Mental Health Group Looks to Remove Stigma From Pedophilia
Fox News: Originally Published August 24, 2011
A group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals say it's time to change the way society views individuals who have physical attractions to children.
The organization, which calls itself B4U-Act, is lobbying for changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the guideline of standards on mental health that's put together by the American Psychiatric Association.
The group says its mission is to help pedophiles before they create a crisis, and to do so by offering a less critical view of the disorder.
"Stigmatizing and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals and the public, without contributing to an understanding of minor-attracted people or the issue of child sexual abuse," reads the organization's website.
B4U-Act said that 38 individuals attended a symposium in Baltimore last week, including researchers from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and the universities of Illinois and Louisville. According to the group, which said to not endorse every point of view expressed, the speakers in attendance concluded that "minor-attracted" individuals are largely misunderstood and should not be criminalized even as their actions should be discouraged.
Speakers also argued that people who are sexually attracted to children should have input into the decision about how pedophilia is defined in the DSM, which they said is supposed to be a guide to promote “mental health vs. social control.”
Critics of the conference say it was a thinly veiled attempt to make children of any age sexually accessible to adults.
"Absolutely," Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting professor of law at Liberty School of Law said. "Oh, they're very clear about that. Their goal is to take all shame out of the lust for children."
The American Psychiatric Association did not participate in the conference, and evidently does not condone the group's message.
"An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act and this is never considered normal or socially acceptable behavior," the APA wrote in a 2003 position statement.
Critics of the effort also note that the movement likens its fight for pedophilia acceptance to society's more recent embrace of homosexuality. They warn of a slippery slope to a time when pedophilia is "just another lifestyle choice" that won't warrant criminal charges—and will leave young children at risk.
Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, said, "I think that we have to face the fact that most of these people with pedophile attractions are going to come up against the law. The laws against sex abuse and the laws against child pornography. And those laws should be strictly enforced."
Fox News’ Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
Don't Pooh-Pooh the Left's Push to Normalize Pedophilia
Originally posted on January 07, 2013 at The Rush Limbaugh Show
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We are loaded today, folks. You can't afford to miss a single syllable today. For example:
There is an effort underway to normalize pedophilia. Yep. And it has two aspects to it. One is that sex with children doesn't hurt them. Kids like it, and so do adults, and there's nothing wrong with it. It is something... I want to take you back. I want you to remember the first time, wherever you were, that you heard about gay marriage, and I want you to try to recall your reaction -- your first gut reaction -- when you heard that some activists or somebody was trying to promote the notion of gay marriage. What was your initial reaction?
"Aw, come on. It'll never happen. That's silly. What are you talking about?"
There is a movement on to normalize pedophilia, and I guarantee you your reaction to that is probably much the same as your reaction when you first heard about gay marriage. What has happened to gay marriage? It's become normal -- and in fact, with certain people in certain demographics it's the most important issue in terms of who they vote for. So don't pooh-pooh. There's a movement to normalize pedophilia. Don't pooh-pooh it. The people behind it are serious, and you know the left as well as I do. They glom onto something and they don't let go.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It's right there. It's in the UK Guardian. "Pedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light -- The Jimmy Savile scandal..." He's a presenter on the BBC. "The Jimmy Savile scandal," it says here, "caused public revulsion, but experts disagree about what causes pedophilia -- and even how much harm it causes." So "experts disagree about what causes pedophilia," and then they do interviews to make the case for pedophilia.
(interruption)
No, it's not a crime; it's love!
(interruption)
Yeah, there are statutes on the book.
The statutes are wrong. The statutes are from a bygone era where everybody's morality was wrong. Look, I’m just telling you what it says. They make the case that kids enjoy it, adults enjoy it; what's wrong with a little love? The same things that were said about gay marriage. Look at the Elmo story, the puppeteer at PBS. Three or four young people, kids, were hit on by that puppeteer. Look how little attention that story got. In fact, that story was laughed off. It wasn't a big deal at all.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I'm not engaging in shock value. I'm not trying to shock you. I'm just telling you what's out there on this pedophilia business. I'll tell you where I first saw it. Wesley Smith, who is married to Debra Saunders. She's a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. He had a little blog post at the National Review website: "Is Pedophilia Just Another 'Sexual Orientation'?" I said, "What?" So I read it.
It was this piece that alerted me to the column, the piece about this in The Guardian, and that piece suggests that pedophilia may be just another sexual orientation. It's not perverted, it's not wrong, it's just another sexual orientation. And, in fact, it's quite loving and as natural as any other sexual orientation. This is what those of us with our heads and minds in the Dark Ages have got to modernize and realize.
