I don’t think it comes down to conscious conspiring among a network of pedophiles, but that the perpetrators tend to gravitate toward these leadership roles for youth groups. I suppose many would go so far as to say their behavior is evil and unnatural, but pederasty, which is not too dissimilar from pedophilia, was apparently quite normal and acceptable among certain social classes at various points in history. Are there remnants of the same drive to pederasty in some of these perpetrators today?
Uccisore, I think you’re making a caricature of the left, and basing most of your arguments off of it. When you point out, for example, that feminists used to hate marriage and today they tend to endorse gay marriage, you’re talking in general about two different groups of people who fit under the large umbrella of “not conservative”. By and large, these are not the same people, and if they are, it’s because they’ve changed their minds, not because they actively hold two conflicting views about marriage. That said, I don’t know if thinking marriage is archaic and thinking that gays have a right to participate is necessarily inconsistent. If you accept certain other beliefs (minimally, that homosexuality is innate, that homosexual love feels to homosexuals just like heterosexual love feels to heterosexuals, and that marriage has not been about children for several decades at least), it is completely consistent to think the government should not support marriage, while thinking that if it does, it should not be allowed to decide whose pair-bonding gets support on the basis of the sex of the participants. You find this ridiculous, I imagine, but probably because you likely reject almost every underlying premise. But given those premises, there doesn’t seem to be a necessary inconsistency.
Again, though, note that many if not most of the people on “the left” are actually different groups of people. As we’ve discussed before, “the left” is a much, much more diverse group than “the right”. The left is everyone who thinks what’s been done before isn’t cutting it and wants to change, and different kinds of change need not be reconcilable to be generally categorizable as “on the left”. Everything that some group “on the left” believes does not have to be consistent with everything that some other group “on the left” believes for the beliefs of some group “on the left” to be consistent.
For similar reasons, I think it’s at best misleading to say that the left cares about pedophilia because caring about it hurts the Catholic church. For Dawkins, that might be true. It is probably also at least as true of right-leaning protestant anti-papists as it is of the generally anti-religion left.
Let’s assume this is true, despite the fractured nature of the left and that there are sizable portions that agree and that disagree with just about any ethical precept. Even still, there are plenty of other ethical principles that can consistently make pedophilia wrong. The left, such as it is, generally finds bosses sleeping with secretaries to be unacceptable. Much of the left finds prostitution unacceptable, especially where it occurs between wealthy men and poor women. The left finds sweatshop labor and non-union shops and contracts between music publishers and artists unacceptable. There are reasons that the left can consistently hold that make any situation in which a power dynamic prevents truly free bargaining one in which no ethical outcome can be reached. Personally, I consider myself a lefty, and I accept most of this, though I tend to part ways with many of my lefty brethren because I think these transactions, though unfair, are better than the alternative (over time, sweatshops enrich poor nations). But I don’t think that’s the case for pedophilia, because there’s no positive spillover from it.
I think you’re probably not imagining hard enough. I don’t hold both claims to be true, but I could easily see how they could be held true. Easiest is, as above, to say that they aren’t both true, but we should act as though they are because to otherwise is worse in practice. Alternatively, we could appeal again to power dynamics, such that two children engaging in sexual acts present less of risk that someone is being taken advantage of than do a child and an adult. If by “two children having sex is none of their parent’s business” you really mean “[a] child doesn’t have to involve their parents when they get an abortion”, the claims seem identical: no adult can interfere with the bodily autonomy of a child, and we presume that a child having sex with an adult is being forced, again because of power dynamics.
I’m certainly happy to say that when bonobos engage in pedophilia, there is nothing wrong with it. I would say the same about proto-humans, and even early humans. I don’t think there was anything wrong with nomadic tribes trading their daughters. I don’t think there was anything wrong with men marrying much younger women in the middle ages. But then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rape among baboons, or necessarily among proto-humans or early humans. Nor do I think war or murder were wrong among those groups as they are wrong today. I don’t see how there’s anything unusual about saying that changes in the structure of society allow for changes in the moral obligations of its members.
I don’t think this is true, at least not for all of the left. A lot of the anti-prison movement, predominantly a left movement, is driven by the idea that taking men out of poor communities perpetuates the cycle of broken homes that generate criminality in the first place.
