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OK, there’s been a war, chaos in the Middle East,
Hillary’s book, and a new “American Idol,” so maybe we’ve been a
little distracted. Still,
a pitch floated at a conference of the American Psychiatric
Association last month to delete pedophilia from the profession’s
list of mental disorders should have been screamed from headlines
sea to sea.
The discussion surrounded a suggestion to remove child
molesters from the next edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders,” the shrink’s guide to mental
illnesses. The APA is careful to note it is not considering a
formal proposal; I want to carefully note that slapping it on the
annual meeting agenda of the nation’s premier organization of
psychiatrists is formal enough.
Dear Lord, please reassure me no one’s buying the bilge
from the pedophile lobby. I don’t need stone tablets or a burning
bush; a well-aimed lightening bolt will do.
The drive to normalize pedophilia is nothing new. The
North American Man/Boy Love Association and other front groups have
pushed the notion for years, mostly from the shadows. What has
changed is increasing acceptance, or at least decreasing revulsion,
in some relatively mainstream circles.
The movement got a major boost from the University of
Minnesota Press last year, which lent its good name to the
publication of “Harmful to Minors: The
Perils of Protecting Children from Sex.” The book is a combination
public relations effort and how-to manual by Judith Levine, who
isn’t just referring to hormone-fueled teenagers. She means younger
children as well.
Try this from the review on Amazon.com’s website: “‘Harmful
to Minors’ offers fresh alternatives to fear and silence, describing
sex-positive approaches that are ethically based and focus on common
sense. Levine provides optimistic, though realistic, prescriptions
for how we might do better in guiding children toward loving well,
that is, safely, pleasurably …”. We certainly wouldn’t want
pedophiles disrespecting anyone’s ethnic traditions – many of which,
I suspect, aren’t particularly disposed to having children molested.
As near as I can tell, Levine
has been writing about sex for about two decades but has no
particular professional qualifications. That didn’t matter to the
Los Angeles Times, which
handed Levine one of its annual Book Prizes and a milestone in
the march to de-stigmatize pedophilia.
The encouragement from
the University of Minnesota and the Los Angeles Times – no matter
how they cloak it with denials and cries of free speech – is
stomach-churning, but a declaration of normalcy by the APA would
almost certainly lead to organized efforts to decriminalize
pedophilia.
Advocates are already getting bolder. In the past my
columns on the subject have brought supportive mail and more than a
few gut-wrenching personal stories. In recent months, however, I
have begun to receive a trickle of rebukes. Some are little more
than profane rants, but others employ the buzz words often used to
defend just about anything once considered immoral.
About three weeks ago I received an email signed by a
man who claimed to have enjoyed his molestation by a stepbrother at
age 7, and again by a blood relative at age 9. “In the end, those
of you who claim to be able to judge right from wrong, for someone
other than yourself, do at least as much damage to children as the
sexual acts themselves do,” he wrote, miming Harris. “Creating laws
and sociological stigmas to govern human sexuality is a paramount of
folly. Be careful those of you who see only black and white.”
He’s talking about children, 7 years old and perhaps
younger, in a manner only imaginable in a society that reviles the
possibility that anything can be absolutely wrong. Pedophile
advocates can fear laws and stigma if they wish; I’ll save my
caution for them. |
