Nobody but you is suggesting we protect the rights of pedophiles. This argument is going where it always goes ... as the author pointed out. There are bad people in the world. They make up a small percentage of the population. You don't change society as a whole based on the behavior of these bad people. You do what is reasonable and within your ability. Did you even read article? By your logic would you allow the Catholic church to exist? They were literally protecting pedophiles for years.
Congratulations, now you understand who benefited when the media created the pedophilia scare.
I confess to being a total conspiracy theory nut on this topic, and go out of my way to defend "sex offenders" in any online discussion I come across. Sadly this is not enough. We're up against a monstrous evil machine made up of mostly good and well-intentioned humans and there's no apparent way to defeat it.
Think about it: who should we blame for the persecution and near ostracism of the article's author? The journalist who honestly warns the public about pedophiles? The media executives? The lawmakers? The police? The whole chain is structured to remove accountability, letting both idea creators and executives sleep peacefully with a clear conscience. The end result is the poor person facing a giant senseless Machine, thankful to be alive after narrowly avoiding its grinding gears. It doesn't have to be this way, people.
So what if they turn out to be wrong later? Fighting paedophilia makes the world better now. Unless you are arguing that is not the case.
Look, at some point this is going to boil down to a simple question. Do you really consider sanctity of thought to be more important than the security of the people those thoughts threaten? Because to a very, very real extent, the thoughts themselves threaten. They create threatening atmospheres and markets in cruelty and suffering.
We're not talking about rights here. We can fight paedophilia completely within the current constitutional framework using completely aboveboard laws. We are talking about nothing more than social pressure of making people feel bad about thoughts that they have that are bad. Simple, uncomplicated moral pressure.
Sex with children is wrong and you deserve whatever happens to you if you do it. Can you at least agree with that?
"Virtually every youth-serving organization used to not handle abuse of youth properly."
This again? The existence of others committing the same crimes does not indemnify the Church.
Love the "Society has changed" argument. Clearly, recognizing that pedophilia is wrong by the Church is a product of changing times...not like they moved clergy from parish to parish to avoid them being caught.
Anyone who thinks that this is really about protecting children should look into how the catholic church, who has a long long [0] history of abusing children in Europe, is treated. If governments wanted to fight child abuse they could easily start there.
No, I don't support this argument. Pedophile priests probably gave support to many people and did a lot of good, too. They still need to be thrown forcefully from their offices and straight into prison.
We are not so desperate that we must accept evil just because it comes with a small payment of good. You can have the good on its own. That reporter or his team could just as easily have found that story while working for a different publisher.
Time to install some new backdoors, the public is hip to the old ones. The problem waz always enforcement, not rules. If you keep letting the pedophiles off, the church will be associated with them. Perhaps as it should. Any org with this level of systemic corruption should be investigated, but non-profits and churches seem to get a free pass to unethical and fraudulant behavior over a period of millenia. Show me abusive preists being put in jail, not some new comittee.
The Catholic Church has a pedophilia/child abuse problem. The conservative/Qanon obsession with pedophilia doesn't extend to churches, much less the Catholic Church. Why not?
> So you deny the existence of offenses against morality or evil?
I deny that any human has ever come out of the womb having committed any such offenses, and I deny that infants (and even children) are morally culpable for offenses committed by fully fledged persons with moral agency. You should be ashamed of yourself for even contemplating such a horrible notion.
Also, since you list pedophilia in your trinity of offenses against morality, I will also point out that the biggest coverups of child sexual abuse in history was conducted by the Catholic church. The cases that have come to light recently are probably just the tip of the iceberg. Taking men at the peak of their sexuality, telling them that having sex is a sin, and then putting them in charge of a congregation is like putting someone in charge of a kitchen and telling them that eating is sin.
And finally, as long as you've gone and pulled my trigger, I will also point out that there is a lot of daylight between pedophilia (which is a psychiatric disorder, not a moral offense) and actual child abuse (which is a moral offense because there is a victim). Getting sexually aroused is not a sin. Neither is gratifying that arousal by self-pleasuring, or by any sexual activity between mutually consenting adults irrespective of their gender and marital status. You want a "fact of sin"? Here you go: one of the biggest sins humans commit is telling people they are sinful simply because they experience a normal human emotion. That is so sick and twisted that the word "sin" doesn't even do it justice. If you believe in original sin and you want to see evil, look in the mirror.
> there are so many sex scandals of priests abusing children.
says who?
If anything priesthood is statistically protective against pedophilia, even without accounting for "professions with access".
If I remember, last time I read the literature on the topic, it was quoted as something like 0.2%? As opposed to, say, teachers, which came at a scary 8%, and against a background population level of about 1-2%.
The scandal was about the "handling" of these cases, not about their presumed overwhelming propensity compared to "normal people". So your theory about repressed urges and the like is effectively Bulverism.
Obviously you'd be forgiven for having that impression though. This kind of stuff os golddust for the media. All they have to do is match pedophilia articles with articles about catholics on the front page, and boom -- fact by association.
I guess there’s someone willing to defend anything.
I don’t see anything about the general population, but to bring up schools is whataboutism. Unfortunately predators seek out jobs that will put them close to children. The Catholic Church coverups go up to the chain of command and they continue to let pedophile priests serve. These issues were well known to the church but they let abuse continue and did not turn priests over to the police. Are you not outraged by this? If your son or daughter was abused by a priest who has been abusing others for decades would you not blame the church?
Fun fact: People care more about hurting paedophiles than they do about protecting children. It's why communities rally around protesting against sex offender treatment centres or cheer about prison rape like more sexual abuse somehow won't make offenders more deviant.
Pedophilia has victims and pedophiles are a potential danger to children. There is no victim when two adult gay men have consensual sex – unless one of them is harassed out of his job by people spying on him.
The comparison with pedophilia is so obviously inappropriate (and liable to unnecessarily inflame emotions in the context of this thread) that it makes me question whether you're engaging with this topic in good faith.
If you do have a point to make, could I ask you to please find a way to make it without reference to pedophilia, which has nothing to do with gay priests using hookup apps to talk to other adult gay men.
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