There's a witch running around that has angered the whole of American society. She is very adept at hiding so we have been forced to skirt around constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to try and catch her. If there ever was a time when the end justified the means most people will agree this is surely it.
At the height of the adult bookstore fad that swept the nation during the '70s anyone over 18 could walk into some adult bookstores and find a section of sex books and movies that featured prepubescent and pubescent children. The size of this section was small compared to other sections that featured adult models but nevertheless had enough customers that bookstore owners devoted shelf space to it. There was then as there is now a certain percentage of the population who found such things interesting.
I was obviously not around during the Salem witchcraft trials and was too young to remember anything about McCarthy's witch-hunt against suspected communists. Nevertheless, I still have an enormous dislike for miscarriages of justice. There is just something about the idea of people gathering around and stoning someone to death that rubs me the wrong way even when it takes on the less obvious forms of injustice manifest in today's courtrooms. In fact, such things rub me so wrong I think I would have no problem machine gunning a mob that had gathered to stone some poor girl to death because she went out with the wrong boy. I would feel morally justified to kill others not only to save a victim of injustice but to rid society of some small measure of the stupidity and ignorance behind injustice.
It might be different if the person being stoned to death had killed someone or in some way done grievous harm to another. But when the only alleged crime they are guilty of is challenging socially accepted norms that at worst result in some inflamed egos, then in my way of thinking it would be better to simply eliminate these twisted egos capable of assuming beliefs could ever hold more importance than life. Unfortunately it is real easy to see the injustices committed by others while it may not be so easy to see the same injustices that occur within the mob you happen to be part of.
One of the most noted injustices in modern times is one the majority have eagerly endorsed against the pedophile witch. Who are these so-called pedophiles? I use the term "so-called pedophiles" because few if any have a real understanding of exactly who or what the term refers to if it accurately describes anyone at all. The professional community quickly closed off any debates on the subject as roaming mobs searching for pedophiles threatened to torch their clinics and institutions. At the head of these pedophile witch-hunts, standing side by side with Christian anti-sex crusaders were those trying to hide their own deviant sexual interest as certified by psychiatrists in the most recently endorsed lists of psychiatric disorders.
I submit to you that there are no such things as pedophiles any more than there are heterosexuals or homosexuals. None of these terms even comes close to accurately describing the true nature of anyone's sexuality as it plays out within the distorting and inhibiting restraints of today's cultures. About the only thing that is certain after decades of associating sex with the rare and extreme is that the new norm for sex in the public's eye has been transformed into the rare and extreme. To say that sex has been unfairly vilified by the media has to be one of the biggest understatements of the century.
The challenge of legally punishing people for engaging in sex with minors has long been filled with problems. Alleged victims have always been reluctant to testify against someone who more often than not turned out to be a parent or close family member. Some were also reluctant to accept the premise they were victims at all in sexual encounters they not only enjoyed but frequently played some role in instigating. Laws defining 18 as the age at which one is mature enough to decide who they want to have sex with evokes cynicism from sexually active teens and preteens who view such restrictions as outmoded and totally out of touch with the reality they know. It is not that uncommon for many of these so-called children to be married with their own children at 16 which also draws into question the viability of the government's one size fits all attitude towards sex. And when government prosecutors fight to have 12 year olds stand trial as adults doesn't this call into question the rationality behind laws that say when it comes to sex you must be 18 before you are old enough to decide?
Needless to say, anyone in their right mind would find the idea of an adult sexually attacking a child as being one of the most horrid acts humans are capable of. Beyond anything related to sex, such acts emphasize man's inhumanity to man which is never more distressing than in situations where the strong and powerful take unfair advantage of the weak. It contradicts deep instinctual drives that move most to protect children rather than harm them. The desire to protect children from sexual assault is admirable. The methods currently used to do so are anything but admirable.
Certainly attempts to define any and all situations where an adult interacts sexually with a child under the blanket heading of sexual assault does not adequately represent the reality in the far greater majority of these interactions. The real dangers children face from physical or mental assault are linked to aspects of adult personalities that have a much closer relationship to violence than anything related to sex. There is and always has been a very real and tangible need to protect children from violence which has no intrinsic relationship to sex.
