is about as legitimate as pedophilia, defined similarly but with regard to children. So imagine someone came up with “Non-Offending Rape Attracted Persons,” or NORAP, and said the various sorts of things about their desire to rape women that you say with regard to attraction to children. They just need help; they shouldn’t be ostracized; they should be “understood”; don’t judge them as a potential rapists because most of them don’t rape; etc. Well, it’s pretty damn obvious that saying these things in defense of a fictional NORAP category is no different from saying similar things in defense of NOMAPs (i.e., pedophiles). Considering that defense of rapeophilia is utterly illegitimate, we can also say that defense of pedophilia is utterly illegitimate.

Now, I’m glad that you at least pay lip service to the notion that pedophiles can control themselves. But I say more than that they can stop themselves from raping children. I say, furthermore, that they bear a heavy burden to deny and rid themselves of their desire to rape children, which they should have denied and repressed the moment it appeared. Instead, they went with it. It is playing with fire to indulge potential criminals by saying that their desire to rape children is a “sexual orientation” on a par with heterosexuality or homosexuality, by saying that there’s nothing wrong with fantasizing, etc. Imagine a group of people, the worst of whom are regular rapists, who say, “There’s nothing morally wrong with people who can only get off on rape fantasies. They can’t control themselves. We should understand them. Some women actually secretly want to be raped, you know — but of course, we believe rape is very, very wrong. (Except, of course, for the people who think it’s just fine, right?)”

You’re not even nearly as clever as you think you are. You’re an idiot. Your bias in favor of people who commit horrific crimes has made you unable to understand basic reasoning. I don’t have many opinions about the best way to rehabilitate pedophiles. I know I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t generally opine about such things. But I do have an opinion about social mores: it should never be an acceptable part of society to encourage adults to accept within themselves their attraction to children. That is, and should remain, one of the strongest taboos we live by. I don’t know or particularly care what therapists say to pedophiles in their therapy sessions.

I also have an opinion about the goal of therapy is the same as the goal of therapy with rapists or alcoholics or drug addicts: to rid themselves of the desire. In this regard, it’s very, very different than the goal of therapy for homosexuals. Most people think we shouldn’t try to “cure” homosexuals; I’m one who thinks we shouldn’t. In that regard, homosexuality can be regarded as a sexual orientation whereas pedophilia and rapeophilia cannot. Similarly, wine tasting and being a whisky connoisseur can be regarded as more or less healthy pastimes; alcoholism isn’t, and alcoholics bear the heavy burden to rid themselves of their compulsion.

  1. Pedophiles sometimes quibble, absurdly, that only sense (a), only the attraction to children, counts as pedophilia; but we hardly need consider the bizarre case in which an adult has sex with a child without feeling sexual attraction to the child. It is reasonable to assume that if sense (b) applies, so does sense (a).[]
  2. I.e., any sex between adults and children. Since, as we will see below, children cannot consent, all such sex constitutes rape.[]
  3. As I put it in my essay on this blog, “A Theory of Evil,” “Evil is contempt for the humanity, the human life, of others.” Child rape is not merely cruel, it evinces contempt for the very humanity of children. Therefore it is a textbook example of evil by my definition.[]
  4. I apologize that earlier versions of this essay neglected to include this point.[]
  5. It is interesting to me, in this connection, that a pedophile wrote a whiny reply to this essay, to which I wrote a scathing answer; he then responded by saying that this harsh judgment was exactly what he needed. Of course, this one case proves little in itself regarding a proper course of treatment.[]
  6. I reported the Wikimedia Foundation to the FBI over such illustrations in 2010, and many people on the group blog Slashdot, for example, roundly condemned my position.[]

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61 responses to “Why Pedophilia Is Evil”

  1. Jed

    Another useful comparison is sociopaths and/or serial killers. They did not choose to be that way and there is no cure. In fact, they often are the way they are because they were abused as children. Nevertheless, we don’t hesitate to consider them evil, and we recognize that they are a threat to society.

    Pedophiles generally have more of an ability to resist the evil within, so I wouldn’t put them on the same level as sociopaths, but nevertheless there are some parallels.

  2. Great article Larry.

    I would counter a bit on the lack of empathy for someone who admits they have an illness and is seeking care. First we have to have empathy for those who suffer from mental illness so we are willing to prioritize the funding for their care.

    The only way we break the chain and cycle of child abuse is to get the victims of abuse into therapy so they don’t follow the pattern. That requires empathy for the victims and potential next generation of abusers.

    We can call the acts of pedophiles, psychotics evil and those who commit them as evil, but we can have empathy for those who have not committed acts and are seeking treatment. Part of the treatment involves empathy.

    https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-017-0907-2

    1. Hi Steve, I didn’t post your comment right away because I wanted to have an answer appear alongside it.

      I disagree (and I discuss this in the article, but not in detail), and I think it will be helpful to explain why. This will come in the form of a few short comments and questions.

      • – Empathy is not always morally required, in all conceivable cases. We aren’t obligated to feel empathy for psycho killers, for example, even if it might help for certain purposes.
      • – You say the only way to break the chain of child abuse is to get the victims into therapy so they don’t abuse others later. I’m not so sure about that. Effective therapy helps in some cases, no doubt. Have any statistics?. Some might not need it and would find the very idea of child abuse as horrific as I do.
      • – I find the suggestion that I empathize with pedophiles to be absolutely grotesque; beyond that, probably wrong and indicative disordered thinking. Sorry, but that’s what I really think.
      • – You say something that is troublingly vague: you complain simply about a “lack of empathy.” The vague part is that you don’t say who is morally obligated to feel or express this empathy. Without qualification, it certainly looks as if you’re saying it’s everyone. I couldn’t disagree more.
      • – It seems reasonable to think that a therapist who lacks empathy would be bad at his or her job.
      • – I would hasten to add that the empathy should be for the plight of a person who struggles control his/her desires but finds it very difficult to do so. There could also be empathy for a person who knows he’d (very rightly!) be regarded as a pariah, as a monster, if his proclivity were made public. But the therapist, much less the public, need have zero empathy or tolerance for the desire itself, which is the thing that is not just disordered, but quite positively evil. So that’s another way in which your suggestion is vague: for what is empathy for pedophilia somehow a good thing?
      • – Finally, you should just think a bit about my comparison of pedophilia with “rapeophilia.” There is, as I said, such a thing as “sexual sadism disorder,” under which “non-offending rapeophiles” might fit. How reasonable is it to expect the general public to have empathy for offending rapists and non-offending would-be rapists? Not too bloody reasonable. But your loose talk makes it sound as if the general public should have empathy for those who really, really want to commit a much worse crime, against innocent children.
  3. Anonymous Dumbass

    Larry,

    I’m a convicted sex offender. She was 16 and I was 40. I thought were were in love. I chose to ignore our age difference and the fact that the laws in my state said she was illegal. I have said many times that “it wasn’t about an age, but about a person.”