And one could just as easily argue that the right doesn’t give a shit that a child is raise by two parents, as they pass laws to prevent stable couples from adopting children, preferring that those children grow up in an institution and not catch gay, as opposed to being raised in a loving family. Whatever harm has been shown from being raised by “a random number and configuration of adults” who are living as a family (and I think few if any harms have been shown), they are completely dwarfed by the harms of being raised in an institution.
First, let’s start by being clear about what we’re talking about. Homosexual sex qua homosexual sex is just sex between two people of the same sex. Pedophilia qua pedophilia is sex between an adult and a child. Just like any kind of sex, homosexual sex can be non-consensual, violent, exploitative, whatever, but when it is, it’s not wrong for being homosexual, it’s wrong for being non-consensual, violent, exploitative, whatever. Your statement that “[h]omosexual sex isn’t always consensual” is comically irrelevant, just as I assume you would agree that the statement that heterosexual sex isn’t always consensual is irrelevant to the fact that heterosexual sex and pedophilia are different in kind.
As you note, by legal convention (and arguably by social convention), pedophilia cannot be consensual. I would argue that legal convention is true for all intents and purposes. Just as having sex with someone in a coma, with someone with a severe mental disorder, with someone extremely drunk or drugged can never be consensual, a child can be presumed to be incapable of consent to a sexual act. Similarly, I would say that children are incapable of consenting to being beaten, they are incapable of deciding to end their lives, they are incapable of deciding to commit many crimes.
It’s a presentation of the left, certainly, and it’s not without a huge amount of experience to base it on. More than most people here, including lefists.
Yes, because Moreno invoked the pre-1990 feminist left as an example of how the left of today views sexual ethics. I'm fine with treating them as two completely unrelated groups if you want to. You say 'not conservative' like they aren't necessarily liberal. So which group do you want to disown from the left? The porn-and-marriage-hating feminists, or the 'marriage is suddenly very important now that gays want to do it' feminists? I thought they were pretty obviously both leftist.
I know they changed their minds! The thought marriage was an evil and oppressive institution, and now that gays want to get married, they [i]don't[/i] think it's an evil and oppressive institution. That's what I said. And certainly we're talking about different groups of people- we got a span of 30 years here, a lot of the old feminists have died. And it's not so much that it's inconsistent, as it invites speculation about the motive. So, once upon a time marriage was evil, now it's not. What changed? Homosexuality. It's about what motivates the left and what doesn't. In this case, people being able to express sexual kinks loudly and in the public square is what motivated the left. Remember, this is a discussion about how the left is likely to react to pedophilia- it's inherently speculative. That the left's opinion on marriage changed because [i]sexual deviants want to do it[/i] is very relevant.
I agree. Wouldn't it be nice if, before the homosexual movement, the left's position on marriage was "It's not really for me, but if other people want to do it, I don't see the harm in it?" Problem is, it wasn't. The consistent view that you present isn't one that anybody with any political clout can be demonstrated to have ever [i]actually expressed[/i]. Remember, we're not talking about what a handful of academics that don't matter in the grand scheme of things might be quietly saying. We're talking about what is likely to happen regarding pedophilia in society, and what role the left is likely to play in that. You know I respect you, and that your views aren't characteristically what I'm bashing here, but you and the handful of others who operate like you aren't going to determine anything.
It's not ridiculous at all, and even if it is ridiculous, it being ridiculous isn't germane to our discussion. What you described, though, isn't a view of marriage that puts much emphasis on [i]child welfare[/i], and that is significant. You can say marriage isn't about child-rearing all you like, but we both know any couple that is allowed to get married is going to be argued as eligible to adopt by those same folks. I mean heck, wouldn't it be nice if the position of the left was "Marriage has nothing to do with child-rearing, and hasn't for ages, so of course if two men want to get married, that's fine, even though we all know a male and female parent is ideal for child-rearing." Wouldn't it be nice.
The left is pretty diverse. But we can limit our discussion of the left in this subject to the leftists that are in a position to actually affect social change in the United State of America, in the early part of the 21st Century. That means, largely, religion-hating quasi-Marxists with a chip on their shoulder against anything that smells like 'Americana', and any source of authority that isn't the State. Hell, if by some miracle a bunch of social gospel Calvinists suddenly become the big political power players on the left, then my opinion on how the left is likely to react to pedophilia will change. Maybe the progessive-eugenicists will rise to power again, who can say?
