Amen-Moses

Then maybe you should get your eyes seen to.

I saw a thread only last week calling for carpet bombing of the middle east, was that inching towards a justification of murder?

We had another thread talking about property rights, was that inching towards a justification of theft?

We have many threads on sex, are they inching towards justifying rape?

We can and do discuss many other issues without being branded as criminals, why is this issue different?

Amen-Moses

Bryan Mc

Still anxiously awaiting the reply to this question:

Which was asked in response to this statement from FrAndrew:

But don't feel like you need to be FrAndrew to offer your insight on this. I'd be eager to hear any situation where the only comfort an adult would be able to give a child is sexual.

Vesica

To those disturbed by these kinds of threads.......

The gut level aversion/horror/anger most of us feel when discussing anything sexual in conjunction with children is, in my opinion, the reason these threads keep popping up.

This board is full of people that constantly question social norms and societal values. We can talk about the brainwashing effect of some religions, the oppressive nature of some political policies and even debate the right to live or die with some measure of comfort but children send us right over the edge.

What makes this fascinating is that those 'gut instincts' are anything but. History does not show that this has always been the feeling towards children. History does not even support childhood as some universally recognized unique or special time of the life cycle. There are whole cultures that never recognized anything similar to what we call 'childhood'. So it seems this idea and the feelings are social in nature. We have learned to feel this way yet most of us are willing to leave it at 'This is wrong. The idea is morally repugnant and no sane personwould think otherwise. PERIOD.'

Apologies to those offended or worried by these threads. Perhaps the above will help you to understand that it is scientific fascination with human psychology and sociology and not any leanings towards child molestation that is fueling these discussions.

cjack

It is not the discussion, but rather the position one takes in the discussion, and the motivations behind that position that I question.

I'm not making any sort of criminal accusations, just questioning the motivations of anyone who would consider sexual relations between adults and children as acceptable.

It is much like discussing the Holocaust with a Holocaust Denier, or discussing evolution with an IDer. It would be reasonable to suspect some amount of anti-semitism might be motivating the HDer. It would be reasonable to suspect the IDer had an agenda of advancing a theistic position.

If you were discussing slavery and someone mentioned that slavery wasn't really always bad, wouldn't you wonder why they thought that way?

What's the difference here?

Amen-Moses

That is another question.

The answer to JohnV's question is simple: "if the adult involved is not willing to give comfort without a sexual aspect to it."

But where his logic is leading I know not, is the grand conlusion to all this that paedophilia is wrong? If so what's the point, we already know that and have acknowledged it. The point is not whether it is but why it is.

The problem with these type of questions is that the questioner is assuming the very thing we are trying to establish thereby making the questions themselves non-productive, this is what I pointed out in my very first response but maybe I should have been clearer.

IMO the whole discussion was over threads ago and I fail to see why people who obviously don't want to discuss these issues bother to keep flogging a dead horse.

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses

Originally posted by cjack:
I'm not making any sort of criminal accusations, just questioning the motivations of anyone who would consider sexual relations between adults and children as acceptable.

But noone has said they find them acceptable!

It is much like discussing the Holocaust with a Holocaust Denier, or discussing evolution with an IDer. It would be reasonable to suspect some amount of anti-semitism might be motivating the HDer. It would be reasonable to suspect the IDer had an agenda of advancing a theistic position.

Would it be equally reasonable to suspect zionism or atheism on the opposite side of those discussions?

If you were discussing slavery and someone mentioned that slavery wasn't really always bad, wouldn't you wonder why they thought that way?

It wasn't really always bad, happy now? Am I a dixie whistler too?

What's the difference here?

Intellectual curiosity, I like to know what makes people tick and find their responses to these sorts of discussions more interesting in some ways than the topic itself.

Amen-Moses

Vesica

just questioning the motivations of anyone who would consider sexual relations between adults and children as acceptable.

Understandably I think. However, define child. Elementary school? Pre-pubescent? A legal minor? Unable to take responsibilty for themselves? Unable to understand what sexual relations entail?

I have seen very few people make a blanket statement that it is OK. There have been a lot asking for more details like define child. Define adult.