    I am not a stupid man. I’m educated. I chose to believe lies. I thought our situation was “different.” I looked for famous people who had the same or larger age gap. There are literally dozens. I justified my actions. Deep inside, I knew that what was happening was wrong. I just wanted to believe the fantasy I’d created in my mind. I wanted to believe we’d be together forever.

    After an argument, she went to law enforcement and I ended up taking a deal in which I was incarcerated for just under three years. I felt like a victim. I felt my punishment was undeserved and excessive.

    That was before I found out what she went through. She experienced a combination of guilt and anger. She turned to drugs. She prostituted herself. She ended up homeless on the streets, strung out on drugs, trafficked and even tortured. A time came when she wanted me to hear her perspective, so I did so without interruption. She wasn’t being cruel. She spoke with no attitude. She just wanted to be heard.

    I can delude myself. I can say that other people are wrong when they say I groomed her. What I cannot argue against, however, is her words. There were two of us that know all that happened. Her perspective, as a woman who is now in her 20s and has a child conceived by rape while homeless, is something I cannot argue against.

    I totally fucked up her life, Larry. There’s no way to deny it. Many of the things you’ve written in this article are things that are her reality. I groomed her, Larry. She is no longer the same person. She was an honor student. Now? Her mind is not the same. She dropped out of high school. She has such low self esteem. She abuses drugs and alcohol to try to escape.

    That’s all on me, Larry. I’m a total piece of shit. I knew better. There is no justification. My actions killed a beautiful life that held such promise. Your article is so incredibly accurate.

    I wouldn’t have listened to anyone at the time this was happening. I don’t know if this story will make anyone else think twice about believing their delusions. Probably not.

    1. Thank you for your profound honesty. Very moving—I hope she gets it together. I hope you’re helping her (from a distance), if she lets you. Maybe some good will come out of your awful judgment; that’s how it sometimes goes.

      1. Anonymous Dumbass

        I did start helping. After my prison sentence I was on community supervision for 9 month. When that ended I sent a letter of apology to her mother. She responded with grace and told me that I was probably the only one her daughter would listen to. She asked if I’d go find her. I found her on the streets of Salt Lake City. She’d literally walked there from California, spending cold nights in the back of pickup truck beds at car dealers in towns along the way. I was driven by the desire to apologize to her. Once I found her, that also felt selfish.

        Larry, as I mentioned, I’m educated. I attempt to be realistic about all situations, but I have come to realize that I cannot be realistic in situations in which I’m personally involved. When I found her… there are not words that can describe the darkness. It IS evil, Larry. You are accurate in saying that.

        I wish I could put into words how life went for the next two months after finding her. On the very first day, she begged me, with tears in her eyes, to let her go with me. She was tired of sleeping in bike lanes and bushes. Bike lanes? Yes, because there are usually lights on in those lanes at night, and she would be less likely to be raped there.

        I promised her that day and reminded her many times afterward that I would never again touch her. I kept my promise. Sometimes she seemed to enjoy being around me. Other times she tried to kill me. She stole my car. She broke my nose. She tried to push me off of the third story of a hospital parking garage.

        She re-established contact with her mother. I paid to send her there. I’d wanted to believe, in my arrogance, that I could fix what I’d broken. That was naive. Her mother and sister back east were who needed to be with her. So I started sending her mother money to care for her and the child she ended up giving birth to. Despite her meth use (meth is a coping mechanism), she quit early enough in her pregnancy that she had a healthy baby.

        Her heart is broken because she has no idea who her son’s father happens to be. She was too high, there were too many men to whom she traded her body for a place to stay for a night, or who simply decided to rape her. Both were common occurrences. But that heartbreak I mentioned is because she wishes she could tell her son who his dad is, or even what is ethnicity might be. Perhaps, when he’s old enough, a DNA test can tell her the answer to the latter.

        Sex Offenders are considered to be incapable of change. That said, if I want counseling I have to seek it out. I have done so. I’ve been through many counselors and have found all but two of them to be useless. One therapist, in her late 30s, told me, “Mr. ______, I really don’t think what you did was all that bad. When I was _____’s age, I had a boyfriend who was the age you were, and I think he did me a lot of good.” I never saw that counselor again. The two who have been beneficial are both in their 70s, and neither of them take any shit from me at all. One of them flat out told me, “I normally can’t stand pedophiles. That’s one group that I can’t tolerate. God must be giving me grace to work with you.” At first I hated his use of the word “pedophile” because, like many, I want him to use words that more accurately portray her age (16). I still sometimes want to rage against that word and instead insist that words like “ephebophile” are used instead. But really, what’s the point? The truth that I must see is that she is a minor who was in no way capable of consenting to anything that happened between us, and that there is no denying that a girl who was on her way to really being something in life, a straight-A student, and artistic, beautiful being, was groomed by a 40 year old with low self esteem who chose a teenager to bolster his own ego. I have no right to argue over semantics.

        My current counselor has convinced me that I have no business being involved in her life in any way. I didn’t like that. I wanted to atone. I wanted to pay off my guilt. He said he would not continue to treat me if I didn’t listen to what he was trying to tell me. So I’ve completely withdrawn from her life altogether. It’s been a month, and I hate it. I want to think I know better than the counselor, but the evidence shows that when it comes to matters involving her, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing, and I need to trust those who have a picture that’s more clear.

        I hope she recovers and does well in life. I need her to do that, Larry. I want it for her, and I need it for me. My counselor says it’s okay to feel deep sorry for what I’ve done, but that it’s time to let go of the guilt. If only that were easy. It sure would be a relief.