For Dawkins, and for the millions and millions of leftists he has a pronounced influence on, and the millions of leftists that people who follow in his footsteps have influence on.
Yeah? You think conservative protestant anti-papists are only against pedophilia because it hurts the Catholics to condemn it? That would be a fascinating subject to explore if you have some evidence of it. I got some for my position in the first post of this thread…
But is increasingly accepting of professors and students doing the same. Again- motivated by hatred (of business) and applying a double standard when that hatred doesn't apply (academia).
See again. The poor need to be patronized, but outside the context of that, I haven't heard a leftist say there's anything wrong with prostitution in a long time. In fact, most of the leftists I know would be a little ticked at you for using such a defamatory term for sex-industry professionals. You're going to find this again and again- whenever the left appears to have a concern about sexual ethics, the backbone isn't sexual ethics, the backbone is "rich people are doing it" or "white people are doing it" or "men are doing it to women". That is why the opinion shift on marriage happened.
Anti-corporate and anti-American, not pro-child.
Yeah, that's a good point. I think that power dynamics is the most likely way that pedophilia can be resisted by the left. I don't think it holds, because there's no sexual ethics to fall back on- the power dynamic argument only works isofar as sex is something to actually be concerned with, and it just...isn't, to leftist. Sex is a casual thing with no more moral significance than a cough or a handshake, we are told that regularly. Consent is the left's ONLY fig leaf, and while it's likely to stick around for a while, two people declaring that they are enjoying themselves is going to get past that rather easily, even if one of them is young.
That doesn't really answer my question. My question was, are you comfortable leaving the wrongness of pedophilia to be determined by as a function of what psychologists find to be harmful or non-harmful, in the way that pregnant women drinking is wrong as a function of what doctors find to be harmful or non-harmful? If not, then I want to know what other standard you're using. If so, then I think I've made my case, as leftist psychologists are [i]already[/i] chipping away at the idea that pedophilia necessarily harms anybody.
That's another one of those 'it would be nice' arguments. Yes, it would be nice if the portion of the left (which I've never heard of) that is deeply concerned with children having a father in the home had any popular political influence. It's also worth pointing out that you needed to rely on patronizing the poor in order to frame even this basic statement about the importance of family structure and child rearing! That's my general thesis here- is that in order to predict what the left will do, you need only look for
1.) Who is being patronized, and
2.) Who is being hated.
The (influential) left doesn't patronize children, but does hate the Church, so for now, pedophilia will remain taboo. But the Church is losing influence, and the left patronizes sexual deviants, so it's not a taboo that's going to last. You may think it's bashing, but it's a predictive model, and it's pretty accurate, even using the examples you cited- the rich, the religious, Americans, and men- the left hates them. Sexual deviants, racial minorities, the poor, and women- the left patronizes them. The combination of patronizing and hatred can be used to see what side the popular left will take on just about anything. I think every example you gave of alleged sexual ethics had to be based on rich/poor American/foreign man/woman dynamics of hated and patronage.
And that's at the core of my argument. I don't think you and I really disagree with each other about the meat of the thing- the left doesn't have any sexual ethics for sexual ethics' sake. There's no firm position on prostitution because there's no firm agreement over whether the men are exploiting the women, or vica versa. What you have is concerns about power dynamics- which is a different language for what I'm calling hatred/patronage. The primary concern here is that I don't see the left as offering patronage to children- the examples you cite of them doing so (labor laws) can be explained through reference to hate (corporate). In the absence of somebody to hate (gay families adopting) or somebody to patronize (poor people in prison) concern for what's best for children melts away.
Pedophilia isn’t gender tied, it isn’t income tied, it isn’t ethnicity tied. The only group to consider is children, and the left doesn’t. It’s easy to say “oh those poor children,” sure, but the patronage to sexual deviants has already proven itself to be a stronger motivator (gay adoption). So I think condemnation of pedophilia is driven by two things- hatred of the Church, and the shrewd realization that the world isn’t ‘ready’ for a progressive, more enlightened view of pre-adolescent sex.
