The latest fad to have gripped the West after ‘Fat Pride’ appears to be the normalization of paedophilia. In an independently organized TEDx event at the University of Würzburg (Germany), Mirjam Heine, who has a background in Psychology waxed eloquence on the misery of paedophiles and how they are unfortunate humans deserving of our sympathy and understanding.

“We should accept that pedophilia is a sexual preference, a thought, a feeling not an act” My God what is the left doing??!!!

I never thought in my whole life that I’d hear such thing!! NEVER! pic.twitter.com/FcXI5yIXAg — Hani ?? (@HNI87) June 19, 2019

Heine talks of a character, Jonas, to evoke sympathy in the hearts of people for paedophiles. She begins her talk with the words, “Let me tell you about Jonas, Jonas is 19 years old. He studies law in Munich. In his spare time, he likes to play soccer.” And then, began her ‘heartfelt’ defence of paedophiles. “Jonas has a secret which he thinks he cannot share with anyone, not even with his best friend or his parents. He is just too afraid of anger, rejection and repulsion. Jonas knows that he has to suppress his sexual drive for his entire life and that there will never be a loving or fulfilling partnership that he can enter. Because Jonas is a paedophile.”

During her entire talk, Heine maintains a carefully constructed tone of sorrow and dejection. The objective of the talk appeared to be to absolve paedophiles of their twisted nature and put the blame on the society at large. Heine appears to make the argument that the society at large is equally responsible for the crimes that paedophiles commit as it has little tolerance for paedophiles and the illness has a lot of stigmas associated with it. She says, “We shouldn’t increase the suffering of paedophiles by excluding them, by blaming and mocking them. By doing that, we increase their isolation and we increase the chance of child sexual abuse.”

Heine appears to have hopped on to the fledgeling #NotAllPedophiles movement. She emphasizes that there is an urgent need to distinguish between paedophilia and child sexual abuse and that not all paedophiles sexually abuse children. Heine also calls paedophilia a sexual orientation. She touches on the extent of the menace when she quotes statistics on the prevalence of the illness in our society but their reliability is a matter of dispute “Because paedophilia is so secretive and so few people are willing to admit it, there is no meaningful way to get a reliable estimate,” as said by Dr James Cantor who is a psychologist and sexual behaviour scientist at the University of Toronto.

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Heine’s solution to the entire problem appears to be more visibility and tolerance for paedophiles. This is consistent with current trends of homosexual and transgender activism. Activists appear to believe that the problem for the vastly high rates of HIV infection among the community and depression and suicide rates could be solved by a little more tolerance and that another gay character in their favourite movie. And these unhealthy trends in LGBT activism have been picked up by paedophile apologists. A criminal psychologist in the past has also claimed that paedophilia is a sexual orientation like homosexuality and heterosexuality.

Apologists and advocacy groups for Paedophilia often equate the illness with homosexuality and heterosexuality by asserting that it’s a sexual orientation despite the fact that homosexual and heterosexual intercourse involves adults who are capable of informed consent.

Paedophile advocacy is not a very recent phenomenon. Readers might be surprised to know that there was an actual paedophile political party in the Netherlands which was allowed to contest the country’s general election by the Judiciary in 2006. The primary agenda of the party, which called itself ‘Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity party (PNVD)’, was the legalization of child pornography and the lowering of the age of consent to 12 years old.

There is a significant section of paedophiles who perceive themselves to be part of a social movement to gain acceptance for their actions. They appear to believe that age of consent should be abolished and that children are capable of giving informed consent and that paedophiles are even beneficial for children. Paedophile advocacy groups exist all over the world and there was even an international paedophile advocacy group, ‘International Pedophile and Child Emancipation’. Attempts are underway to distinguish between ‘Good Pedophiles and Bad Pedophiles’ as well with the advent of an internet-based mutual support group for paedophiles, ‘Virtuous Pedophiles’, whose members claim to believe that all sex between adults and children is wrong.