        At present, I seclude myself. Before this, I traveled the world. I was actually well known amongst certain circles. My counselor reminds me that I no longer have a platform – a voice – and likely never will again. Before I listened to HER words, I would have argued with him. As I mentioned in my last comment, I felt like a victim. Now, after hearing her tell me how fucked up her life has become because of my actions, I feel like I was let off too lightly. I stopped going to Sacramento, which I’d previously done in an attempt to get lawmakers to change sex-offender laws to be more favorable for us. As mentioned, I could argue with others who tried to point out how wrong I was, but I cannot argue with her. Because of her words, I presently have no desire to ask for more rights.

        I want to believe there IS treatment for sex offenders. If it going to be effective, a person has to be honest with himself and truly want to change. He has to see the truth no matter how badly it hurts. We need to read articles like this that tell us exactly who we are. I think we have to own who we are if we’re ever going to become something better.

        This 16 year old didn’t make me face who I am. She didn’t criticize or make me face reality. She bought into my self-delusion because she had no experience to argue. That made me feel good. It was all entirely about ME, no matter what I chose to believe. So to bolster my ego, a promising life was ended.

        If there are any pedophiles/hebeophiles/ephebophiles reading, PLEASE listen. I don’t think you will, but I can still ask. SHE DOES NOT LOVE YOU. SHE IS INCAPABLE OF LOVE. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THAT WILL CHANGE THIS BIOLOGICAL FACT. STOP DELUDING YOURSELF. If you have any conscience whatsoever, you’re really going to hate yourself down the road. That’s a fact.

  4. OK Now

    As a survivor of long term child sexual abuse, I can attest to the fact that the sexual abuse of children and adolescents does indeed cause severe damage that lasts a lifetime.
    Even at the age of 66 years, I still have the occasional nightmare, fear, and great difficulty in trusting any human being. My condition is much improved after years of counseling, but the aftereffects of the abuse will always be there.
    I spent time in mental hospitals as an adolescent because back in the late 1960’s, early 1970’s, anorexia nervosa was seen as something rare, and oppositionally defiant of parental authority.
    As a 59 pound, 16 year old girl, in order to find out why I was starving myself to death and mutilating my body, the Freudian psychiatrist I was seeing, after a session using “truth serum”, decided that I had a severe Oedipus Complex and that the sexual abuse was all in my head.
    I was placed in a state mental hospital with adult psychiatric patients. I was subjected to electro-shock therapy, although it was discontinued due to my fragile physical condition. I was drugged for many years with potent psychotropics like Thorazine, Stelazine, Artane, Valium, various anti-depressants, and Qualudes.
    Unfortunately, while at the hospital, I was raped by a patient, and molested by one of the staff.
    I somehow managed to make something of my life however, and eventually went to college and became a registered nurse. I truly loved my job and had great empathy for my patients. However when my abuser died, and I finally had to face the enormous impact that the abuse had had on me, my life disintegrated into a haze of alcohol, prescription drug abuse, numerous suicide attempts, and self destructive behaviors.
    To make a long story short, by the grace of God, great therapists, and various 12 Step Programs, I was able to come back from all of the insanity and rebuild my life.
    It has been a long, difficult and painful journey, but utterly worth it.
    It hasn’t been an easy journey, but my experience has helped others who have been through the hell of child/adolescent sexual abuse.

    No one should ever doubt the heinous, soul destroying effects of the sexual abuse of children.
    The adult is ALWAYS responsible for the abuse, the child/adolescent is NEVER the cause of the abuse.
    The sexual abuse of children is thoroughly and unimaginably EVIL, perhaps the greatest of evils.
    It destroys the child’s soul, it so often destroys the child’s future.
    The sexual abuse of children is the cause of many, many suicides, suicides that occur years after the child has become an adult. It is often the underlying cause of mental illness, depression, alcohol/drug abuse, and reckless, self destructive behaviors.

    Thank you so much Mr. Sanger for calling this crime for what it is, EVIL.
    The cause of a pedophiles behavior, or the difficulty that his/her pedophilia presents in the life of the pedophile is of no consequence.
    The only thing that matter is stopping this evil.

  5. John G

    Epstein and his network:  The Elite Eastern Establishment  and European network of Saturnian cults do not use pedophilia for sexual pleasure but to drain the innocent from a child for demonic purposes. Red Ice Radio interview with Jay Weidner exposing the Saturnian Cult.

    Weidner discusses Stanley Kubrick’s attempt to expose several aspects of the Elite’s agenda including pedophilia and the Secret Space program through his movies. Eyes Wide Shut, Lolita, etc.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq3xRyBZ_5A&list=PLEpr4aa9rk9o9JL-907rGEC-F0DvBUpHx&index=9  

    Kubrick was suppose to make the movie AI, then he was killed, and Steven Spielberg  changed the original movie.  Someone has asked the question , ” What person would want  AI boy age 12 who doesn’t age, go to school or get married etc?”  
     
    Cult of Saturn : Published on Aug 26, 2012

    1. I’m afraid I don’t believe that a “cult of Saturn” exists, but if you want to share some evidence, feel free. Regardless of the nature of the awful organizations engaged in child trafficking, such as Epstein’s or NXIVM, it is a horrific problem that needs to be stamped out.

  6. I’m not so sure. Many MUSLIMS seem to think pedophilia is OK.

    1. Bryan

      Your thinking of Germany.
      Age of consent there is 14 and is one of the largest child pornogorphy distrubitors and buyers in the world besides thailand.
      In japan child pornogrophy is legal and so is prostitution, they have the own red light district there. Its so grossly deprived in japan that young teenagers and young adults in their 20s decided to not have sex ever, becauses of how disgustingly perverted their last generation were.
      Germany, Sweden, poland, thailand, japan, United kingdom, untied, states, canada, and mexico all have that same gross deprivated evil acts of viloence on children. Not muslims. If any religion was like that it would be christians and catholics since their churches are riddled with old pervert priests that never face any reprocussions of the law but relocated to an island or another state.

      1. Derek

        Everything you just said is wrong.

        Muslims absolutely molest kids, and it’s OK with them. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape.html

        https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/rape-adultery.aspx

        1. Oy, it’s quite unpleasantly and wrongly offensive and bigoted to make the blanket claim, “Muslims absolutely molest kids, and it’s OK with them.” Some Muslims make excuses to do so. I am quite sure that most of them would be horrified by the idea. I don’t know about proportions, but at least we should not imply that it’s all or a great preponderance. The evidence you’ve given certainly does not carry that implication.

