…recommendations “put forward in a forthcoming chapter on the psychology of social attitudes towards paedophilia and their links to abuse prevention.” Among those recommendations was this statement:

“We need a re-evaluation of how we view paedophilia at a societal level. That is, there is a case to be made to categorise the stigmatization and public attack of non-offending paedophiles as hate, consistent with existing human rights laws. This is because paedophilia appears to conform to empirical definitions of sexual orientation and could therefore be afforded the same legal protections as other groups who are already afforded such protections on this basis.”

WARNING: This article discusses topics that are – quite frankly – disgusting.

I’ll admit it. I was wrong. I was having a civil discussion with some liberal friends of mine just over 6 years ago about the potential “slippery slope” involved in legalizing homosexual unions as licensed marriages. The common ground we found was that it’s a ridiculous argument to warn of the impending “man marries his horse” scenario; but where we diverged was the slope leading to legitimate human/human concerns – including polygamy and incest. The question at hand seemed to be whether or not people should be allowed generally, as Rhode Island’s state Representative Frank Ferri put it, “to marry the people we love.”

My thinking was with homosexual marriages being state-sanctioned as valid, there should be no argument (as far as the state is concerned) against polygamy. My friends agreed that the prohibition of polygyny or polyandry seems to be based primarily on religious concerns. Surely normalized polygamy would come soon. After all, why should we prohibit three or more consenting people who love each other from enjoying their authentic happiness?

The next step from there would be incest. Sure, there are potential problems with any offspring’s genetic integrity as a result of incestuous pregnancies. But since when are marriages about children? What is this, 1960? Procreation doesn’t need a social construct to thrive, and the social construct of marriage doesn’t need to encourage procreation! (At least this certainly seems to be the attitude of those wishing to expand the definition of marriage.) And even if someone DID get pregnant, and there was a concern over the fetus’s genes, why not just abort it?

My point was not to justify or encourage what I consider to be horrific behavior, only to point out that with an expanded definition of marriage to be between “adults who love each other,” there was then no justification for prohibiting these relationships, as far as the state is concerned. After polygamy was normalized, I argued, incest would likely follow soon thereafter.

My argument continued to the bottom of the slope, in which I made the case that even this definition of “adults who love each other” can itself be open to question as to what an “adult” is. We define “adult” by the arbitrary age of 18, but why should that be the standard? After all, isn’t this about the consent to love, not legal independence? The age of sexual consent in most states is 16, not 18; but even then, there are still many countries (who are we to judge?) that recognize the age of consent could be as low as 11, or simply when children reach puberty. Yes, the final step at the bottom of the slope would be to normalize pedophilia and give it legal status.

Boy, was I wrong.

Sure, there’s been some talk and movement about legalizing polygamy, and the incest argument has since gained a little sympathy in the United States (In Germany there’s a little more sympathy). But six years after that conversation, what part of the slope has the most movement? It’s the last step, and they call themselves either pedosexuals, minor-attracted persons (MAPs), or non-offending minor-attracted persons (NOMAPs).

In 2014, the New York Times argued for extending civil rights to those sexually attracted to children. In 2015, Salon published an article (since removed) titled, “I’m a pedophile, but not a monster,” and since then voices have felt emboldened to come out of the woodwork on Twitter and Tumblr, even so far as to demand acceptance into the #LGBTP movement.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed. Also, one or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]

Read another article on this topic: TEDx speaker says, ‘pedophilia is a natural sexual orientation’

“We should differentiate between child sexual abuse and pedophilia.”

“We should accept that pedophiles are people who have not chosen their sexuality… We should accept that pedophilia is a sexual preference, a thought, a feeling, and not an act. We should differentiate between child sexual abuse and pedophilia. We shouldn’t increase the suffering of pedophiles by excluding them, by blaming and mocking them.”