Sex is in the news again. Rush Limbaugh charged a major British newspaper of supporting ‘normalization’ of ‘pedophilia.’ President Obama pushed gay marriage: “our gay brothers and sisters [must be] treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” U.S. fertility is at an historic low, and a Japanese Minister admonished the old to “hurry up and die” while deprecating “tube people.” Why animus toward the old? Japan is finally shrinking, so it is running out of workers!
Are these headlines related? It would seem so. Fertility has dropped for a number of reasons, but a key factor is our embrace both of non-marital forms of sex — including homosexuality — as well as the closely related de-linking of sex and procreation. And then there is ‘pedophilia.’ If homosexual ‘love’ — most notable for spreading disease and increasing medical costs — is to be considered equal to the love of those who generate kids, how are we to regard ‘child lovers?’ Because so many ‘gays’ are into children, the logical result of protecting homosexuals is also to protect child molesters.
Even as Rush Limbaugh was sounding the alarm that The Guardian was trying to ‘sanitize’ sex with boys and its obvious homosexual implications, a pedophile ‘scandal’ at the state-funded and state-monitored British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was unfolding. Jimmy Savile, a former BBC host of popular programs for children and teens, was ‘everywhere.’ The Department of Health recruited Savile to lead a “taskforce” overseeing management of a high security psychiatric hospital — Broadmoor — back in 1988. When he was caught for child molesting in 2009, somehow Public Prosecutions let him off the hook — again! Savile received a knighthood in 1990, and died aged 84 in 2011. He was barely in his grave before so many allegations ‘hit the fan,’ two dozen cops were put on his case to try to figure out what happened.
A million dollars was spent researching Savile’s activities, so we may know more about him than any other child molester. While called a ‘pedophile’ in the news reports, Savile examples the tremendous sexual flexibility common to almost all child molesters: 73% of his known victims were under the age of 18, so he was clearly a child molester. But not just a child molester. A 1970 Kinsey Institute study in San Francisco found that of the 23% of male homosexuals who ‘admitted molesting boys,’ not one respondent said he only had sex with boys (instead, they said boys constituted “half or less” of their partners). So too, Savile was NOT exclusively interested in children, nor did he only have sex with children.
Savile apparently molested kids (and some adults) from 1955 through 2009. His range was vast: at least 13 hospitals, lots of schools and institutions, and — of course — at the BBC facilities. He got caught a few times, but somehow it never led to anything except being banned from some ward, and he never got prosecuted. His youngest known victim was an 8 year-old boy, his oldest a 47 year-old woman.
If we define someone who engages in homosexuality as a homosexual, Savile was a homosexual. If we define someone as a homosexual who, as an adult, engages in homosexuality with other same-sex adults, Savile was a homosexual. Notice the range of his tastes in Table 1: boys, girls, men, women — all were fair game. While 82% of the 450+ victims who came forward after the massive publicity were women, we do not know — and now, since his death, we cannot know — exactly how many individuals Savile molested, nor in what proportions. Men are less apt to report molestation, and many adults probably did not feel telling would be worth the exposure. Furthermore, some — like groupies who follow the famous to say they had sex with them (Savile was famous in Britain, after all) — may have enjoyed the experience and did not consider themselves one of Savile’s victims.
| Age (yrs) | No. Females (% of total) | No. Males (% of total) |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 | 18 (10%) | 5 (14%) |
| 10–13 | 23 (13%) | 10 (29%) |
| 14–16 | 63 (36%) | 14 (43%) |
| 16–17 | 17 (10%) | — |
| 18+ | 52 (30%) | 5 (14%) |
While the media, and often the state, has criticized the Catholic Church for ‘covering up’ or ‘looking the other way’ regarding child molestation by priests (see the latest episode in the Los Angeles diocese, for instance), the Savile case shows how the BBC — as the biggest media outlet in Great Britain — hospitals, and schools handled a similar situation. This one spanned five decades of molestation by one media star.
One of the ‘big lies’ of the gay movement is the claim that “homosexuals are no more apt to molest kids than heterosexuals” (others are claims of great numbers and that they were ‘born that way’). Of course, the mental health professions are eager to back this up. The Harvard Mental Health Letter claimed in July 2010 that:
“Roughly 9% to 40% of pedophiles [with an “attraction to children who have not yet reached puberty”] are homosexual in their orientation toward children — but that is not the same as saying they are homosexual. Homosexual adults are no more likely than heterosexuals to abuse children.”
It seems the bright folk at Harvard either have or will not read the Gay Report or the 1970 Kinsey study cited above, or else are deliberately ignoring the evidence.
But what should we call a man who has sex with little boys? In late February of 2008, FRI interviewed George Finch, Coordinator of Professional Practices in the Oregon education bureaucracy. Finch keeps the records and does much of the investigation of teacher-pupil sexual encounters for the state. Notes taken at the time of the interview recount Finch as saying:
“that most of the molestations by male teachers in the elementary grades involved male homosexuals, and he only knew of two instances (in over a decade) by female teachers, one of a boy and one of a girl. At the high school level he noted that boys, especially, were loath to testify, but that it ran about 70% heterosexual/30% homosexual for male teachers and about 50/50 for female teachers.