While scientists were still researching the question of whether sexual interactions at an early age was psychologically harmful to children, lawmakers tried to find a way to prevent any debates on the issue from finding its way into the courtroom. Up until this time, anyone accused of harming someone had rights guaranteed by the 6th Amendment of the Constitution to challenge assertions of harm in court. Actually, the onus was frequently upon prosecutors to prove harm which had a limiting affect upon the restrictions the government could place upon sex by claiming harm. But after putting on a show where congress listened to the testimony of law enforcement officials and a group of alleged child experts who also just happened to have direct ties to religious organizations, the anti-sex lobby succeeded in shredding constitutional guarantees by mandating in law that sex was harmful to children. Unfortunately, no one was there to speak in defense of childhood sexuality or to explain that the rare, unusual and sensationalized events testified to by law enforcement officials did not even come close to representing the real ways childhood sexuality played itself out in most children's lives. As lawmakers patted each other on the back, the congressional declaration that sex was harmful to children opened the door to new laws whose intended or consequential effect was to demonize childhood sex across an entire nation.
There were two basic misunderstandings behind attempts to keep children from behaving sexually. The first was 'out of sight out of mind' which falsely assumed if children were not exposed to sex they would never be moved to think about it. Such ideas completely overlooked the fact that children experience the same basic sexual urges as adults which originate inside as opposed to outside. Though few would deny that external stimulation might influence one to think about sex, this does not say we would not think about sex at the same level we ordinarily would without external prompting. And though it may be true that the sexual urges children experience are not as intense or frequent as their adult counterparts, this does not stop them from experiencing sexual urges. The second misunderstanding behind attempts to keep children from behaving sexually nestled tightly within ideas of protecting children from sexual assault was that the experience of any sex at an early age was a traumatic event leaving lifelong scars upon developing young minds. This view was not endorsed by the scientific community at the time and is not endorsed by it today.
The tools law enforcement had at their disposal did not enable them to overcome privacy rights inhibiting them from ferreting out suspected pedophiles from the privacy of their own homes. It wasn't enough to put people in jail for engaging in sex with someone under 18. Now they wanted to make it a crime for just thinking about engaging in sex with someone under 18 so they could theoretically prevent it from happening. So they decided to try and pass a new law making the possession of child pornography illegal thereby giving them the tool they needed to identify and incarcerate those who might be drawn to engage in sex with children.
Arresting people for simply possessing a certain type of picture meant lawmakers had to overcome legal concerns about punishing people for committing an act where there was no direct contact with a real person one could identify as a victim. They also had the problem that many individuals could be imprisoned for the same single incident of illegal sex with a minor depicted in multiple copies of the same picture that could have been taken 50 or more years ago. Arguments were made that since the pictures contained images of illegal activity some felt motivated those in possession of child pornography to actually engage in, this was enough reason to make the possession of such pictures illegal. It was also argued that child pornography could be used as a tool to break down a child's resistance to sex making it easier for pedophiles to seduce children into an illegal act. Concern was also raised that child pornography could re-traumatize victims who later ran across pictures of their sexual encounters on the internet.
In the rush to push child pornography legislation through everyone seemed to overlook the obvious fact that renders all the above arguments invalid. The fact is you could just as easily apply the exact same reasoning forbidding the public from possessing sexually explicit pictures of children to pictures depicting other illegal activities such as murder. And even though, unlike debated issues of psychological harm from sex, there is absolutely no doubt that murder is harmful to both society and the victims of murder, no one has ever suggested we should make the possession of pictures depicting murder illegal in spite of good evidence showing exposure to pictorial depictions of violence leads some to commit violent acts including murder. It seems we have accepted a double standard in social values that seek to protect children from sex on one hand whether they need it or not, while at the same time overlooking the negative effects graphic depictions of violence have on those same children who are exposed to it on a daily basis.
Of course, arguing against the legitimacy of one irrational idea by comparing it to another irrational idea does not further the argument against the original idea. Two wrongs do not make a right. However, in law it is accepted to expect and demand that the laws we enact can withstand such tests of comparative fairness. In other words if you are going to put people in prison for possessing child pornography you should also be putting people in prison for possessing, transmitting or recording pictures depicting graphic violence or murder.
Article I of the US Constitution in section 9, paragraph 3 states that "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed." "The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature." U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965). A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Congress's declaration that sex was harmful to children used as a basis for outlawing the possession of child pornography qualifies as a clear legislative attempt to single out those sexually attracted to children and imprison them without benefit of trial. Not only did congress legislate away the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the accused to face his accuser they enacted law that eliminated any need for a victim at all.
