Just had a brief thought that I'm sure is not original and not all that profound, but what's a blog for if not to post such things.
The homosexual apologists claim that when an adult male, say a priest, coerces an adolescent male into a sexual relationship that has nothing to do with homosexuality, but is in fact a form of pedophilia. So when an adult female teacher coerces an adolescent male into a sexual relationship or an adult male teacher coerces an adolescent female, why is it never called pedophilia? Why is he or she never derided as a pedophile? Why does no one speak of child-molesting teachers?
Oh we hear chuckles of cradle-robbing and talk show hosts tell tales about the hot teacher they had in high school or, admittedly rarer, talk about the hot-looking teen girls they see at the mall. But never the same opprobrium. And never a word about pedophilia.
If we can talk about the "natural" heterosexual attraction between an adult and attractive youngster of the opposite sex, then the same-sex attraction involved in the other cases cannot merely be dismissed. Like it or not, homosexuality is a factor in the clergy sex-abuse scandal and pretending it isn't is hobbling any attempt to deal with the causes and fix them.
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Homosexuality undoubtedly plays a role in the scandal. However, I think lumping all adolescents into a single group when looking at this is not appropriate. The John Jay study breaks them up into different age ranges, and I think the age of the adolescent makes a huge difference.
Clearly an adult male seducing a 16 or 17 year old boy is homosexual predation.
An adult male molesting an 11 or 12 year old boy, even a pubescent one, is not in the same category and I don’t think properly categorized as “normal” homosexuality.
Where do you draw the line in between? That is debatable. But often we see the statisitc that 80% of those abused by priests are boys, and the vast majority are adolescents, but “adolescent” is defined as 11-17.
I think it is very important to break it down more by age because there’s a huge difference between sexual relations between an adult and a 17 year old—which must in some sense be consensual—and an adult and an 11 year old, which is true child molestation.
Technically? Because an adolescent is post-pubescent, and one who would do these things to an adolescent isn’t – by definition – a pedophile.
Still, I see where you’re going with the double-standard. The problem never seemed to revolve around pedophilia in the Church, anyway, and yet “pedophile priests” has become a common term.
It is called pedophilia by the media. Example below from a quick google search.
Headline: “Pedophile teacher wants early release from prison”
by Eric Mansfield
Created: 1/9/2007 5:13:13 PM
Updated:1/9/2007 5:54:45 PM
AKRON—A local teacher who admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student has filed a motion for early release from prison.
44-year-old Randall Crane has served six months of a two-year sentence for sexual battery. The music teacher admitted to having sex with a girl at Akron’s Jennings Middle School.
Also, I don’t know that there is a “‘natural’ heterosexual attraction between an adult and attractive youngster of the opposite sex,” as you put it. I think what you’re calling natural is actually pedophilia. Unless by “youngster” you mean something other its common meaning.
What I mean is the “natural” as opposed to “moral” sexual attraction between two sexually mature members of the same species who are of the opposite sex.
There are moral reasons why a 25-year-old man should not seek to bed a 15-year-old girl, for example, but on a natural level on the basis of propagation of the species, such attraction is understandable. Conversely, an attraction between a sexually mature adult and a sexually immature child is unnatural.
This applies to human beings or any other species.
Incidentally, your headline is the exception that proves the rule. You found a single headline referring to pedophile teachers. No doubt, of the estimated 100,000 cases of teacher sexual abuse of children that occur each year you might find a few other similar references.
In the estimated 200 cases of clergy sexual abuse, the most common reference is pedophilia.
Also, I think JW’s dividing line between 11 and 12 and 13 and up is artificial at best. There’s a reason the John Jay Criminal Study set the age at 11: because that’s the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia, i.e. sex between an adult and a sexually mature, but still adolescent child.
Dom,
You write:
I appreciate that psychologists define pedophilia as the abuse of prepubescent children. I’m not arguing clinical psychological definitions here.
Physical development doesn’t stop with puberty, nor does emotional development.
There’s a huge difference between molesting a 12 year old and abusing a 17 year old. And I think it is a different sort of man who would commit one of those sins versus committing the other.
As regards to the original post, I think homosexual abuse of older teens is clearly homosexual. But the homosexual abuse of younger teens is a different beast. The perpetrator may be homosexual, but he’s a homosexual with moral and psychological issues that go far beyond simple homosexuality.
Look at it this way. I know it isn’t uncommon for married heterosexual men with children of their own to find their neighbors’ teenage daughters extremely attractive. I’ve been present at very crass conversations where I’ve heard this sentiment expressed by multiple men. But I’ve never heard that sentiment expressed about their neighbor’s middle school aged children. Normal heterosexual men wouldn’t find such a young girl attractive, or if they do, their internal controls are enough that they’d never even say it, let alone act on it. It takes a very troubled man to abuse a 12 year old. Less so a 17 year old.
Granting your distinction, it would be foolish to dismiss the homosexual aspect of the abuse, whether of a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old, which is the point of my original post.
Did any of you catch the Anderson Cooper story on Monday night about the CNN anchor, Thomas Roberts, who was molested as a teen by a Catholic priest?
Turns out Roberts is openly gay. Gee, I wonder why?
I wish the John Jay study would have gone a step further and asked how many male victims of clerical sexual abuse are now openly gay.