The Growing Defense of Sexual Child-Abuse

Since the dawn of time, humanity has been on a binge of perverting the divine gift of human sexuality. The Creator made the human family male and female. He then ordained an arrangement called marriage. Jehovah decreed that within this relationship men and women could enjoy the benefits of sexual intimacy.

It was not long, however, before rebellious man decided he did not want to be restricted in his sexual activity. Only a few generations from Adam, Lamech, a descendant of Cain, determined he would take a second wife (Gen. 4:18-24). The sexual revolution was underway.

Those of us who have witnessed the American landscape for the past half-century, have observed drastic changes in society’s sexual proclivities. There has been a downward spiral of deviancy that simply is numbing.

In the 60’s, the counterculture of the “hippie” revolt made its disgusting presence felt in America. Communal lifestyles, drugs, open and free sex became common in many metropolitan areas. Then came the popularization of the “gay” agenda. At one time the disdain of respectable people, the homosexual movement was glamorized by the entertainment industry and fortified by the politically ambitious. Progressive “legal” under-girding bestowed a superficial legitimacy upon the perversity. Many began to wonder: “Can the nation sink any lower?” It could — and has.

A word that increasingly is becoming a part of the common vocabulary is “pedophilia.” The term literally means “child love,” but it does not connote anything sweet or healthy. It reflects one of the grossest forms of human debauchery — adult-child sexual activity.

Recent reports reveal that this shocking practice has been accelerating for several decades. It has engaged the general public’s attention only more recently — especially with the scandal that is now shaking the American Catholic Church to its very foundation. The most bewildering thing about the whole distressing situation is the growing tendency to defend, hence, to normalize, this most egregious level of sexual perversion.

Consider, for example, a just-published book, “Harmful to Minors — The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex”. The book was authored by Judith Levine, a Brooklyn-based journalist who founded the feminist organization “No More Nice Girls.” The Foreword to this nauseating production was penned by former Surgeon General (Clinton administration), Joycelyn Elders — which ought to be a “red flag” itself. Moreover, this is not a “brown bag,” under-the-counter enterprise; the book is published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Levine argues that pedophiles frequently are quite harmless people. She contends that sex is a wonderful part of growing up and that teens and children “can enjoy the pleasures of the body” yet be safe at the same time. The author commends the system of the Netherlands, where the law permits sex between adults and children (as young as twelve years old) if the activity is “consensual.” Levine charges that when adults “protect” children from sexual activity, such can do the youngsters more harm than help. One section of the book contains the caption, “The enemy is us.”

When the controversy regarding sexual abuse among Catholic priests began to rage a few weeks back, a Minneapolis newspaper reporter interviewed Ms. Levine. She commented that a sexual relationship between a priest and a boy could “conceivably, absolutely” be a positive experience. Tell that to the victims of Paul Shanely and the hundreds who are seeking litigation damages from the Church! She suggests that a sexual relationship between a teenager and an older person could be “more like salvation than victimization” (“abcNews.com, April 5, 2002”). The pedophile’s “salvation” could lead to the Bible’s “damnation.”

This pedophilia mania has been steadily working its way toward acceptance, in a rather subdued fashion, for several decades. Twenty years ago John Leo, then a writer for Time magazine, warned that “pedophilia arguments were catching on among some sex researchers and counselors.” In 1998, an article appeared in the Psychological Bulletin (published by the American Psychological Association) which alleged that adult-child sex “does not cause harm on a pervasive basis.” This study is now cited frequently by those defending pedophilia (see John Leo, “Apologists for pedophilia,” U.S. News & World Report, April 22, 2002, p. 53).

This sort of deviatory ideology is the by-product of a generation of people who no longer believe there is an objective standard for the moral restraint of human conduct. Some, like Levine, have become their own “god.” They write the rules — consistent with their own base appetites. When the publishers of Levine’s book argue that her philosophy provides “sex-positive approaches that are ethically based” (http://www.umn.edu/), they are appealing to an “ethical” criterion than has no higher authority than their own personal aberrant dispositions. Levine acknowledges that as a teen-minor, she had sex with an older man.

The author insists that “consensual” adult-child sex is moral, but, as Professor David Spiegel, chairman of psychology and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, has noted: “The claim that any sexual relationship between a child and an adult can be consensual is just not possible. Children cannot make a contract” (“abcNews.com, April 5, 2002”).

Besides, if one can simply invent the rules along the way, who says sex has to be “consensual”? Not long ago, some evolutionists argued that “rape” is merely a genetic tendency from our ape-ancestry!

Then add to this sordid mix this fact. The United States Supreme Court has just handed down a decision that allows pornographers “First Amendment” protection to utilize photographs of children in the construction of digital images that depict youngsters as engaging in sex with adults (“Supreme Court strikes down ban on virtual child porn”).

No one has “molested” more, the Constitution of this nation, than some of these “Justices of injustice.”

Surely this growing phenomenon of child abuse, as much as anything else, is a symptom of the spiritual malignancy with which our society has become afflicted. The real question is — is the disease terminal?