The argument being made in the piece is that the desire for sex with children is a natural part of the human condition. And, in fact, if we acknowledge it, and encourage it, we can actually somehow better protect children. That's in the story, too. It's the same thinking, if you remember back in the nineties, when we were told that kids are going to have sex, you can't stop them. And that's why we needed to give away condoms in the schools.
Remember we had stories from Long Island about parents who said that they willingly let their daughters' boyfriends spend the night because it was better if their daughter was gonna have sex in a clean bedroom rather than the backseat of a car. Well, same thing here. We can better protect children if we know that they're having sex with adults rather than it being done on the sly.
If it's supervised, and if it's engaged in by loving people, then what's wrong with it? This is in the article. I just want to remind you, now, when you first heard about gay marriage -- and I don't mean to pick on gays. It's not what I'm saying. It's just something that was such a tremendous departure from accepted norms of the day. When you first heard about gay marriage, you pooh-poohed it.
When you first heard me say that the Sierra Club was gonna try to come after you and ban your SUV, what was your reaction? "Aw, come on, Rush! There you go again: Overreacting, exaggerating." Well, you know that the SUV has become a target. You know all about that. You know how much progress the notion of gay marriage has made. So I'm just keeping you here on the cutting edge.
In fact, the article in the Guardian actually quotes some academics. (For those of you in Rio Linda, that's college professor types. These are the people you see that have leather arm patches on their sport coats.) Academics are quoted in the Guardian piece saying that sex with adults does not hurt children. Normalization. So Jon Henley decided he'd write a whole piece on this, normalizing pedophilia, where he quotes extensively and looks into it and finds out what this is all about.
"Pedophilia: Bringing Dark Desires to Light," and it says, among other things (this article is loaded), "Pedophiles may be wired differently." There's nothing wrong with them. They're just "wired differently. ... But there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that pedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that pedophilia 'is a sexual orientation' and therefore 'unlikely to change.'"
Can you imagine if Jerry Sandusky had had this information at his trial? What do you think the reaction would be to Jerry Sandusky's defense saying, "Hey, look, it's normal. The kids love it, he loved it, nobody was hurt. And in fact, it's just a different sexual orientation"? Now, what do you think's behind this? What kind of people do you think are behind this, this effort to normalize pedophilia? Which is what? The abuse of kids, is it not? Who's behind that?
What is their objective? They want us to all think that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation. You know who's gonna fall right in line is college kids, just like they have on gay marriage, just like they do on all other revolutionary social issues. Their own definition of the cutting edge, civil rights, freedom, understanding, tolerance. So I'm just warning you here. You think it can't happen. "Impossible! Don't be nutso and wacko on us, Rush."
I'm just asking you to remember all of the things that occur normally in our culture now that when you first heard about them you thought, "No way! That'll never happen; that'll never be mainstream," and now they are. Here is another one to add to the list. (interruption) You want more excerpts from this piece? "In 1976 the National Council for Civil Liberties, the respectable (and responsible) pressure group now known as Liberty, made a submission to parliament's criminal law revision committee.
"It caused barely a ripple. 'Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult,' it read, 'result in no identifiable damage ... The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of pedophilia result in lasting damage.'" So you see it's you who have to reorient your thinking. It's you who have to get rid of your bigotry. It's you that have to open up and become more tolerant. It is you judgmental people who think this is child abuse when it isn't.
You are the ones who are going to have to change. The pedophiles and the children involved, they're normal, just like you or anybody else. It is your old-fashioned conventions that create the problem. So another excerpt. "It is difficult today, after the public firestorm unleashed by revelations about Jimmy Savile [the presenter at BBC] and the host of child abuse allegations they have triggered, to imagine any mainstream group making anything like such a claim.
"But if it is shocking to realize how dramatically attitudes to pedophilia have changed in just three decades, it is even more surprising to discover how little agreement there is even now among those who are considered experts on the subject." Here is the money quote: "For Goode, though, broader, societal change is needed. 'Adult sexual attraction to children is part of the continuum of human sexuality; it's not something we can eliminate,' she says.
"'If we can talk about this rationally -- acknowledge that, yes, men do get sexually attracted to children, but no, they don't have to act on it -- we can maybe avoid the hysteria. We won't label pedophiles monsters; it won't be taboo to see and name what is happening in front of us.'" See? The only people who have to change are you who have these old-fashioned, Victorian-type attitudes. You're gonna have to open yourselves up to love and realize that wherever it happens, it's wonderful. No matter what.
