Monday, September 29, 2008

About That Non-Existant Mainstreaming of Paedophilia

JuliaM wants to know just what it takes to get barred from working with kids.

Chicks, hey? Isn't it obvious?

No need for weasel phrases like 'suggestive of' in the case of the Reverend & Mrs Nonce, but that one just does not excite our not at all mainstreaming pals.

See, that's the thing. Plenty of hipsters - particularly the libertarian ones - keep telling us that - gosh darn it! - they're all up for nailing perverts to the wall, but you start zapping child rapists and then something, something, something until we're living in the Fourth Reich.

They're never too specific about how we get from taking out the garbage to Strength through Joy, but their loony paranoia doesn't even stand up to cursory examination here. I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that a prerequisite for a slippery slope is that it should actually be a slope. Au contraire, in this case the issues couldn't be more clear cut. There's no 'profiling' required here, what we have is a 100%, self-confessed, unrepentant pervert flicking a v-sign at decency - and getting away with it.

There's more to it than that though. Let's approach this the other way. The usual suspects justify harassing teachers with the wrong views by claiming that the natives are just one blog post away from forming rampaging mobs of racist killers. Meanwhile, a pervert can openly advocate paedophilia with nary a whisper from our pals. That's revealing in two ways: not only does it show the essential humbuggery of the folks who claim they're ready to tear perverts limb from limb except, y'know... yada, yada, yada, it also flags up just how the lack of condemnation affects how the perverts view themselves.

Put it this way: in so far as Mrs Hart was comfortable defending outright perversion, it suggests a certain confidence that there were people out there who'd offer a sympathetic ear. Crunch question: does the hipsters refusal to forthrightly condemn perversion make it more or less likely that potential perverts will choose to act on their impulses?

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