  7. Reflection

    I really, really want to understand your line of reasoning. I’m giving it everything I’ve got to try and comprehend WHY we should only care about one side of the spectrum….

    I’ll start with this. One thing I understand crystal clear, is that anyone who gives in to their evil urges and commits the act of child abuse is an evil person who can’t be forgiven. Such a person has already claimed a life, one way or another, through those actions alone… which is an unspeakably malicious thing to do.

    But then we get to the part where this comes to play: the fact that you believe people should be condemned, punished, and ostracized for even thinking those thoughts and having never acted on them…… this right here feels like an inhuman thing to do.

    No matter how I see it, it seems to me that your justifiable anger and constant use of emphasis toward your stance accentuates the underlying FEAR of what could happen if the very IDEA of a person having evil thoughts were to ever be given the slightest CHANCE to be treated like a human being. You have a preconceived notion that they are ALL shameless of their actions and you can’t shake it no matter how much proof is presented to you.

    Furthermore, your idea that pedophiles who hold themselves back shouldn’t be sympathized with… THAT is pure cynicism…. Those people could very well be dealing with the mental anguish you so casually glossed over, thinking those evil thoughts and doing everything in their power to resist them…. and SUCCEEDING in doing so. BY doing so, they continue to suffer for what could be their entire lives without forcing innocent people to be claimed as victims or suffer through the life-long trauma. By that logic, for what reason should we treat those people as sub-human scourges…. if they ultimately SAVE lives by keeping their own temptations at bay?

    It should definitely be made more apparent to pedophiles everywhere that whatever pleasure can be derived from those actions is a fleeting one that only THEY will receive…. while their victim is left to toil in a traumatic state for the rest of their life…. after said victim did NOTHING wrong and doesn’t deserve that kind of internal torment. I can absolutely understand why such an issue NEEDS to be addressed…. but through this zero tolerance policy toward THOUGHTS alone…. this ham-handed decision to punish people for merely having DESIRES that go against the moral code…. and most of all, the FEAR of what “might possibly happen” resulting in the condemning of not just the shameless, ignorant monsters who act on their desires without remorse…. but also the people who throw away their own happiness to preserve the happiness of others, or worse, the people who end up as collateral damage… as in, people who you THOUGHT had such desires, but never even had them in the first place due to a misunderstanding. Can you not see the inherent flaws in this logic? What I find the most horrifying of all is that your same argument…. about having what you call “sympathy” for pedophiles going through that evil mental disorder…. is that you only think sympathy is needed so that it can prevent future instances of child abuse…. By that very same logic, you are saying that the same ends can be met by ending the lives of those pedophiles as well. Is it the simplest solution? Yeah….. Is it the right thing to do? You tell me.

    You say that so deep is the priority of protecting innocent people, that anyone who is even in a position to cause that trauma needs to be treated like a monster. Please…. open your eyes and mind, and try to think, just for one minute, that raising awareness through witch-hunts and immediate condemnation with no questions asked…. is NOT the answer… You said it yourself, this doesn’t come from a place of religious faith, psychology, or even the law…. You say this comes from a place of morality. If so, then in what way is having ZERO sympathy for someone keeping their pain to themselves the morally correct thing to do?

    The last thing I’ll say is that your assertion that not everyone needs to use the popular sense of the word is just asking to rouse conflict…. For you to compare it to the analogy that not everyone needs to agree to adding “tomato” to their list of fruits…. Well, is anyone going to throw someone to the lions for thinking tomatoes are or are not a fruit? No….. No sane person will. However, if someone thinks that a pedophile who should be treated with contempt is someone who ACTS on their desires and NOT someone who fights off the urges every day, then they WILL be hurled into the lion’s den. Last of all, if pedophilia refers exclusively to children…. then why is it now extending to people who are barely under the age of 18 as well, regardless of the age of consent that is specified in the law for their locations? I’d like to hear your input on that as well. This all-encompassing fear is resulting in blatant intolerance, regardless of actual current LAW.

    I truly want to know what you think about all this. ALL life has value as long as it doesn’t harm another…. and there are two sides to every story. I want to protect innocent people from having to experience unbearable trauma and torment just as you do…. I want to lock up the sickening pedophiles who couldn’t hold themselves back and gave in to their greed…. but I ALSO want to acknowledge the pain and self-sacrifice that comes with restraining themselves and keeping their hands off of those children… In the same way that you see yourself as a hero for protecting the innocent, defenseless children from those people….. I see those acts of altruism from the self-restraining pedophiles to be heroic as well… because unlike the blissfully unaware children, they ARE aware of, and are struggling with that mental anguish… making sure that no one else needs to feel the way that they do. That is NOT something to be ignored.

    1. “I really, really want to understand your line of reasoning.”

      Let’s see if the quality of your responses do indicate a desire to understand.

      “I’m giving it everything I’ve got to try and comprehend WHY we should only care about one side of the spectrum….”

      “One side of the spectrum“? What spectrum is that?

      “I’ll start with this. One thing I understand crystal clear, is that anyone who gives in to their evil urges and commits the act of child abuse is an evil person who can’t be forgiven. Such a person has already claimed a life, one way or another, through those actions alone… which is an unspeakably malicious thing to do.”

      I don’t know about “who can’t [ever] be forgiven,” but let’s agree that they are very probably evil in the extreme.

      Of course, almost every pedophilia apologist I’ve ever had the misfortune to talk to online has said much the same.

      “But then we get to the part where this comes to play: the fact that you believe people should be condemned, punished, and ostracized for even thinking those thoughts and having never acted on them…… this right here feels like an inhuman thing to do.”

      I did not say they should be punished. Condemned and ostracized, yes. That is what we do to people whose actions or attitudes are beyond the pale. It’s not “inhuman” if the reasons I gave are correct.

      “No matter how I see it, it seems to me that your justifiable anger and constant use of emphasis…”

      Huh? What difference would it make if I use emphasis?

      “…toward your stance accentuates the underlying FEAR of what could happen if the very IDEA of a person having evil thoughts were to ever be given the slightest CHANCE to be treated like a human being. You have a preconceived notion that they are ALL shameless of their actions and you can’t shake it no matter how much proof is presented to you.”