Without getting too deeply into the unconstitutional aspects of child pornography law it should be noted that the constitution forbids enacting laws that turn a large segment of the population into criminals. The government's own statistics establishes the fact of how widespread public interest is in child pornography thereby also establishing the unconstitutionality of these laws. Further, any law that cannot be clearly understood by the general public who have a right to understand what they can and cannot do under the law is unconstitutional. The evidence clearly shows the definition of exactly where legal boundaries are drawn between what is and is not considered child pornography meets the legal definition of vagueness which also renders child pornography legislation unconstitutional. To have a Supreme Court Justice define child pornography as something he knows when he sees it may be fine for him but it leaves many others struggling to define the letter of the law. And finally, any law whose affect goes beyond its intended restrictions is legally defined as overbroad which also means it is unconstitutionally invalid. There is little doubt child pornography legislation goes way beyond its original intention which never meant for it to cause parents to be arrested for developing nude pictures of their children at K-Mart. The fact internet hosting companies immediately disconnect any websites they are informed contain nude pictures of children though such depictions are perfectly legal can also be directly tied to child pornography legislation. Scientific research into child sexuality has virtually been brought to a halt since the enactment of child pornography legislation as the public now views such research as boarding on illegal activity for even suggesting there is any sexual aspect of childhood to explore.
I've always viewed news stories about "pedophiles" with a great deal of skepticism. There is just something about these stories that does not ring true. As a young teen, I had a few encounters with older men and women more than twice my age and I thoroughly enjoyed them as did others in the crowd I hung around with. I would hardly define these encounters as anything even remotely connected to abuse or trauma. It may have even been illegal back then but unlike today, everyone had the good sense to understand that you don't insist someone is a victim when they say there was no assault and they enjoyed the sex.
It seems the word "abuse" may be the most abused word in the English language today. All these highly sensationalized stories about pedophile daycare centers, satanic pedophile rituals, pedophile priests and international pedophile rings never made a lot of sense especially when the so-called victims recounted how they returned time and time again for repeated "abuse". Of course the element of money in all this obviously plays an important role which could explain the enormous scale of the alleged problem as defined by the newly evolved cottage industry that makes its money from child abuse. One in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys paints a pretty bleak picture until you realize that the far greater majority in these statistics aren't real victims at all, but people like me who enjoyed the sex and wanted to go back for more.
It is wrong to ruin people's lives, destroy families and sentence citizens to terms sometimes exceeding sentences given out for murder for doing nothing more than possessing pictures. Not that it makes any difference but contrary to what the general public has been led to believe, child pornography more often than not contains images of smiling children clearly enjoying their sexuality. Images depicting forced sex are rare by comparison which likely mirrors the reality in the frequency of such encounters. It is wrong to turn good and productive citizens often with no previous criminal history into one of the most despised criminals for doing something that roughly 25 years ago wasn't even illegal. And with the inevitable phenomena of sexting, now the laws supposedly enacted to protect children are directly responsible for unspeakable crimes against children thrown in jail and emotionally traumatized for life in the name of protecting them from sex. Have people lost their minds?
There are many valid reasons why it was a mistake to make the possession of child pornography illegal. Not only because laws were enacted to facilitate an immoral and unjust witch-hunt against so-called pedophiles or anyone suspected of harboring sexual interests in children, but even more importantly because these laws effectively criminalize childhood sexuality not only in the minds of children but everyone else as well. Seeing an integral part of your own personality as immoral, abnormal or unacceptable to the society one lives in does serious psychological damage to impressionable young minds too immature to question the irrationality of misguided government legislation. The statistical increase in suicides among younger and younger aged children should be setting off alarm bells in the minds of anyone claiming a sincere interest in the wellbeing of children. But that is not what is happening. Instead, children's cries for help continue to be drowned out by a nation so invested in anti-sex rhetoric, it is all but impossible for it to see how they are killing their own children.
The government had no legal standing then and has none now that gives it the authority to turn an entire nation against childhood sex. They were mandated in law to resist efforts by religious lobbies to turn scripture into civil law. Separation of church and state provisions should have prevented government complicity in demonizing childhood sex or endorsing religious based ideas that sex is evil and sinful through legislative trickery declaring sex is psychologically harmful.
People did not used to view sex the way we have learned to view it today. The association of sex with emotional trauma is a fairly new phenomenon without much basis in fact. This does not say that rape or forced sex does not cause trauma because it certainly does. While sex with an unwelcome partner may cause extreme sensations of disgust both during and after, our imagination of how terrible this disgust must feel likely exceeds the reality. Many misassumptions about how children might respond to a sexual encounter with an adult stem from our own idea of how we personally would envision sex with a much older partner. But our ideas about this neglect to include childhood memories where some not only found a few adults sexually attractive but occasionally went on to develop crushes on them.
The fact is, sex is overwhelmingly something the mentally healthy would put in the positive experience column. Sex feels good in any number of ways as it meets deep basal needs that draw all of us to experience it. Attempts to claim that sex traumatizes children ignore the overwhelmingly positive aspects of sex. If the experience of sex evokes guilt it would be wrong to blame this on sex when the real culprit can usually be traced to irrationalism we acquired from religious folklore.
