Sex with children is still considered a heinous offense.  Revelations of child sexual abuse in churches, no less, still fill most of the public with outrage.  But, according to Stella Mirabito in her Federalist article The Pedophile Project, a movement has begun to legitimize and legalize pedophilia.

One by one, our sexual taboos have been falling.  According to our pop culture, premarital sex is now the norm.  What used to be called “self-abuse” is served by the vast world of internet pornography.  Sadomasochism has become the topic of best-selling romance novels.  And instead of homosexuality being considered a psychological and moral problem, disapproving of homosexuality is considered a psychological problem (homophobia) and a moral problem (hate).  But a few taboos remain.  For now.

Sex with children is still considered a heinous offense.  Revelations of child sexual abuse in churches, no less, still fill most of the public with outrage.  But, according to Stella Mirabito in her Federalist article The Pedophile Project, a movement has begun to legitimize and legalize pedophilia.

She cites magazine articles in which pedophiles–celibate pedophiles, they hasten to say–give their testimonials, bidding for sympathy.  We were born this way, they say.  We can’t help our desires.  We are objects of “hate.”

Mirabito cites academic articles arguing that sex between children and adults is not that harmful and that pedophilia is simply a “sexual orientation.”  Classifying pedophilia in that way is being considered also by the American Psychological Association in its authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Mirabito points out that “sexual orientation” is a protected category under the nation’s civil rights laws.  Thus, if pedophilia is officially classified as a “sexual orientation,” pedophiles would enjoy the same legal protections that LGBT individuals currently receive.

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