pop morality

[Drich]

The importance of consent is with one with which I agree. Yet why should sexual interactions between adults and children be treated any differently than interaction in other areas. For example, adults can compel children to eat things, take medicine, take music lessons, etc. without their consent because the adults believe it is good for the children. Now of course most people in today's Western culture know that adult-child sexual relationships are generally traumatic and psychologically crippling for children.

All I am saying is that evil people are very good and rationalizing very harmful things especially with respect to primal desires like greed and lust. But if perversity becomes part of the culture then people become blind to the harms it causes. It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new "civil right". Afterall, some people say you cannot legislate morality and complain about other people pushing their morals onto them.

I've been (and remain) very ill, these past few days, so I missed a chance to respond to Drich and to participate in this ongoing conversation, but I feel I need to chime in on this.

We keep hearing the question, loosely phrased, "If it's okay to have sex in __this__ formerly-forbidden way, then why is it still forbiddable to do __this___?" (particularly, the first blank is homosexuality and the second blank is pedophilia).

As Jenny has already pointed out, the simple answer is that we know that children are unable, psychologically and in terms of emotional development, of consenting to sex with people who are adults, and since we as a society have (sometime since the Bible was written, apparently) decided that sex without consent is called rape, then pedophilia is banned on that basis. I cannot see a circumstance in which sex with prepubescent, that is to say non-sexual, children would ever be considered moral or acceptable, regardless of the desires or justifications of the people who wish to engage in such acts. 

On the other hand, Hebephilia, which is adult sexual attraction to teenagers, is a slightly different proposition. If science discovers that we are wrong about this factor, then I can see the laws changing to suit a different figure than the ones we have artificially drawn (somewhere between 14 and 18, depending on the nation and/or the state in question), but as things currently stand, I cannot see a basis for the "but if people want to, then isn't anything permissible" argument I see being made here. It's apples and oranges, when you're talking about the behavior between two consenting adults and behavior of one major and one minor person, the latter of whom cannot meet the standards I set out above.

This is a question of harm. There is no harm in "perversion", as people choose to call a great many acts. You will recall, no doubt, that all/any anal or oral sex (even between a husband and wife) was technically called sodomy, regardless of which gender(s) performed the acts, under the statutes which until 2004 prohibited it. The idea was that sex was for reproduction only, and anything else was perversion. Thankfully, we are moving away from that "every sperm is sacred" (Python joke) approach to sexual behavior, and we're not letting those who want to label things perverse determine what two consenting adults may do to one another. Conflating that question with acts against children is, I believe, willfully dishonest.

So, while I keep hearing Christians on these types of forums saying things like, "It is conceivable that at some point pederasty could be the new civil right", I simply see no realistic basis for such an argument. It's simply an assertion that's thrown out there, without bothering to address the question of harm and/or the data about why  there's such a thing as the Age of Consent.

In the words of Dr. Drew Pinsky, "There’s a reason we have laws in place protecting young people. Their brain development isn’t such that they can render consent for something like sex. And for a judge to say that a 14-year-old to consent to this  … It is outlandish in a way that I cannot describe. There’s no such thing as someone being older than her chronological age who can magically have a brain of a 21-year-old. She may have behaved in a way that was inappropriate, but guess what? That’s a sign of mental illness. Those are the people we need to protect the most."

Your introducing a red herring while moving the goal posts!

In my senerio I go to great lengths to explain science has given it's blessing stating their is no physical or mental harm that comes to certain children. Likewise their is a genetic predisposition for pedophilia. Just like science gave it's blessing on homosexuality clearing the way from physical and mental concerns and is hasn
t yet but is still striving to find that gay gene. It took it a step further even and verified a pedo gene, so technically their is a more legitmate reason for pedophilia in this senerio than homosexuality. Now using the very same metric that got homosexuality in every single show now on tv (pop culture/morality) explain why you have a reservation on pedophilia? Obviously science and reason are not working for you, because they contradict your morality. so what then tells you that 'science' got it wrong with pedophilia and right with homosexuality?

If you can/won't put a lable on it I can and will if you like.