      Basically, you’re attacking a straw man. I didn’t say “non-offending pedophiles” shouldn’t be treated like human beings. But one doesn’t befriend them, pretend that they are normal, or that their desires are just another “sexual orientation.” You shame them. Shaming is something you do to human beings with profoundly evil attitudes. And otherwise treat like human beings? Yes. For example, I wouldn’t say that beating them up on sight is in order, just because they are non-offending pedophiles.

      “Furthermore, your idea that pedophiles who hold themselves back shouldn’t be sympathized with… THAT is pure cynicism….”

      No. I also don’t sympathize in the slightest with people who burn to commit murder or rape, but manage to hold themselves back.

      And it is disgusting and disturbing to be told this is “cynical.” No, the cynical thing is to come to my blog and actually argue on behalf of people who really, really want to rape children, but “manage to hold themselves back.” That’s cynical.

      “Those people could very well be dealing with the mental anguish you so casually glossed over, thinking those evil thoughts and doing everything in their power to resist them…. and SUCCEEDING in doing so.”

      Well that’s very nice. They succeed in not committing one of the worst crimes in the catalogs of crime. Do they have mental anguish? I’m sure. I sure hope so. So do addicts and others who owe it to themselves, and (especially in the case of non-offending pedophiles) to society at large, to do everything in their power to utterly rid themselves of their urges. Does that involve anguish? I’m wouldn’t know but I find it very plausible that it does. Is that anguish I sympathize with? No. Do I approve of it? Only if it actually results in them not acting on their criminal desires.

      “BY doing so, they continue to suffer for what could be their entire lives without forcing innocent people to be claimed as victims or suffer through the life-long trauma.”

      I don’t think that’s how desire works. I think that it can be trained to be turned off, or denied so often and so forcefully that it basically goes away. Anyone who says he “suffers” from his “afflication” for any extended period of time strikes me as prima facie a truly horrible person.

      “By that logic, for what reason should we treat those people as sub-human scourges…. if they ultimately SAVE lives by keeping their own temptations at bay?”

      Again, I didn’t say they were “sub-human.” They also aren’t “scourges,” if they in no way act on their desires (with child porn or children), not in the sense that they cause great harm to children.

      It’s still perfectly appropriate to shun and shame such people, and to resist every attempt to normalize pedophilia, precisely because they do not rein in their “temptations” in the first place.

      “It should definitely be made more apparent to pedophiles everywhere that whatever pleasure can be derived from those actions is a fleeting one that only THEY will receive…. while their victim is left to toil in a traumatic state for the rest of their life…. after said victim did NOTHING wrong and doesn’t deserve that kind of internal torment. I can absolutely understand why such an issue NEEDS to be addressed…. but through this zero tolerance policy toward THOUGHTS alone…. this ham-handed decision to punish people for merely having DESIRES that go against the moral code….”

      Now you’re getting boring. Again, I’m not “deciding” to “punish people.” Saying that people should be shunned and judged is not punishing them. You have not offered the slightest sort of argument, you’re just playing for sympathy. You deserve none.

      There is wrongdoing of intention, evil desires, disordered thoughts and imaginings. You simply assume that there aren’t, and while I think it is obvious there is, I also have arguments. The problem really is that as long as you lack the strength of character to stop having the desire to rape children, you are a risk to children. This is ultimately in your control.

      Do you really object to a policy condemning “THOUGHTS alone”? So you’re perfectly OK with adults fantasizing about raping children? It’s all right with you if they really, really, really want to violate little boys and girls? It’s “just a thought.”

      “and most of all, the FEAR of what “might possibly happen” resulting in the condemning of not just the shameless, ignorant monsters who act on their desires without remorse…. but also the people who throw away their own happiness to preserve the happiness of others”

      Whoa. You’re saying that pedophiles are “throwing away their own happiness to preserve the happiness of others”? What a horrible thing to confess about yourself. Your happiness depends on your raping children? You “throw away” your own happiness if you don’t rape children?

      Listen, you execrable little creep, you hateful insect, the happiness of an ordinary man or woman doesn’t depend on having sex at all. But here you are saying that your happiness depends on the satisfaction of your evil, perverted urge to rape children. And even worse, you’re asking for sympathy because you can’t be made happy by committing one of the worse crimes known to man.

      And if you had half a brain, you would know that that’s no happiness at all, you cretin. That would and should be misery beyond the comprehension of most of us. And if you did get pleasure and joy out of the act? Your happiness would be worth absolutely nothing—it would itself be horrifying.

      “or worse, the people who end up as collateral damage…as in, people who you THOUGHT had such desires, but never even had them in the first place due to a misunderstanding. Can you not see the inherent flaws in this logic?”

      Sure, it’s easy to debunk the logic of a straw man. At no point did I say it was a good idea to accuse people of pedophilia without evidence. I don’t think I’ve ever done that myself, and if I have, I apologize.

      “What I find the most horrifying of all”

      Good lord. Here’s someone who can only be made happy by raping children, claiming to be horrified at me.

      “is that your same argument…. about having what you call “sympathy” for pedophiles going through that evil mental disorder…. is that you only think sympathy is needed so that it can prevent future instances of child abuse…. By that very same logic, you are saying that the same ends can be met by ending the lives of those pedophiles as well. Is it the simplest solution? Yeah….. Is it the right thing to do? You tell me.”

      Idiotic attempt at an argument that doesn’t even merit a response.

      “You say that so deep is the priority of protecting innocent people, that anyone who is even in a position to cause that trauma needs to be treated like a monster. Please…. open your eyes and mind, and try to think, just for one minute, that raising awareness through witch-hunts and immediate condemnation with no questions asked…. is NOT the answer… You said it yourself, this doesn’t come from a place of religious faith, psychology, or even the law…. You say this comes from a place of morality. If so, then in what way is having ZERO sympathy for someone keeping their pain to themselves the morally correct thing to do?”

      Again, no. Shunning someone is not treating him “like a monster.” Really, how an individual should be treated depends on the circumstances. The very minimum is that we must not dignify non-offending pedophilia as anything other than horrifying, evil, and criminal ideation.

