Pedophilia

I'm surprised nobody has taken this debate yet. Given the stigma that pedophilia has, PRO might as well have named this topic "Hitler: Role model for today's youth?". I ask the judges of this debate to try and be as objective as possible. We KNOW you detest pedophilia. He does bring up several points that I'm sure true pedophiles are using to justify their lifestyle: Pedophiles can't help being attracted to children, different cultures have allowed sexual conduct with minors, the pedophilia taboo has no natural basis, and sexual conduct between a child and an adult wouldn't be traumatizing if the taboo didn't exist in the first place. I would agree that people do not have much conscious ability to control who they're attracted to. Attraction is a biological process that existed long before consciousness ever evolved. The question is, does this make pedophilia any more acceptable? Surely, a pedophile can choose not to act on his or her urges. We might accept that a person be absolved of guilt if there was no other course of action they could have taken, but this only applies if there truly was no room for choice. PRO points out that in some cultures, it was acceptable to be sexually active with a child. This is false on two fronts. First, the age range of a "child" is not universal. Puberty gives a lower bound on adulthood, but even that is likely controlled in part by one's social upbringing. In an earlier time, when a 13 year old was considered to be an adult, pedophilia would still be scorned. The only difference is that the age range of a child would be significantly less than it is today. The second contention is that marriage to a child did not necessarily imply sex, particularly if the marriage was made in the name of politics. Pedophilia aversion is a very interesting moral law, as it doesn't seem to behave like most other morals. We don't bat an eye when someone voluntarily watches a simulated murder, or plays a video game which simulates theft. In the case of pedophilia, not only is the action deplorable, but so is voluntarily watching it, simulating it, or even desiring it. We can say "Boy I'd really like to strangle my boss" and be met with nods of approval. Not so if you said "Boy I'd really like to take that 8 year old up to my place." Rape has a very similar pattern: merely simulating it is thought to be unacceptable. The rape of an adult is generally not considered to be as unacceptable as the rape of a child, but it is still tends to generate more moral disgust than theft, assault, or even murder. What is the reason for this? PRO argues that there is nothing natural about the pedophilia taboo, so where might such a powerful aversion arise? Religion is an obvious answer, but the crusade against pedophilia does not appear to be as overtly religious as the crusade against gay rights. My view of morality is that moral laws define a social group, the "acceptable persons" group. Like any other social group, it evolves over time, changing as new people develop slightly different conceptions about what it means to be part of the group or not. Moral groups tend to be the oldest and most powerful of the social groups we belong to. We can then ask, would aversion to pedophilia give one social group enough of a survival advantages over moral systems that didn't take a stance on the issue? If so, we would have our answer as to where the basis for the pedophilia taboo comes from. Let's revisit the distinction between child and adult. It might seem like this should be a gradual progression, but if you think about the archetypical "child" and "adult", you will see little in common between them. Many cultures have specific rites in which the passage from childhood to adulthood is celebrated. Deciding on a cutoff point between child and adult, no matter how arbitrary, makes it considerably easier to categorize our social networks. If we treated the passage from child to adult as a smooth continuum, rather than a set of discrete steps, the words "child" and "adult" would lose much of their meaning. So what is the benefit of having a clear distinction between "child" and "adult"? If the cutoff point is well placed, a clear distinction would reduce instances of treating a child as if he or she were an adult. As society was forming, giving adult privileges to children would be disastrous. Children would not have the experience, intelligence, and judgment to act as adults. Hence, societies that have strong separations between children and adults would have an advantage over those that don't. Sexual conduct is considered to be one of the most significant properties of being an adult. Treating a child sexually would be breaking the child/adult barrier. What of more trivial violations of this distinction, for example letting a child become a governor? We would consider this to be unwise, but it would probably not generate any kind of moral panic. To answer this, we can also go back to the notion that "pedophiles can not control their attraction". There is no basis for wanting a child to be in a position of political power, so there is no reason for moral outrage. There IS a basis for people to be attracted to children, which is their abnormal biology. Hence is it necessary to push back against pedophilia more strongly.