Yes, you absolutely could! If you think the right has a history of hatred and patronage motivating political decisions instead of moral absolutes, you certainly could make that argument. I'm not going to reflexively defend the right just because I'm criticizing the left. Of course, the problem is that, insofar as Marx influences the left, the idea that class struggle (patronage and hatred) is at the very core of political activity is an expressly leftist notion and not a conservative one. So in addition to basing my opinions on what tends to happen, I'm basing it on what the world's most famous leftist academics [i]say[/i].
That homosexual sex isn't always consensual is VERY relevant, because it goes to how we imagine the two acts.
See, if you asked somebody 25 years ago “What do you think of homosexuality”, what would come to their mind is two guys meeting in a dingy truckstop bathroom, and sodomizing each other, then bringing home disease and shame to their unsuspecting wives. Now, there were plenty of loving, clean, homosexual relationships in those days, but nevertheless, if you said the word, that’s what people were passing judgment on- the grossest image. An image that wasn’t inherent to the act. Now, when you ask people what they think of homosexuality, they are picturing two guys standing behind a white picket fence, holding hands and waving at the camera. To be sure, there’s plenty of disease ridden public-bathroom sodomy going on too, but nevertheless, when you ask people to pass judgment, that is not what they think of. Not because the act changed, but because of the games politicans and the media play- then and now.
When I point out that homosexuality isn’t inherently consensual, and pedophilia isn’t inherently rape, what I’m saying is that there is an image of ‘pedophilia’ that we have now when we are asked to pass judgment on it, but it is NOT an essential image. The image could easily change as politicians and the media play different games, so we have to be very careful about what is inherent to the image and what is not.
But those things are all a big deal. Sex is just a pointless bit of fun. Can a child consent to eating ice cream? If not, does that mean they can't have any? Seriously- if a child can't consent, they can't consent to [i]anything[/i]. And yet...we have no problem with allowing them to do things. In fact, we even go through the motions of asking them if they want to do certain things, and then doing those things based on what the child says, [i]as if they can consent[/i]. But they can't. They do this other thing that very often seems like consent, but isn't. Call it...consent2.
So what is it about an action that determines if we can resolve it through reference to a child giving consent2, vs. something that requires regular consent, that a child is incapable of?
Wow, that’s long. To summarize my position for non-Carleas:
1.) My thesis is that the left’s political positions can be defined in terms of hate and patronage- going back to Marx at the least, the left has groups it favors, groups it despises, and sees it’s mission as the uplifting of the former at the expense of the latter.
2.) Children are not a group the left patronizes.
A) The only time the left has done anything for children was labor laws and welfare, which can both be defined in terms of their hatred of business and of the wealthy.
B) I accept that a stance against pedophilia can be developed on the basis of children as a class that needs to be protected, that sounds sufficiently ‘lefty’. The problem is, no such position was actually developed. If the left was going to develop a strong argument for protecting children from exploitation and abuse as a class, they had plenty of opportunity to do it when this country was debating no-fault divorce, gay adoption, partial birth abortion, single-parents as heroes, or school vouchers. Whatever concern the left has for children, they have more concern for loose women, perverts, and teacher’s unions.
3.) The interest groups that are affected by the acceptance of pedophilia are Perverts, Children, and to a lesser degree, the Catholic Church. The math is simple- the left hates organized religion, patronizes perverts, and is ambivalent towards children.
Based on my thesis, this means support for pedophilia among the left should increase as the Church continues to lose influence- with one caveat, see below.
The Catch: There is one other force contributing to the current (tepid) condemnation of pedophilia from the left. The current most-favored perverts, homosexuals, were promoted specifically on the grounds that they are nothing like pedophiles- the comparison between them was made instantly and loudly by conservatives over the past 20 years. To put it simply, for the left to endorse pedophilia right now would make other perverts look guilty by association. There’s a delicate balance- right now, saying “pedophilia and homosexuality have the same moral value” makes homosexuality look bad. A tipping point will eventually be reached where homosexuality is so beyond reproach that the exact same words serve to make pedophilia look good, and then you’ll see a big shift in support, as endorsing pedophilia no longer endangers the current en vogue perverts.
This does mean I’m backing off a bit on my earlier statement that hatred for the Church is the primary force leading to the condemnation of pedophilia. While this may be true for Dawkins in particular, I think for the left in general, the patronizing of perverts is a somewhat stronger (and ironic) motivation.