      Your argument in the latter part of the above seems to be that if my arguments are based in ethical reasoning (which of course they are), then they must in every case recommend sympathy.

      Well, no. The ideation is evil. You don’t have sympathy for evil. You have sympathy for situations you don’t get yourself into, or that you aren’t quite responsible for yourself.

      I’ll tell you this. If you were abused as a child yourself and as a result became a pedophile (as when children are trained to rape each other) and when you come to the full-sighted understanding that your own pedophilia is a horrible, evil condition, then you know, I think in that case I might at some point have some sympathy. Multi-generational abuse is a horrifying situation all around. Whether I continue to have sympathy depends on what the person does after that.

      “The last thing I’ll say is that your assertion that not everyone needs to use the popular sense of the word is just asking to rouse conflict…. For you to compare it to the analogy that not everyone needs to agree to adding “tomato” to their list of fruits…. Well, is anyone going to throw someone to the lions for thinking tomatoes are or are not a fruit? No….. No sane person will. However, if someone thinks that a pedophile who should be treated with contempt is someone who ACTS on their desires and NOT someone who fights off the urges every day, then they WILL be hurled into the lion’s den.”

      “Just asking to rouse conflict?” What the hell does that even mean? I can’t tell. Do you mean that people will angrily disagree? I’m sure they will. Do I care? No. Am I saying it just to get a rise out of them? Of course not.

      The left—and there are no pedophile apologists on the right, as far as I know—is in the habit of trying to win arguments by redefining words. I’m simply saying: hell no, that won’t work here. It is perfectly normal to refer to all desire and act to violate underage people as “pedophilia.” That’s how most people use the word. And no apologists, armed with words and scientific-sounding jargon drawing distinctions, will succeed in making this incorrect.

      I could go on and justify continuing using the words in this way further (e.g., answer the tired argument that “17 is almost legal!” and “16 year olds aren’t children!”), but I’ve already given the likes of you far more time than you deserve.

      “Last of all, if pedophilia refers exclusively to children…. then why is it now extending to people who are barely under the age of 18 as well, regardless of the age of consent that is specified in the law for their locations? I’d like to hear your input on that as well. This all-encompassing fear is resulting in blatant intolerance, regardless of actual current LAW.”

      “Why is it now extending…”? Listen, you scum. The word has always extended to underage teenagers molested by much older people. This is another contemptible and outrageous habit of the left: pretend that their redefinition of terms is what it has always meant. This is gaslighting. Screw you. Your gaslighting won’t work here.

      And there we have it: “Blatant intolerance.” You’re actually going to try to get all social justice on me, and say that non-offending pedophiles are victims of “intolerance.” I guess it’ll be LGBTQP next. Again: screw you, you evil son of a bitch. No tolerance for pedophiles, any more than we should have tolerance for people who really, really want to murder and rape people, who fantasize about it, who are miserable because they can’t murder and rape, but *whew* they “virtuously” manage to stop themselves.

      “I truly want to know what you think about all this. ALL life has value as long as it doesn’t harm another…. and there are two sides to every story. I want to protect innocent people from having to experience unbearable trauma and torment just as you do…. I want to lock up the sickening pedophiles who couldn’t hold themselves back and gave in to their greed…. but I ALSO want to acknowledge the pain and self-sacrifice that comes with restraining themselves and keeping their hands off of those children… In the same way that you see yourself as a hero for protecting the innocent, defenseless children from those people….. I see those acts of altruism from the self-restraining pedophiles to be heroic as well… because unlike the blissfully unaware children, they ARE aware of, and are struggling with that mental anguish… making sure that no one else needs to feel the way that they do. That is NOT something to be ignored.”

      “ALL life has value as long as it doesn’t harm another”—I didn’t deny that. I didn’t say the life even of an offending pedophile has no value. That’s another matter altogether. A life can have value, but we can still be more than justified in (depending on how bad things are in the case) harshly criticizing, shunning, reviling, arresting, legally punishing, probably castrating, and perhaps even executing that life—out of respect for other, more innocent lives.

      “In the same way that you see yourself as a hero for protecting the innocent, defenseless children from those people”—another telling remark. You think other people are as narcissistic as you are. I don’t think of myself as a hero at all. I’m just a normal person with normal moral sensibilities. I saw, some years ago, that there was very little written online about why pedophilia is evil, so I answered the Quora question (my account has since been deleted and my answer replicated, and since further edited, above). Partly this was to clarify my own thoughts, but especially after the Epstein case clarified matters even further to me, I see it is useful to give others the intellectual ammunition to respond to cretins like you. You, on the other hand, narcissist that you are, actually see yourself as a victim of intolerance, a martyr owing to self-imposed unhappiness because you heroically restrain yourself…from raping children. And those “acts of altruism from the self-restraining pedophiles” you deem to be “heroic as well.” You actually said that—“heroic.” That’s absolutely obscene. Words cannot adequately express the contempt with which I regard your narcissistic self-description.

      One other thing. You dare say, “unlike the blissfully unaware children, they ARE aware of, and are struggling with that mental anguish.” Not only are you actually praising yourself for feeling so much “anguish” when you restrain yourself from raping children—you actually try to make it seem better by comparing it to the innocence of children. As if, what? If you were to rape them, then they would have a similar anguish to yours? As if you’re doing them a favor by sparing them that anguish? So you feel the anguish rather than innocent children. You’re quite the opposite of a hero. You’re a goddamn narcissistic, un-self aware piece of crap.

      I’ll tell you what I think about this. You actually tried to shame me for saying that non-offending pedophiles are evil; their attitudes, certainly, are evil, I reiterate. Not only did you utterly fail to shame me for anything, you only laid bare your complete moral bankruptcy. The only reason I’m responding to you is so that I can help you expose to the immature reader and thinker just how disordered your thinking is. If I cause you to stop and take stock, too, well and good. You certainly should. You’re already profoundly evil in your attitudes. You’re in great moral danger and are putting many other innocent lives in terrible danger of a greater sort, by being one step away from an even more radically evil position. I hope you’re getting all the help you need—for the sake of the children harmed, however directly, by your actions within the horrible little underworld of “non-offending pedophiles.”

