Progressive media trying to normalize pedophilia

[GMDino]

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/im_a_pedophile_youre_the_monsters_my_week_inside_the_vile_right_wing_hate_machine/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

I’m a pedophile, you’re the monsters: My week inside the vile right-wing hate machine
My pedophilia essay outraged the right. My attempt to humanize a real problem brought out their nastiest rage

Quote:What I want to focus on now is the continuing misconceptions, prevailing fears and willful ignorance I’ve encountered because of this, both about pedophilia itself and about Virtuous Pedophiles as an organization. My experiences doing the Niall Boylan Show (Irish talk radio) and the Dr. Drew on Call TV show taught me that pedophilia is still largely a gut-level issue for a lot of people. One caller to the radio show said that she didn’t want to know what pedophiles think and lambasted the show itself for even giving me a platform. I told her that no problem was ever solved by refusing to understand the issue. We’ve been in that mode for a few decades now—has it fixed the tragedies of child abuse and child porn? Nope. If anything, this attitude has only increased the problem, since pedophiles at risk of offending are unlikely to seek help in this severely hostile environment. This caller fancied herself a reasonable person, but she decided this issue was beyond any reason. Unfortunately, this viewpoint is all too common.

Another point that arose on Dr. Drew was that pedophiles are by nature compulsive. This opinion comes from the extant data, almost all of which is based on people who’ve been arrested, since non-offending pedophiles tend not to self-identify or participate in studies. What do you think that data is going to show? Yes, criminals are often compulsive, but this data says little about people like me, who haven’t offended. This point should be obvious, but these kinds of statements demonstrate the dearth of levelheadedness when it comes to this issue. Logic gets chucked out the window. Dr. Drew himself even suggested that, because I was using hydrocodone, I might’ve abused kids without knowing it. First off, I never took more than two or three pills a day, well within what is generally prescribed, even though they weren’t being prescribed to me. I never blacked out or even came close to being out of touch with reality. I’m neither stupid nor a massive risk taker. And being a doctor, he should’ve known that opiates pretty much obliterate your libido anyway.

Nearly all of the callers suggested I seek professional help myself, as did Dr. Drew. Well, I already tried that . . . more than once. My counselors were nice guys, but there was little they could do for me. They knew they couldn’t “cure” me of my sexuality—that doesn’t workon anyone and it won’t work for us. All they could do was lend a sympathetic ear. Another caller said I should do whatever it takes until I’m rid of this. For those of you who feel this way, question: are you going to foot the bill for that? In case you missed it from the first article, I am quite poor. I can’t afford that, and my state, Tennessee, is one of those that turned down the new Medicaid funding, leaving me without medical insurance. I am far from the only pedophile in this situation. And again, even if I could afford it, what could they do for me? As well, a lot of pedophiles are afraid to seek medical help because of the mandatory reporting laws, fearing that they could be reported even if they’ve done nothing wrong.

As for VirPed, one of the panelists on the Dr. Drew show suggested that our forum was dangerous because we lacked oversight. I didn’t get a chance to respond to this (nor to several other accusations leveled at me, since everyone pretty much just talked over each other and I politely stayed quiet until addressed directly by Dr. Drew himself), so I want to answer that point here. First off, it isn’t like we are operating in secret. Membership is open to anyone, including non-pedophiles, providing they follow our rules and aren’t just there to make problems for us. We’ve also worked with notable experts in the field, most prominently Dr. James Cantor, who holds a membership on our forum. And there’s nothing stopping the authorities from joining our forum either; I have little doubt that they are there, looking over our shoulders. So we do have some oversight. Besides, all those pro-contacter forums we’re competing against have no oversight either. Should we shut our digital doors while those forums continue to operate, until we get an official stamp of approval? Remember: when it comes to anti-contact pedo forums, we’re the only game in town. That being said, I am officially extending an invitation to any experts, scholars, counselors or authority figures who wish to learn from us, or even keep a watchful eye on us. We have never closed our doors to anyone who didn’t mean us harm.

With regard to angry respondents to my article, the greatest amount of flak has come from the far right, who smeared Salon for daring to allow me to speak, as if silencing pedophiles somehow equates to fighting sexual abuse. I want to state for the record that the members of our forum come from all political, religious and philosophical stripes. We are a pretty diverse group, but we really don’t fight about God or politics internally—our mission is too important to get caught up in that. But according to Breitbart and company, since Salon was willing to publish my piece, it must mean they have some secret agenda to “normalize pedophilia.” The constant refrain of these folks is the old slippery slope argument, where they resort to appealing to people’s fear of a future where anyone can marry anyone, or anything. These ultra-conservatives reject the notion of pedophilia being a sexual orientation not on scientific grounds but on purely political ones. They resist the word that best fits our sexuality (which many experts are now using themselves); in so doing, they are assuming that people are too dumb to understand that a term does not justify an activity. It is merely recognition of a state of being.

John Sexton’s article for Breitbart attempted to paint me as a terrible person, since the author apparently had no good arguments against my actual position and never bothered to ask me to clarify the points he was confused about. First off, Sexton attacks me for not narking out the people at the pro-contacter forum who were supposedly doing illegal things. This is purely a straw man attack, since I never observed anyone there doing anything illegal or admitting to illegal activity (which is actually forbidden by that forum’s rules). Before I respond, I want to say that I considered naming the forum here. I didn’t want to, but since I’m being forced to defend myself on the grounds that I haven’t really been vigilant about my anti-contact position, with the implication that I was likely involved in immoral activities myself, I almost felt I had no choice. But ultimately, I decided it was worth weathering the accusations not to give that forum the publicity they so desperately seek. At the risk of embarrassing myself for some stupid things in the past, you can seek out my old Wikisposure page if you like; it’s still out there, doing its mischief, so it’s not hard to find the name of that site if you are truly interested.