Pedophilia in Christianity

[SteelCurtain]

Since you are so fond of definitions, Huggy, I'll throw this one at you:

Pedophilia or paedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children, generally age 11 years or younger.[1][2] As a medical diagnosis, specific criteria for the disorder extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13.

If anything, we are talking about an ephebophile in Milk, not a pedophile. When we are talking about pedophile priests, we are talking about men who molested pre-pubescent or pubescent boys. There were ephebophilic and hebephilic priests as well. In my opinion, there is a distinction of degree here. If you molest a 10 year old, I think differently of that crime than a person who has sex with a 16-18 year old. I still think it's awful for a 30+ year old to take advantage of a teenager, but I do think it's different. There are reasons the law treats these crimes differently as well.

Now, I don't say any of this to excuse Milk's actions. The age of consent in California at the time was 18, what he did was illegal. He had a history of taking advantage of teenagers with substance abuse problems. That made him a predator in my book. I would say the same of a straight man who did the same to teenage girls. His homosexuality had nothing to do with it. He was privately not so good a person.

It is difficult to separate the two, but he still did amazing things for society. That cannot be taken away. Some of his actions deserve to be celebrated.