Opening the next dark door: pedophilia (Update)

The doors of darkness keep opening in Western society, and once they are open it is hard to close them. There is a movement to redefine pedophilia as a normal sexual orientation. I have for many years received weekly an online paper entitled Apologia Report: Tracking Spiritual Trends in the 21st Century. The latest one has a small article directing the reader to an article in the new magazine, Salvo. That is a magazine with some connections to Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. The article in Apologia “Morality” starts:

Coming Attractions: Is Pedophilia the Next Sexual Perversion to Become Normalized?” by Judith Reisman — a report from the “B4U-ACT” conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 17, 2011. Riesman attended a conference symposium called “Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies.

The organization B4U-ACT is attempting to get pedophilia changed from abnormal sexuality to a normal sexual orientation. The name pedophilia would be changed to Minor-Attracted Persons (MAP). Reisman writes about a conference that supposedly had to do with helping mental health professionals better understand the pedophile as well as change the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders put out by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Reisman reports that the main speaker at the conference, Fred Berlin, M.D., Ph. D. was discipled by John Money who founded the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic and who also was “a pedophile advocate who called for an end to all age-of-consent laws.”

One of the speakers at the conference, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Ph. D, Professor of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY writes about how others listen to the testimony of the pedophile. Potter’s summary of her speech includes”

Genuine listening is a virtue, and one that is necessary if the voices of those attracted to minors are going to participate in the construction of the new DSM. Such participation is required in order to ensure that we have good science and ethical grounding that can go forward for diagnosis and treatment, while minimizing stigma and damage toward minor-attracted persons.

To this end I make a distinction between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ and argue that those creating DSM-V [defining disorders] need to cultivate a virtue in order for genuine listening to occur.

All of this sounds very familiar. One of the speakers actually connects feminist's concepts, homosexuality and the need for changing the terms and diagnosis connected to pedophilia. In his description of his paper, “Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies, Jacob Breslow, B.A. writes:

The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders is currently under its sixth revision, and the current proposed changes put forth major revisions on how pedophilia is defined, diagnosed and understood. This paper approaches these revisions from within the critiques made by queer youth activism as well as feminist and anti-racist scholarship, framing the upcoming changes to the DSM with apprehensive praise and critical ambivalence. Within I shall challenge normative assumptions about sexuality, personal and political identity, and childhood, both within the DSM and within wider society.

One of the major changes attempts to establish a clear distinction between pedophilia as a non-diagnosable ascertainment, and pedophilic disorder as a diagnosable, distressing and non-normative disorder that requires psychiatric intervention. Allowing for a form of non-diagnosable minor attraction is exciting, as it potentially creates a sexual or political identity by which activists, scholars and clinicians can begin to better understand Minor Attracted Persons. This understanding may displace the stigma, fear and abjection that is naturalized as being attached to Minor Attracted Persons and may alter the terms by which non-normative sexualities are known. Furthermore, this paper argues that this distinction is potentially another step towards the complete re-thinking of paraphilias within the DSM – a step that follows historically and theoretically from the removal of homosexuality.

My first thought of response to the ending of this posting was God have mercy on his people. But quickly following is, yes, but in that mercy help us to have mercy on those who need the mercy of the cross. May we proclaim with greater intention and fervent love the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Update: I found an article similar to the one at Salvo by Judith Reisman at her web site, Sexual Sabotage. See "They're mainstreaming pedophilia: Judith Reisman attends confab pushing orientation 'Minor-Attracted Persons'

And this:
"Time to Normalize Pedophilia: Firsthand Report on B4U-ACT Conference"