“Are There Enough Morally Sound Liberals Left to Keep Pedophilia Illegal?” asked American Thinker’s Christopher Skeet last week. Many would quip, and others would lament, that the phrase “morally sound liberals” is becoming an oxymoron. Others would scoff at Skeet’s assertion: that with the sexual devolution’s perfect track record of collapsing one sexual standard after another, the “next logical target, currently being implemented, is the sexualization of children.”

It may seem crazy. But remember, if you’d have told people in the 1950s that, in a few generations, homosexuality would largely be accepted, same-sex “marriage” would have government sanction, and the “transgender” agenda would be in place — and opposing these things would bring scorn — they’d have called you a nut.

Moreover, is telling little Johnny he can choose to have sex with an adult really crazier than telling him he can choose to “become a girl”? Both are psychologically, morally, and spiritually damaging, but while changing sex is impossible, having sex certainly is not.

Skeet points out that that during a 2018 New York Times interview, unrepentant sexual transgressor Jeffrey Epstein “described the criminalization of sex with teenage girls as a ‘cultural aberration.’ He justified this by noting that such behavior has been acceptable at different times in history and by pointing out that homosexuality is still considered a crime punishable by death in some countries.”

“His claim was that societal sexual mores are completely subjective,” Skeet continued, “differing from one cultural value system to the next, and constantly modifying within each value system” (more on this later).

(Note: Skeet apparently uses the term “pedophilia,” which technically refers to sexual relations with prepubescent children, to describe all such activity with underage youth. I’ll henceforth use it as well while also citing other kinds of adult-minor sexual relations, as this is a transitional stage to pedophilia.)

Speaking of homosexuality, many know the path it took to legitimization. For example, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that the Los Angeles Times ran a 1983 article bearing the following title and subtitle: “Many researchers taking a different view of homosexuality.”

“Homosexuality once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.”

(Though it’s the mistake of biological determinism, the rhetorically effective pitch is that if it’s inborn, how can it be wrong?)

What may surprise you is that, while the Times likely did run such articles, the above isn’t from ’83, but 2013.

And I inserted in the sentences the word “homosexuality” — in place of “pedophilia.”

They originally read: “Many researchers taking a different view of pedophilia.”

“Pedophilia once was thought to stem from psychological influences early in life. Now, many experts view it as a deep-rooted predisposition that does not change.”

Would you bet that a legitimization process that began as homosexuality’s did won’t end as homosexuality’s did?

Skeet won’t take that bet. He writes that from “cheap and widely available contraception to prostitution to abortion on demand to premarital sex to civil unions to [undefining] marriage and to human-animal marriage (you read that right: it’s no longer just for Sudanese progressives), the assertion ... that the government should … stay out of the bedroom” has carried the day. In fact, Skeet points out that “conservatives” have a perfect record in these battles — of losing them.

He also mentions that the sexualization of grade- and middle-school children in government schools is rampant, amounts to “state-sanctioned child abuse,” is “deliberately underreported and, if it is exposed (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here)” is not effectively countered.

There is in additon, Skeet laments, how the barely dressed “slut look” is now the norm among middle-school girls — with their parents’ tacit consent. (As a woman close to me once put it, “Forty years ago you knew who the bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are.”)

Then there are the tender-aged boys — as young as eight — who dress as drag queens, perform in homosexual bars, are serving as sex objects, and are promoted by media. This is the sanctioning of pedophilic imagery end behavior (video below).

Next, as I wrote in 2013 in “The Slippery Slope to Pedophilia“:

There has long been the “Pedobear” Internet meme, a little comedic cartoon character Web users often associate with news stories about pedophilia. And remember what happens when people start to laugh at something? Then there was the “Chester the Molester” cartoon character in Hustler magazine (the creator of which, Dwaine Tinsley, was once convicted of molesting his 13-year-old daughter). Far more significant than a porno-mag offering, however, was a film made in 1993 called For a Lost Soldier. Based on a true story, the movie somewhat vividly portrays a WWII-era sexual relationship between a Canadian soldier and a 13-year-old European boy. What I’d like to focus on here, however, is a New York Times review of the film written by someone named Stephen Holden. Entitled “Treating a Delicate Story of a Soldier and a Boy Tenderly,” you’d think the paper was reviewing Romeo and Juliet.

There’s also the 2001 film L.I.E., which, as Ed Gonzalez wrote at SlantMagazine.com, “suggests that a pederast could actually have something useful [to] contribute to society.” As you can see, this is nothing new.

Thus is Skeet not very optimistic. “If we are going to beat these public school-running animals back under the rocks from whence they came,” he warns, “we need to recognize the depressing fact that, in today’s world, the Epstein Defense will eventually win out.”

That defense posits “that if an 80-year-old man can legally have sex with an 18-year-old girl, then a 40-year-old man should be allowed to have sex with a 17-year-old girl,” Skeet continues. “It attacks the arbitrary age limit on sex, which presently determines that once a person has experienced 6,575 rotations of the Earth since his birth, he has met the ethical qualification to engage in sexual intercourse, but those who have experienced only 6,574 rotations or less must wait. It proclaims that age, like sex, is but a social construct and should not be wielded by the ‘far right’ to oppress consensual couples from ‘loving’ each other.”

Skeet is correct, and the moral relativism and biological determinism the Epstein Defense reflects now permeates everything. It perhaps was never articulated better than by former Hollywood youth talent manager Martin Weiss, who molested a 12-year-old client and then years later, recorded on a hidden microphone, explained to the victim, “It is a natural function. The only difference between us and the rest of the animals in the animal kingdom is that we socialize it.”… If animals feel like it, “they go for it.”

Yet the problem is that the Epstein defense is not just Epstein’s — it’s our whole civilization’s. Prescient philosopher G.K. Chesterton predicted in 1926 that “the next great heresy is going to be simply an attack on morality; and especially on sexual morality.…The madness of tomorrow is not in Moscow, but much more in Manhattan.”

And so it has come to pass. We wanted to justify fornication, no-fault divorce, cohabitation, and sexual license generally, and among the justifications was, “Who’s to say what’s right or wrong?” It’s mere perspective, a flavor of the day, fifty shades of grey giving us fifty shades of gay and beyond. For once saying there are no absolutes — an idea embraced now by most Americans — it’s a package deal: A prohibition against a behavior, any behavior, based on its “wrongness” cannot be logically maintained.

One is then reduced to operating based on feelings. And so just as many say “if it feels good, do it,” so are we, essentially, saying if it feels wrong, stigmatize it. But feelings are mercurial masters, changing with the wind.

Skeet suggests that many liberals don’t actually, in their heart of hearts, have a problem with pedophilia. He’s correct. Nonetheless, consensus societal “feeling” currently precludes pedophilia’s acceptance. Will this last? With every single targeted sexual-standard domino having fallen, “finishing the progression,” as in a math problem, informs that the future may not be a very safe place for children.

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