An interesting and at the same time quite a nauseating article - one from 2011 however one that seems to have reared it's head somewhat over the previous few months.
Reading the article, the comments, and associated forums that have recently been discussing this, it seems that most people that have read and commented seem to be under the impression that this is some sort of attack on homosexuality, and indeed, some seem all to keen to add their bigoted small minded comments onto forums and blogs.
After very little looking around, it was quite easy to find the original Committee Meeting in Canada's parliament from February 2011, and reading through it is far more vomit inducing (to be frank) than the newspaper article in the above link. The full transcript is available here
and for those of you who have the time and the stomach for it, I strongly suggest reading through this, lengthy as it is.
For those of you who may not have the time, one of the main highlights relevant to this posting is here:
I am concerned, Professor Van Gijseghem—and I know you well as I have heard you testify on a number of other subjects—because you say, if I am not mistaken, that pedophilia is a sexual orientation.
Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem:
That is what I said.
Should it therefore be compared to homosexuality?
Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem:
Yes, or heterosexuality. If, for instance, you were living in a society where heterosexuality is proscribed or prohibited and you were told that you had to get therapy to change your sexual orientation, you would probably say that that is slightly crazy. In other words, you would not accept that at all. I use this analogy to say that, yes indeed, pedophiles do not change their sexual orientation.
Now, please excuse my ignorance (yet again), but I always thought that a Sexual Orientation, was purely a gender thing - i.e. heterosexuals, homosexuals or bisexuals. Where does anywhere state that anything other than gender attraction is a sexual orientation? Does this also mean that all sexual paraphilia are all "sexual orientations? What about gerontophilia?, what about hebephilia? what about ephphebphilia? What about good old fashioned teleiophilia or adultophilia ? Where does it all stop?
One of the other things to take into account, is discrimination, and this I believe is the scariest part of this whole discussion and the main reason I feel that this is more than likely being pursued as much as possible by every paedophile and paedophile sympathise there is. Society today in the majority of cases and quite rightly so, has a range of laws that are in place to stop discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (example here ECHR Sexual Orientation), and you can bet your bottom dollar that every paedo would want paedophilia to be officially diagnosed as a "sexual orientation" so that they too can be protected by law against being discriminated.
Scary stuff imho.
Anyway, I digress a little.
In the previous few years, I have read many articles stating what paedophilia is.
In Greece, it is classed as a "disability" and no doubt paedophiles can also (as it is a disability) claim disability benefits....
In the UK, it is classed as a Mental Disorder , as it is (I believe) in the US
Now in Canada, it is being pushed as a Sexual Orientation , which as explained briefly above, is possibly the worst of these "options"
Often as well, we hear offenders claim that they were abused themselves, which as caused them to become paedophiles as well (aka The dubious "life cycle of an offender"), although my belief is the majority of these are more likely to be fabrications in order to gain sympathy and therefore get a lesser sentence.
So, what is it?
"Mental disorder", "disability", "sexual orientation", "the result of childhood abuse", a vile "fetish" or something else? Someone tell me please - the world nowadays seems to find an endless supply of excuses for paedophilia, instead of concentrating on dealing with and helping victims of these vile crimes.
Whatever it is, there is never any excuse for any crime associated with paedophilia. No-one forces anyone at gun-point to abuse a child, or download IIOC.
Whatever it is, paedophiles do have their own minds, and are very manipulative and have (or have tried to) groomed everyone for far too long.
Whatever it is, society needs to ungroom itself, to stop looking for and redefining the causes of adults sexually abusing children - it needs to get back to the basics, that abuse is abuse and that offenders have no excuse for what they do.