Making Pedophilia Respectable
by Rod Dreher, The American Conservative:
I hope you’re sitting down for this. Thomas O’Carroll, a convicted British pedophile, has published an essay in a peer-reviewed academic quarterly arguing for legalized pedophilia. Justin Lee writes about the situation in his Arc Digital column. Excerpts:
At 73 years old, O’Carroll has long been a bogeyman for both the left and the right — not to mention the children he has violated. To the right, he’s the perfect condensed symbol for the Sexual Revolution’s true telos — the nihilistic destructuring of human relations. To the left, he’s an albatross, a useful idiot for conservatives intent on establishing a link between homosexuality and pedophilia. He’s also a testament to the degraded standards of interdisciplinary scholarship.
His Sexuality & Culture article, which reads like the senior thesis of a bright-enough undergraduate edgelord majoring in philosophy, attempts to make the case that virtue ethics fails to provide a convincing justification for rejecting sex between adults and children. Moreover, he argues that in an ideal world, virtue would be understood in such a way as to include such practices and even celebrate them.
Lee pulls this quote from O’Carroll’s paper. Remember, this is O’Carroll writing, not Lee. Lee has highlighted a part of the passage:
The assertion that children are incapable of reciprocal sexual relations is empirically unfounded. Where is the evidence? A comparison with animals is again suggested. Dogs appear to be perfectly capable of reciprocity in loving relationships with human beings, often to the extent of being every bit as devoted and loyal in their affections towards their owners as their owners are towards them, and perhaps even more so. Again, even the personhood-restricting Scruton has acknowledged this (Scruton 2013, 2014). Dogs may lack a sophisticated appreciation of the other’s “intentionality”, on which Scruton sets so much store as a qualifying criterion of moral agency within sexual relations, but this appears to be no barrier to reciprocity in what many would consider to be its morally essential features. There should be mutual affection and attention to the other’s wishes. What else is needed, really? It may be thought this analogy is insufficiently close because dogs are not sexual partners of their human masters. But they can be. Dogs are not shy about expressing sexual interest in humans, and when their owner reciprocates that interest a sexual (and loving) relationship may develop, as has been attested in Dearest Pet, a book by Dutch controversialist (and children’s writer!) Midas Dekkers, and endorsed in a review by philosopher Peter Singer (Dekkers 2000; Singer 2001). (emphasis mine)
Got that? O’Carroll says that because bestiality is permissible, so too is pedophilia. Lee summarizes:
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