Pedophiles should not be stigmatized as much as they are

Before addressing your points, I wish to make one more point myself. In bold and italics will be what my opponent has said, in just bold will be a title to what I'm saying. Stigmatizing pedophiles makes them more likely to offendWhen we are alone and everyone is against us, psychology dictates that we are more likely to do something out of desperation than if we had support[11] thus when we stigmatize pedophiles, thus leaving them to live a life closeted, they are more likely to molest a child.[11]. Therefore, society is partially to blame for when a pedophile molests a child. We could have better prevented this by being understanding of the pedophile, and encourage them to do something to stop the pedophilila that they suffer from, either through therapy, or perhaps medication. Rebuttal to paragraph 1Now, you say that pedophilia should be eradicated, I agree, but stigmatizing them does the opposite of what you would hope for it to do. As stated above, when you're painted into a corner, and feeling desperate, you're more likely to do that terrible action. You also bring question to my conclusion that we are causing the pedophiles to be depressed. I argue that we are because there are numerous examples of pedophiles feeling distressed and depressed from society looking down on them for simply having an attraction[11]. Yes, correlation doesn't equal causation, but when you begin to see many examples of depressed pedophiles claiming to be distressed and depressed due to society, it starts to become causation. I'm sure some of the pedophiles are not depressed due to society, but I would conject that majority of them are. After all: what other reason would they have such a higher rate of depression? All things being equal, the only difference is that they are a pedophile. That, in itself, it not a cause for depression, but being victimized, bullied, and stigmatized by society is a cause to become depressed, and as I stated, many pedophiles have reported that they are depressed because of that, and psychologists determined that it was the same cause as well[11]. "As for your third paragraphs, we obviously have different perceptions of 'wrong'."Then it only makes sense to ask you to prove that thoughts are wrong, which seems to be what you're indicating here. I consider the only things that are wrong to be when you do harm to another person or their property. Having thoughts does no harm. If you're going to claim thoughts are wrong, then that leads to believing dreams are wrong if you do something wrong in that dream. That doesn't make any sense, you don't even control dreams, and in many instances, you don't control your thoughts. A thought can just enter into your brain without you doing it yourself. I think burden of proof lies with you to show how a thought is inherently wrong. Rebuttal to third paragraphYou have yet to offer a valid reason to stigmatize a pedophile just because they have thoughts you disagree with. My fourth paragraph was primarily there to show that pedophiles are not doing anything wrong in most instances, and you have yet to prove that thinking about children in that way is wrong. Paedophilia needs to be stigmatised, as if it isn't it moves closer to acceptance. If something is not stigmatised, it is accepted (perhaps not encouraged, but accepted) again, your definition of wrong differs from mine.Why shouldn't pedophilia be accepted? I think burden of proof lies with the one who claims something is wrong and should not be accepted. Again, we're not talking about child molestation, but pedophilia itself. In my opinion, society should not care if a paedophile commits suicide, as even without action his thoughts represent incredible amounts of evil, and are a threat to society. You have yet to explain how thoughts are evil. If we follow your logic, we should stigmatize everyone who has ever had a thought about harming someone else. We would pretty much be stigmatizing everyone, because I think everyone has thought about harming someone else at one time or another. I'm sure even you have at some point, don't lie either. Thoughts literally do not matter, actions do. Sources:[11] http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu...