Broken taboos-this is how it's done
Eric Raymond
does it again. He asks questions that should be asked-but can't be asked.
- Do homosexuals have a propensity for pedophilia greater than heterosexuals?
- Does non-coercive pedophilia damage the "victims."
- Why can't we talk about the pedophile priest scandal by referring to homosexuality outside of right-wing religious circles?
As far as the first item-I think perhaps yes-homosexuals do have somewhat of a tendency toward pedophilia
statistically (this
site has some interesting data-though its a little heavy on the "gays are sinners" rhetoric for me-). But why? Homosexuality is something that's hard to
explain via evolution. On the other hand-it would make some sense why the average heterosexual male would
not be a pedophile-it mitigates against the spread of his genes. I don't know about the second position-Raymond has some links and I'm not interested enough frankly to follow them. I'm on the record as saying the age of consent should be dropped to 16-but that's about where my thoughts kind of peeter out. I don't have a
personal interest in this issue after all. The third point is obvious-we can't talk about homosexual pathologies because we don't want to go back to the "bad old days." I don't want to go back to the bad old days either-but ignoring obvious problems with the homosexual lifestyle only feeds the hatred that the social Right has toward personal freedom that leads toward acceptance of this sort of behavior.
Unless gay rights activists confront the seed of
criminal pathology that the Right accuses homosexuality of harboring, the movement will not be able to be secure in their rights. The average American is now rather accepting of homosexuals as individuals-but there still remains some reticence with some of the more
flamboyant aspects of the culture. Just as homosexuals were closeted and their expression muffled in decades past-the activists need to be careful about those that would critique their culture (just as I critique black American culture on certain points)-because you can never destroy ideas if they have some basis in fact.