      1. Reflection

        When and if you ever replied back to me, I truly expected it to be little more than reiterated concepts from your article, just hashed out in different words. I expected to be slandered and ridiculed with nonsensical hypocrisy and shaming with no substance. But you…. man, you deserve a standing ovation for all that. I mean it with every fiber of my being that I don’t think that the deepest facets of my personality have EVER been more accurately analyzed in my entire life. There is so much that you were dead-on about. I’m egotistical… I can be petulant… and yeah…. I’m a self-restraining pedophile. I knew that much would be obvious, and I guess if you’re going to overwhelm me with so much brutal honesty, I might as well be honest too.

        I’ve been at a constant war with the left for a while now…. and I admit, I might have inadvertently picked up some of their despicable social justice tricks when it comes to debates. So if I DID ultimately play the role of a martyr and try some kind of shaming tactic without realizing it, I apologize. I’ve been shown time and again that it gets results. It gets people to listen. Honestly, a part of me is glad that you saw through it… because I’m not really sure if I even saw it myself. I just adopted what I saw to be the winning strategy in an argument…

        As for everything else… damn, it was really just what I needed. I’ve never been quite so humbled and enlightened all at once. I can pretty much confirm that you are far better “help” for me than a majority of professional psychologists out there. YOU got me thinking… YOU got me enthralled in just about everything you had to say about my situation. I have a millennial mindset, so I’ve been told that I exaggerate what I consider to be genuine pain…. genuine injustice…. genuine right from wrong. Despite all that, I’m still a Christian man. And I know the very thoughts alone are evil. Actions are unforgivable. I think what I’m doing here is looking for solace from everyone else rather than facing my problems head-on responsibly, but you seem to have already picked up on that. I truly feel like I’m on the right TRACK…. but I just haven’t quite accepted that thoughts alone were also unforgivable. That something like fictitious cartoon art could actually be unacceptable even though no real lives are affected at all. There’s just no gray area to this that I’m desperately trying to make for myself.

        I had you wrong on many aspects… firstly, you’re not someone blinded by bias. I know that’s me. Second, I had thought that you were out to wreak hell on self-restraining pedophiles through acts of physical violence out of righteous anger. You said outright that you do not agree with this… that instead shunning them and forcing them to reflect is the right move. On that, I wholeheartedly agree. Two wrongs don’t make a right…. and you go about this the smart way. You’re not here trying to exercise hatred to the point that the pedophiles only end up hating you before they ever start to hate themselves…. You are very admirably careful with your words, masterfully choosing them in such a way that brings out as much shame as possible. It’s honestly very impressive… like I said, it’s humbling… It’s wisdom in action. I know I could never BEGIN to comprehend how much worldly knowledge you’ve got at your fingertips.

        I don’t know… I’m betting most would be outraged by your reply and fire back with more fruitless attempts at proving you wrong. But I don’t want to do that, even if I ever could. You stated that you despised me by the end of your response… and I’m willing to bet that you still do. But I don’t feel the same about you. You’ve more than proven that you deserve respect. From what I read, it sounds like you have a pretty good idea of where I know that I’m wrong… and where I DIDN’T know I was wrong… That’s why I’m laying all of this out there for you so that there can be no confusion. No misunderstanding. Nothing but the truth… If you could reply one last time, I’d appreciate it more than you’d ever know…

        I don’t want to be a monster….. I don’t want to be dangerous….. I don’t want to live in fear and I don’t want to hurt anyone…… the day I prevented someone from taking their life after being abused and deceived by someone else who they thought they couldn’t live without, it was the greatest feeling I’ve ever had… I want to continue to do good like that. To be someone I can be proud of, rather than a shameful, detestable cockroach. I greatly exaggerated the “throw away their happiness” part…. Violating people doesn’t make me “happy”…. it’s simply desire that needs to be erased. I made the grave mistake of thinking “happiness” and “desires” were synonymous…. I couldn’t be any more wrong, now that you helped point that out.

        Like you said, articles like yours are disturbingly rare…. Many people have tried to give me the same information that you have, but those people either don’t know how to say it or they get so impatient with anyone who asks that they think they’re not worth telling. The stuff you told me is exactly what I’ve been searching for…. Someone with NO holes in their logic, someone who ISN’T in this for the steady stream of income, someone who’s out there to actually make a difference…. and willing to go that extra mile for it.

        I doubt you ever will (maybe the very thought of it repulses you), but if you ever got to know me, I think you’d agree that I’m really not that bad a guy…. I’ve developed bad habits over the years, but I take every possible measure to make sure real people don’t get caught up in my evil thoughts. I’m always thinking…. I think of the consequences every time and I never become a slave to my desires. Sure, sometimes my desires do the talking for me…. but even I can see that’s just making excuses for myself. You don’t have to worry about me ever DOING anything to people…. I’m basically a shut-in who avoids contact with the outside world as much as possible. I distract myself with other good, meaningful, and constructive hobbies that have nothing to do with this topic or anything sinful in the least. But if I can just get the THOUGHTS out of my head permanently….. I know I’d basically be in the clear… They’re rare as it is… just potent. Then I come across stuff like this and it reignites those thoughts and that desperation to feel like I’m more than just a waste of skin.

        As for my conscience….. I know this sounds weird, but my mind basically combined my conscience with an extremely malicious masochistic part of me (yes, I’m talking about hurting myself)… and to keep from losing all sense of reality, I had to lock that away. If I were to ever bring my conscience back… who I manifested in my head as a person I cherish, then it brings all that severe evil back into my mind and I know that there must be better ways to fix this than that…. I see horrible, unspeakable things and it can shake fragments of that conscience loose…. I know that I still HAVE it, but rebuilding it from the remnants left is the hard part. I know that I’m a mess of a human being….. but no one else needs to be a part of that…. If I can kick this habit once and for all….. can I be redeemed? Having never hurt anyone before with this, can taking all that evil away actually be a clean slate?

        1. Reflection

          So I open my heart, pour out my SOUL to you, and you decide to never respond.

          Is it because I’m not “owed” forgiveness or any of that garbage people are trying to preach nowadays? Larry…. you are clearly a very wise man and you stick to your beliefs. But I didn’t take you for the type to do THIS….