Now, there were people -- I just want to remind you -- back during the early days of the effort to redefine what a family is, and in the early days of the gay marriage activists. There were people who said, "Well, if this becomes mainstream, then someday marrying your dog is gonna be okay, and then having two husbands and two wives in one family is gonna be okay, 'cause who can say it isn't?" There were others who predicted that pedophilia would be mainstream, and there was an outcry of opposition to this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, the expert that I was quoting extensively from in the pedophilia story in the UK Guardian is Sarah Goode. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester and is the author of two, count them, two major sociological studies on pedophilia in society in 2009, 2011. Hey, folks, look, I know it's uncomfortable. I'm just warning you, there's now an effort on to normalize it. It's safe for children. Controlled supervised, engaged in two loving people, it's actually safer for children this way.
I mean, it's the same rationale back in the nineties for giving away condoms. We can't stop it. Kids are going to have sex, so we want to make it as safe as we can. It's the same technique being used here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now to the phones and Walter in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. I'm glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was really incensed earlier when you were talking about the business of pedophilia being entertained in England and possibly among the leftists in this society as giving it some kind of credibility. And every single civilization that I've ever studied about and every religion in this country teaches us over and over again about the destruction of civilization because of it. I mean, Greek history is one of the most egregious people who adapted as part of their culture the culture of the warrior and pedophilia. And it just absolutely amazed me that we live in this age where people have forgotten what happened with Sodom and Gomorrah, what Christ taught in his most profound thing, in anger, was about the hurting of little children. That he would put a millstone around them and cast them into the sea. And it's amazing that people have forgotten these warnings over 4,000 years and are willing to entertain this over and over again. I remember at BU, Boston University, where I studied, a [professor] told us that in the mid-sixties, that psychological association of the United States went from one person held off these aberrations and said that they were, you know, they were mental problems that needed to be directly dealt with from, you know, a clinical point of view, and when that person died, the American Psychological Association then began the slippery slope of allowing all these aberrations to --
RUSH: Let me ask you a question.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: You say you've been studying this.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Before I mentioned this today, were you aware of the UK Guardian story? Were you aware of the effort that is quite a ways along now to normalize pedophilia?
CALLER: I didn't know that. I thought that they had --
RUSH: This is the point. You didn't know it, I didn't know it 'til I ran across the story, you didn't know it, and most other people don't know it, either, and this is why it succeeds. Most people don't have time for stuff like this. Most people aren't reading the UK Guardian; they're trying to get jobs. Or, as in the case of some, I got a New York Post story here: "Welfare Recipients Take Out Cash At Strip Clubs, Liquor Stores And X-Rated Shops." Welfare recipients are using the debit cards at these kinds of places, whatever, they're not paying any attention to pedophilia. So this stuff happens literally under the radar.
Now, if you're just joining us, the UK Guardian has a story today that essentially quotes a bunch of college academics who've studied it and said there's really nothing wrong with pedophilia. It's just another sexual orientation. In fact, it may be safer for children when it's engaged in knowingly and accepted. Children love it, the adults love it, and if there's love involved, what can be wrong? I'm not making this up. We'll link to the story at RushLimbaugh.com. You can read it yourself. I was made aware of it by a contributor at National Review, Wesley J. Smith.
Like I mentioned, try to imagine where you were the very first time you heard somebody seriously make the case for gay marriage and ask yourself what was your reaction. It was probably something like, "Right, that will never happen," and now here we are. Gay marriage and gay rights happen to be at the top of important issues for young voters ages 18 to 29. It is the number one most important issue to them, civil rights, freedom, tolerance, liberty, all that cool stuff when you're that young. Well, here we go with the same technique. It's safer. It's safer for children under these circumstances than if it's happening under the cover of darkness and behind the law. If it's happening under the shroud of illegality, then it has a stigma; but it really shouldn't, it's just another sexual orientation. It's a serious piece, a serious effort. And it's all about these people wishing to have their preferences and desires judged to be normal, not weird or perverted or what have you.
And even if you had heard about it, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? You might organize opposition to it. You might organize in California, a proposition, you put it on the ballot to oppose it and you win, and a federal judge will overturn it. Yeah, pedophilia, it's already against the law. What do you do to stop it? Who's gonna stop it? Do you think today's Democrat Party's gonna speak out against it? No. You won't have 'em advocating it, not yet, but that day's coming, if it follows the same progression as some of these other things you thought would never, ever happen and they are happening now in a mainstream way.
So that is what Walter here is reacting to, and he said that pedophilia, societies can't survive when stuff like this becomes normal. But you've got some official psychiatric groups that are endorsing it as normal. And the only thing wrong with pedophilia is the bigoted attitude towards it, is the point of the story in the UK Guardian, which is left wing, but it's not a fringe publication, it's a mainstream publication in Great Britain.
END TRANSCRIPT
Cross-Posted at AskMarion
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