JohnV

What, would he "like to see" it because he finds it unacceptable?

Amen-Moses

Given the provisos "Not "abused", not "harmed", not "used", not "exploited"". If any of those are in doubt then he is not accepting anything.

To give an example that I think he may have in mind a previous girlfriend of mine recounted her losing her virginity at 11 to a 21 year old mentally retarded male, she instigated it through curiosity and did not consider that she had been "abused", "harmed", "used" or "exploited", quite the opposite in fact, i.e she enjoyed it immensely and felt slightly guilty for "using" and "exploiting" him!

Amen-Moses

Fr.Andrew

Mimi was seven years old and lived in Flat Rock, half-way between Plain View and Christmas Knob on County Rd 123...in a trailer with her mom and dad. Their nearest neighbor was 1/2 a mile away as the crow flies on County Rd 9--across two creeks and some pretty rough terrain.
Sadie's father, Tom, helps neighbors with their wood when he's able, but hasn't been much good since the "incident" in '98--mostly he eats Paxil, drinks coffee flavored brandy and passes out.
Sadie's mom, Esther, works at Brown's Cabins--a "motel" in Plain View. Her income is from the truck drivers that answer her CB call and wander over from I32 to visit her and/or Phyll, the other lady who works at Brown's Cabins...Esther's ride to work and her smack dealer.
Esther and Phyll share more than a profession and a drug addiction it turns out (particularly since the "incident")--and so Esther is sometimes gone, unannounced, for days, or weeks, at a time. Mimi was pretty much on her own...no human contact. No love, no comfort, no attention. She cried a lot. It'd been like that all of her life.

Mimi's great-aunt Reenie (widow of Tom's Uncle Will) lives in Plain View...still in the two room house that she and Will had built with their own hands and moved into when they were married. No kids.
Will died of Black Lung in '86 and Reenie has made do on his miner's pension and what vegetables she can grow. No car. No phone. No pool. No pets. She keeps the house neat and tidy and reads the Bible every day.
Aware of Mimi's circumstances, and being a caring (and lonely) woman, Reenie had begged Esther for years to let Mimi come live with her. One day Mimi showed up in her dooryard and said that Esther and Phyll had dropped her off at the head of the road.

Reenie spends long hours rocking Mimi and singing to her. Hugging her and holding her. Making her feel wanted and cared for. They bond quickly...the lonely old lady and the abandoned child. The quality of both their lives increases greatly.
Mimi officially sleeps on the sofa, but often crawls into the old double bed with Reenie--as kids do. Especially neglected kids. There's something about going to sleep in someone's arms...and, should you awake in the middle of the night, knowing someone's there.

Now, some would say that things should stop here, and perhaps so...but it was not to be.

One night it happened. There was a thunderstorm and, as they snuggled in the bed together, as Reenie was comforting her, she realized that Mimi was masturbating against her leg. Mimi knew that something was going on, but had no idea what. All she knew is that it gave her a pleasure and release she'd never known...and that she was laying in the arms of a woman she had grown to love, tingling and exhausted.
She asks. An honest woman, Reenie says that it's something that people do sometimes by themselves and sometimes married couples do it together...and tries to change the subject. But Mimi is still curious and asks if Reenie and Uncle Will had done that in bed. Reenie says yes...they had. Mimi asks if Reenie doesn't miss it because it feels so good. Reenie says yes...she misses it a lot. She sometimes does it to herself, but it's not the same.
The next time they're in bed together, feeling sorry for her aunt, Mimi slips her knee against Reenie's crotch and the old woman, relenting to a flood of emotions she thought she'd never experience again, allows her niece to bring her to orgasm.

I can easily see how things may lead one to the other in this situation--with Mimi and Reenie having a long, caring, loving, non-abusive relationship...to no one's harm.

I can also see the County child welfare people getting wind of the arrangement, yanking Mimi out of the only loving home she'd ever known and putting her into a foster care situation from which she emerges, years later, with a life-time of debilitating guilt instilled in her for having violated one of societies sexual taboos.
And I can see Reenie being hounded by the state on child sexual abuse charges...and blowing her brains out one afternoon with Uncle Will's old 12-gauge.