          Don’t you see what happened? Because it’s painfully clear to me. You see someone challenging your opinion, and you reply back to debunk everything. That same person sees your perspective now, asks for some help and enlightenment, and since you’ve already won the “argument” and have had it immortalized on your anger blog… you disregard that person entirely. Why bother being a decent human being and reply when you’ve already shown to any potential readers that you’ve made your case? That is what I am seeing here. You don’t seem to have the humanity to care about anyone other than people who are at risk, except for that disturbingly terse and aloof remark you gave to someone above who replied back afterward, clearly wishing to hear more from you…. who is no doubt their beacon of light in their conscience…. and you ignore them too. I’m referring of course to “Anonymous Dumbass”.

          You may seem like you’ve got all your priorities in order, but work on redefining your assessment of what REAL empathy actually is. Until you do, you’ve convinced me that this article and its writer cares about nothing more than its agenda.

          I’m totally fine with you blowing me away and winning the argument. What I am NOT okay with is that you’re just like all the other soulless maggots in today’s society who are so blinded by their outrage that they can’t bring themselves to offer a helping hand to human scum that ask for it. Human scum that genuinely want to change and take the right steps toward a brighter future. I get it… It’s not your job. You are probably not a psychologist… But it IS common courtesy.

          Next time, don’t jump at the chance to refute people who are challenging your steadfast article… and then ignore that person when they plead for help. It is not a good look.

        2. anon

          Woah there buddy; he didn’t ask you to worship him like you did in your previous post. I’m glad you agree that pedophilia is bad now, but he didn’t post for your sake. You are clearly still narcissistic and entitled, even if your pedophilia, the disgusting symptom that it is, is in remission. Try to learn some humility.

        3. I can’t disagree with this (he does still sound narcissistic and entitled), but I also wouldn’t be so harsh. I mean, look, if he’s sincere, he’s sincere. We don’t know his mind. (He may not quite know it himself.) I can only hope that he does defeat his condition (weakness, perversion, pride, whatever it is) in the long run.

        4. Reflection

          @Anon

          Thank you for taking the time to do what Larry didn’t….

          Thank you for actually NOT dismissing what I said as crocodile tears or my words as hollow…. That acknowledgement alone, that basic level of human compassion, can go a long way sometimes. It does for me at least.

          I want so badly to be free from this…. If I conquered the schizophrenia, why can’t I conquer this? There’s no reason I can’t, if I just Keep. Trying.

          I think that I have something precious that a lot of other pedophiles unfortunately lack…. I have at least a basic understanding that those children are PEOPLE. I would never objectify them… The more I see what this kind of stuff does to them, the worse it makes me feel for my human brethren. The worse it makes me feel for getting urges over something that destroys lives, ESPECIALLY innocent lives….

          People can be as dramatic as they want with their words and beliefs, but at the end of the day, every criminal is STILL a human being, born and bred. Monsters don’t exist, animals are defined by their state of evolution…. I don’t want to be a monster even when I have such a strong desire to be something more. To be someone that DOESN’T have a desire to hurt others or myself……

          But if calling someone a monster after that person has reviewed all the facts and STILL think it’s okay to hurt people that way… acts as a deterrent to make them abandon those urges… Then, by all means…. a pedophile who still thinks such thoughts are acceptable, despite the damage they’re causing, is a monster.

        5. Look, the reason I didn’t respond is that I didn’t really have anything to say. For one thing, I don’t know whether I should believe that you are sincere. I hope you are. If so, I’m glad my words had an effect. But, in any case, it is up to you to reform yourself, and I wish you luck in doing so. I am not your guru or counselor. I lack the training and for that reason, I certainly don’t want to. If I were quite confident that I could help you and not just do more damage, then probably I would. But I’m not sure. All I was trying to achieve is to cause you to rethink your views on this stuff. Beyond that, I disclaim any responsibility or aim.

      2. Sam

        Paedophilia apologists on the right: Milo Yiannopolous, Nathan Larson and possibly this writer (https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/30/alabamians-vote-roy-moore/).

        1. Milo abandoned his earlier ill-thought apologetic.

          As to the other guy…I guess I stand corrected. Piece of crap.

  8. Federico

    I’m glad I’ve come across this article. Normalizing pedophilia is just mind-boggling. Philosophically speaking, the very idea that your desires have absolutely no connection to you acting on them is literally (and arbitrarily) separating potentiality and actuality in the will. It’s like saying that I want to eat chocolate ice-cream, and that it’s just a pure “wanting” without any object or direction. It’s simply not the case.

    Thanks again, it was enlightening.

  9. Kay Kay Smith

    These non offending pedos are looking at child porn arent they? Otherwise why would they be thinking about it????

    1. I don’t want to imagine what goes on in the head of a pedophile, thanks.

      1. I take that to mean that your mind was made up long ago, you are seething with rage, and you aren’t in any position to say anything interesting about morality. But this might be a new fact for you — what do you think would happen to a society where child pornography was very difficult to get, and suddenly it became very easy to get? Sounds like a disaster, right? Pedophiles seeing what others are doing will run right out and do it themselves. But it didn’t. If anything, child sex abuse went DOWN. http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-effects-of-pornography.html. Maybe if you want to protect children, it IS worth thinking about what goes on in the heads a pedophile (whose thinking covers a wide range). If desire was malleable, gays and lesbians would just become straight, right? Life is much easier that way. In the science of the attraction (NOT in being able to act on it — never!) pedophilia is very similar. It arises in young teens, they are scared shitless, and the way to protect kids is not to just tell them they’re evil. They might say, “Hrumph, they’ll say I’m evil no matter what I do, might as well rape some kids”. Pedophilia doesn’t go away when people stop talking about it.

  10. ChildRape Apologists

    Thank you so much for such a well-written & informative post.
    You are correct – the number of pedophile apologist postings I’ve encountered is staggering.

    There is a “rebranding” movement underway to get Pedophilia safely under the LGBTQ umbrella.
    It is only a matter of time before pedophilia is normalized & then legally protected as well as a “civil right” unless we speak up & fight for the sake of all the vulnerable little ones who can’t speak up or protect themselves.

    You’re correct. Pedophiles are depraved sexual predators with with obsessive & intrusive thoughts & sexual fantasies involving children.
    And the apologists? They are no better. They have no excuse. They are just as depraved. They are just as evil.

    We must ALL speak out & fight against the acceptance of pedophiles and the normalization of pedophilia.
    If not me, then who?
    If not you, then who?

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