All expressions of love are essentially sexual in nature... a communication where one is being the other - where empathy is duplicated and understanding is complete. Sexuality is not limited to the physical act of sex alone. Sex and love are a fusion, a coming together of thought and feeling and body; the synthesis of dominance and submissiveness which has nothing to do with age or one's level of physical strengths. Sex rarely is expressed at the expense of someone else but uplifts and illumines all concerned. As human beings we are all sexual and our sexual activity in whatever manner we find satisfying is normal and natural for us. Sexual denials, shame, embarrassment, inhibition and guilt all cause a great deal of stress and resulting problems. Fulfillment of our sex drive and sublimation of it through love often leads to uninhibited happiness and ecstatic satisfaction.
To reach the conclusion that sex is only supposed to manifest itself in the limited ways prescribed by today's current flavor of social acceptability which frowns upon any type of intergenerational sex is to ignore the obvious reality that people have always been diverse. Not only does each and every one of us have different tastes, likes and dislikes; the fact of our intended diversity evidences any number of important reasons for it including those tied to the survival of our species. While some may be genetically predisposed to perpetuate the species through sexual interactions with the opposite sex, others may be genetically directed to perpetuate the species by raising abandoned, neglected or orphaned children. In short, nothing could be more normal than to experience different sexual preferences than the person sitting next to you or to experience evolving sexual preferences as one goes through life.
To assume that normal sexually healthy adults never see past the runny noses, scraped elbows and immature physical features to notice the sexual charm or budding sexual attractiveness of a child is like claiming none of us were once children acutely aware of the sexual attractiveness we saw in other children. Further, to assume everyone is supposed to disconnect completely from their childhoods at a sexual level with no residual memories or effects stemming from those memories is to ignore nothing less than the whole of human history that has long established sexual attractions between adults and children. The fact we outgrow our childhoods and frequently move on to more mature types of sexual interactions does not mean we leave everything behind or that we are supposed to leave everything behind. In fact, the only accurate picture one can draw about human sexuality is that most of us are quite capable of enjoying sexual interactions with a far wider variety of partners than today's social norms would permit us to admit to ourselves let alone others.
The professional community has long recognized that normal adults occasionally see children as sexually attractive and even today their attempt to define pedophilia (DSM-4; 302.2) includes a qualifier that permits adult sexual attractions to children for up to 6 months without classifying the person as a pedophile. I challenge anyone not prone to delusion based denial or outright lying to honestly claim that have never found a prepubescent or pubescent child the least bit sexually attractive. If you need evidence of the level of public hysteria on this issue consider for a moment your own reluctance to voice any opinion that even hints you may have on some level noticed the sexual appeal in children. Now ask yourself why, with rational voices silenced, the level of irrationalism surrounding childhood sex has reached the level of hysteria it has.
As already stated rape or forced sex is a hideous crime in any but a sociopath's eyes. However, attempts to define rape based solely upon the age of someone old enough to speak for themselves does not further justice. When it becomes necessary to legislate harm as the only viable means to establish harm everyone should stand up and take notice. Assumptions of harm do not create it where there was none no matter how distasteful one person's actions may appear to another.
Sex is or should be a private matter between two individuals. There is no legitimate need for any government to involve itself in the private sex lives of its citizens beyond laws forbidding anyone from forcing sex upon an unwilling partner. Age of consent laws serve no legitimate function except to attempt to force the sexual preferences of adults upon children at the expense of denying anyone under 18 their inalienable right to behave sexually with any willing partner they chose within the boundaries of parental guidance.
The mistake we have made about sex is the same old anti-diversity problem otherwise known as prejudice that has long plagued us. We mistakenly assume that what we experience sexually is supposed to be what everyone else is supposed to experience too. And if it isn't, then we take this one step further and assume there must be something wrong with anyone whose sexual tastes differ from our own.
None of this is meant as an endorsement for intergenerational sex or any other manifestation of human sexuality. The truth is that no matter what you or I think about sex or other's sexual preferences there is little any of us can or should do to prevent our fellow sexual beings from behaving sexually. Putting thousands of so-called pedophiles in prison is not going to stop adults from engaging in sex with children anymore than it will stop children from engaging in sex with adults. This notion that pedophiles are the one's doing all the harm to children sexually or otherwise is statically false no matter how much everyone likes a simple villain to blame things on.
The pedophile witch we have been trying to catch is nothing more than a myth. He or she doesn't really exist. We will never catch her just as our attempts to catch her will never change the reality of human sexuality. Before you light the match that sets her on fire you should remember that being a witch was not a matter of choice but rather a statement of the reality one is born into. It is the same reality that says if you are going to burn a witch, you better expect the same treatment from anyone who discovers the broom you fly around on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZU0NwyoRdg
