Real pedophilia is no joke and those who abuse small children are serious criminals but the fact is that most of what passes for pedophilia is not abuse. And by “most” I mean at least 95%, closer to 99%. I have known young boys about 18 years old referred to as “men” when they engage in oral sex with young girls about 17 who are never referred to as “women”. For this crime, they land in jail and on the sex registry. There are thousands of such cases for every genuine case of abuse.

When an elderly man merely pinches the cheek of a 12-year old in the park, his subsequent life is destroyed. When a man with “a record” (maybe the above mentioned 18 year old) gets entrapped by a phone call with a police officer who tells him she is 15 and offers to meet him in a parking lot, he gets locked away for 5 year if he is dumb enough to show up. That is NOT a crime but entrapment (a charge which unfortunately won’t stick in this case) is.

When a 25 year old school teacher falls in love with her 16 year old student and has sex with him that may or may not deserve to be a crime but labeling that as pedophilia makes a monstrous joke of the category.

In general, the anti-pedophilia police use the word “pedophile” indiscriminately and arrest people in such outrageous, wholesale ways that it is they who are the threat to society, not the so-called “perverts”. By their refusal to give the specifics of the wicked deed, the police send a loud message – if you knew what happened, you would say, “That’s it? That is what the fuss is about?” We are not a particularly prudish society; we enjoy watching explicit sex in the movies and we hear and use cuss words every day. We can handle it. The next time somebody gets arrested for sex abuse of a minor, just ask, “What did he do?”. The next time someone asks you to sign a petition forbidding a man who has been released from jail from living near you, ask “Where do you propose that he live?” He better have an answer that makes sense to you or he is the pervert.