There’s Always A New Frontier

     At least, there is for those determined to break down every remaining norm of conduct.

     I didn’t think we’d ever see this. But it’s here.

     In a country fanatically dedicated to the protection of the innocent, especially those who can’t protect themselves, we’re seeing a new, surprisingly energetic campaign to normalize sex between adults and young children. How can this be? Who is propelling it? Why is it getting the smallest scintilla of respect?

     Have Americans become so inured to the dismantling of barriers that once protected us that we’ll allow this to roll over us with only token resistance? Or are we just taking a moment to get over our astonishment before slapping down this new demand with all the fury our society can muster?

     Some of the “arguments” being advanced in defense of pedophilia are mind-blowing:

• “Love is love.”
• “It’s nobody else’s business.”
• “It’s not as harmful as was once claimed.”
• “We allow children to consent to abortions, don’t we?”
• “It’s just a sexual preference, no different from homosexuality.”

     I hope and pray most fervently that the reaction against this new “movement for liberty and equality” is smashed flat. In particular, I hope the political Left, for all its lunacy, isn’t quite insane enough to embrace it. But why it’s arising now is worth some thought.

---

     Supposedly, a small but measurable fraction of the U.S. population feels the pedophilic impulse. That fraction has been estimated – God only knows how – as somewhere from 0.5% to 3%. Even at the low end, that would make it probable that each of us has known someone who occasionally feels a desire to have sex with a minor. It would also imply that the great majority of those persons either never act on the impulse or are clever enough not to get caught.

     Note that the current estimate of the homosexual fraction of our populace is also around 3%. But is the prevalence of a desire any sort of rationale for legitimizing it?

     The last five decades have seen a convulsive loosening of norms and constraints applicable to sex. We’ve serially decided to tolerate:

• Divorce and remarriage;
• Premarital and extramarital sex;
• Homosexuality and bisexuality;
• Various sexual fetishes;
• Sadism and masochism.

     In the matter of sexual conduct, few barriers remain to be broken. But why pedophilia? Haven’t we agreed that below a certain age – I think most states put it at 16 years of age – an individual is not competent to make the weighty decisions that go along with sexual activity? I could understand there being some differences of opinion about what the age should be. I can’t understand the claim that there’s no appropriate minimum age of consent.

     Is this a consequence of allowing Muslims into our society? Or does it spring from the latitude our society has granted to talking about sex and fooling around with its peripherals (e.g., child beauty pageants)? Were we fated to come to this pass from the moment we separated sex from the marital bond?

     Would any non-pedophiles like to argue in favor of legitimizing pedophilia?

---

     Everywhere around the world, horrors proliferate. Third World countries are aflame with wars and insurrections. Much of South America is strangling on socialism. The nations of Europe are dying demographically. Some are trying to stave off the end by importing Muslim savages. Africans who’ve contracted the AIDS virus routinely rape young children in the belief that sex with a virgin would cure them. Several nations have legalized assisted suicide. I’ve written before about the incomprehensible Groningen Protocol. Only here in the United States does there remain some measure of public order and respect for human life.

     Yes, I said “some measure.” No nation in which a million babies are aborted yearly can claim to be wholly respectful toward the miracle of life. Even so, we’re doing better than most of the world, in most of the respects that matter. But no nation, as far as I’m aware, has baldly legalized sex between adults and children of any age.

     What are we doing on this ledge? How did we get up here in the first place? Can’t we see how far there is to fall? What will it take to dismount without incident?

     Is what I’ve vented about here merely a transient, a blip soon to vanish permanently from the national radar, or are we genuinely threatened by it?

     Pray.