By Hank Beckman -
With all the cultural changes we’ve been through in recent years, from same-sex marriage to male transsexuals demanding access to female restrooms to people deciding that they are “gender fluid,” the general outrage about Michael Jackson’s perversions and R. Kelly’s preying on underage girls is, in a twisted way, almost welcome.
Welcome in the sense that as confusing as the modern world can be—especially to people who were raised in an era where gender distinctions were clear—at least the outrage over their predatory behavior shows that we haven’t completely bottomed out morally.
No matter how many strange changes we’ve been put through, at least progressives aren’t trying to make pedophiles acceptable.
Or are they?
In her Feb. 21 article in the Federalist, Stella Morabito reports that the movement to sexualize children is alive and well.
She covers territory that should be familiar to anyone observing the sewer that our culture has become in recent years: the sexualization of children that includes watching an 11-year-old dancing as a drag queen on a mornings television; parents taking their young children to drag-queen story times at public libraries around the country; people advocating giving hormone blockers to children as young as eight. Anyone who doesn’t get their news exclusively from mainstream media should be familiar with our culture’s steady slide towards depravity.
Morabito links to a TED talk given by Madeleine van der Bruggen, a psychologist from the Netherlands who works with law enforcement to prevent child abuse.
Van der Bruggen cites statistics showing up to 3 percent of males have some form of interest in pedophilia. She stresses that nothing can be done about it because “we’re talking about biology. We’re talking about a sexual orientation.”
Get that? Just like straight sex, gay sex, or being bisexual, to be a pedophile is just another form of sexual orientation of which one needn’t be ashamed. And apparently the rest of us just have to accept it or be labeled mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers, forever banished from The Society of Decent People.
And van der Bruggen knows how to begin addressing the problem.
“First of all, let’s stop with hate,” she said. “Let’s stop with the negative vibes in the media.” (As Morabito notes, the language sounds eerily like the justification for same-sex marriage)
However well-intentioned van der Bruggen might be in insisting that open discussion of the issue will help, if she doesn’t realize that her approach is the first step down a slippery slope that will ultimately lead to recognizing pedophile “rights” and lowering the age of consent to God-knows what age, she would better serve her profession by restricting her practice to helping people quit smoking or procrastinating.
The move toward normalizing pedophilia isn’t new. Since the 1970s, we’ve had the North American Man Boy Love Association, a group that is open about its members sexual attraction to young boys and teenagers, the justification being that if no coercion is involved, no crime has been committed; statutory rape laws are apparently irrelevant in NAMBLA.
But no serious progressive politician, journalist or activist would dare suggest an approach anything like normalizing pedophilia or abolishing the the age of consent. Would they?
Maybe not; or so one hopes. But anyone paying close attention to progressives in the last half-century knows that to blindly believe in their assurances of restraint and policy moderation is a dicey proposition at best.
Since at least the 1960s, progressives have made a habit of proposing polices—or denying support for certain policies—that set off alarm bells with large groups of Americans, who rightly point out not only how the polices might be wrong, but to what they might lead.
Progressives always swear their new proposals are the final solution to a pressing social problem, and if we just agree to enact them, they’ll go no further. History shows these promises were casually broken.
Some of us are old enough to remember that affirmative action was originally supposed to be only be for blacks and not lead to quotas. It soon morphed into quotas, and came to be demanded for every “disenfranchised” group.
Abortion went from being illegal in this country, except in the most dire circumstances for the mother, to its legality being determined by which trimester it came in (Roe v. Wade). Now several states are moving to allow abortion right up until the moment of birth.
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was sold to the American people as being strictly an unpaid benefit; now liberals are demanding paid leave. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act to protect traditional marriage; now people are hounded out of public life for supporting traditional marriage. As president, Clinton spoke out forcefully against illegal immigration, and no less a liberal icon than the late Barbara Jordan called for deporting illegals; now it is an article of faith among progressives that anyone in favor of enforcing immigration laws is a bigot.
Twenty years ago, did anyone, even the most progressive politician, suggest that it was acceptable for transgender men to compete in women’s sports? Now it happens regularly, with little comment outside the conservative community and a few feminists like Martina Navratilova. About three months ago, liberals were scoffing at the notion that anything like widespread voter fraud existed; now they openly advocate illegal aliens voting. In the 2016 election cycle, no Democrat dared to support racial reparations for slavery; now it’s discussed openly by several candidates.
If you want to protect your children from the pedophiles and other deviates that live among us, remember that progressives are relentless. Almost no breach of traditional values is ever out of the question and no issue is ever completely settled.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
