-By Warner Todd Huston
The paper the Guardian has become Britain’s newest champion for a minority of sorts. In a January 3 article, the UK paper has taken up the cause of pedophiles who claim they are just “ordinary members of society” that only need a little understanding.
The paper seriously presented pedophiles as but a misunderstood minority that do no real harm. As Telegraph writer Damian Thompson points out, “this is not some sick send-up” on his point. The UK Guardian is wholly serious.
Guardian feature columnist Jon Henley uncritically quotes convicted pedophiles like Tom O’Carroll who said that children enter into such “relationships” voluntarily. “If there’s no bullying, no coercion, no abuse of power, if the child enters into the relationship voluntarily … the evidence shows there need be no harm.”
Henley then trots out a few “experts” that present “proof” that kids are not harmed by the predators that abuse them.
Thompson points out that this is the same sort of absurdly permissive attitude that caused Catholic Churches across the world to “adopt a mild, nuanced approach to suspicions of clerical pedophilia.”
This isn’t a new phenomenon, though. Only last year America’s Gawker website also published a story that gave pedophiles the benefit of being treated as abused minorities.
As in the Guardian article, throughout the Gawker piece passive language was used to soft peddle child rape. The Gawker piece also constantly claimed that sex between adults and children is just a “choice.” The pedophile quoted in the Gawker piece even maintained that the sex he had with his seven-year-old niece was consensual. Gawker simply takes his word for it without protest.
Further, Gawker similarly trotted out “experts” claiming that child rape is no big deal.
This attitude about adults that predate on children is a growing topic of discussion and is the next horizon for defining criminal behavior downward.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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