Finch noted that few girls were willing to testify about involvement with female teachers at the HS level, since he believed ‘they were exploring their sexuality, and were often friends with the teacher with whom they had relations.’”
Given the link between homosexuality and pederasty, Rush Limbaugh’s concern about the normalization of ‘pedophilia’ is understandable. Indeed, as gay rights advances and homosexuals are injected into more situations that include kids, we would expect an increase in the numbers and proportions of boys being molested. So far, only one study, the National Survey of Adolescents, suggests this might be happening: in 1995, 13.2 percent of girls reported sexual assault in the past year, dropping to 11.5 percent in 2005 (a relative decrease of 13%), while boys’ reports increased from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent (a relative increase of almost 9%).
What Does ‘Normalization’ of Pedophilia Look Like?
What does ‘normalization’ of pedophilia entail? At first, it will only mean that: 1) people realize that a fair number of adults are sexually attracted to children; 2) the shame of having such attractions should be eliminated due to being ‘kinda natural’; 3) those who have such desires will be able to ‘come out’ and ‘be accepted’ because they are ‘normal’; but 4) they must be encouraged to not touch kids, and kids must be protected from them.
The most visible ‘expert’ in the area and the one highlighted in the Guardian, Professor Sarah Goode, said “adult sexual contact with children should be prevented but punishing an individual for his sexual attraction rather than his actual behavior is counterproductive; all of us adults need to behave in a much more mature and responsible way, so that all of our children can have happy childhoods, free from harm. Hating paedophiles seems easier, but doesn’t keep children safe” (Understanding and addressing adult sexual attraction to children, 2010).
We can all appreciate that someone should not be punished for having desires of an anti-social sort. Our laws, after all, are based on punishment for behavior, not desire. But how does anyone know an individual has such desires? There are only two ways: 1) they either do something that proves a desire — e.g., a male teacher seduces a boy student, thus proving he has homosexual desires; or 2) they tell others about their desire. Professor Goode is obviously concerned that people are being shunned because of #2.
But such revulsion and concern is reasonable. Generally, we do not know if someone wants to do something bad. But if they tell you they have desires to have sex with kids (or with same-sex adults), a significant line is crossed. For one does something only if they have desire, ability, and opportunity. So they are not only alerting you to the first component, but they are making you to some degree complicit in their crime if they act on that desire.
If, for instance, you hire an elementary teacher who tells you he wants to have sex with kids, you are risking the lives of his students. Of course, as Goode points out, her research and that of others demonstrates that many teachers want to have sex with their charges. But initially, upon hire, we do not know who these teachers are. Some teachers indeed act on their sexual desires; credible research indicates that about 1% of all U.S. pupils in grades K through 12 have had sex with one or more of their teachers.
But to be ‘broad-minded and fair’ by hiring those who tell us up front that even though they are sexually attracted to kids near the very age of their pupils, they would never, ever do it if you hired them, would be a disaster. All of us have odd desires or wants, and some of those desires may be sexual — but we have enough social sense and self-control not to talk about them. If people cannot ‘shut up’ about their desires, we have a pretty good idea they are hot to fulfill them.
Not being able to ‘shun’ or discriminate against those who openly express their anti-social desires leads, almost inexorably, to the next step of ‘normalization.’ Once people discover that ‘pedophiles’ are nice folk, that they bleed like us, they cry like us, they can be kind, etc. — even as with homosexuals — they can be expected to ‘soften’ their concerns. After all, the ‘pedophiles’ are simply being “honest” about themselves. At that point, accepting (or being forced to accept) their actual behavior is not far behind.
A widely believed empirical reality about pedophilia is expressed by J Michael Bailey, Professor at Northwestern University, who says such relationships, entered into voluntarily, are “nearly uncorrelated with undesirable outcomes.” Yes, this is the same Bailey that published the poorly-done ‘gay twins’ study with co-researcher Pillard. Bailey wrote in a refereed journal in 2012 that “persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of paedophilic relationships does not yet exist.” So it hinges on what you consider “persuasive evidence.”
The testimony of history — from Aristophanes to the Didache to contemporary testimonies of those molested — all could be disregarded by those who feel ‘only a controlled scientific experiment could prove’ what is really true. Obviously, such an experiment is not going to happen. So just what are Bailey and many, many others in the ‘sexual liberation movement’ saying? It is not quite clear, but they and their supporters can always retreat to ‘you haven’t PROVED it is dangerous/always harmful/etc.’
Common sense ‘knows’ far more than those who await ‘final, irresistible proof’ can ever know. That’s the way life is. When it comes to adults having sex with kids, demanding such ‘proof’ is the refuge of scoundrels.