A friend of a friend is a rabid far right Catholic. I saw a screed of his on Facebook, complaining that Democrats in California were going to protect the rights of pedophiles to not have "their orientation questioned." Apparently Democrats do this because they don't believe in God, and therefore have no morality. "Without God, all things are permissible," or rather, that being secular essentially means you have no basis for your morality. Therefore if you let homosexuals marry, then men marrying dogs or small children is also permissible. This friend of a friend rabid Catholic is educated, articulate, and bat guano insane for his church. It's actually rather amusing to watch, but I wanted to deal with the basic argument.
First off, I don't believe in his God, the book that represents his God's worldview, nor do I put much stock in his God's earthly proxies. My own personal thing, and you may not agree. That's fine, we don't have to eat at the same lunch table. This friend of a friend essentially says that everyone advocating for traditional marriage (whatever that means) have always said "authorizing" gays to marry would lead to a Dionysian orgy and society would fall apart at the seams. To him, being homosexual is a sign of sexual deviancy, no different than bestiality or pedophilia.
There are many problems with people saying the secularism just devolves into relativistic morality, where anything goes depending on the time frame and culture, which we can go into in another diary. I want to take a look if the vaunted objective morality of fundamentalist Christianity really is the moral base we should use in decided whether marriage rights should be extended to gay couples, or if there really will be bestiality outbreaks once we let the floodgates of gay-dom loose. Objective, hard, tangible morality based on a never changing God must be the only morality we can rely upon.
But alright. Your morality is based on your Bible and its interpretation by authoritarian scholars blessed with the holy spirit over hundreds of years. Mine is based on facts derived from scientific analysis and cold hard data. Your religion says if everyone follows it, then the world would be Eden, whereas I say, if I can gather enough data, I could better the world in this world in real, tangible ways. Let's see who wins! Let's talk gay marriage and the slippery slope to pedophilia.
Gay Marriage vs. The Bible LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!
First, let us ask ourselves a question: is pedophilia an orientation, or is it a just disease? What is it really? How does it relate to homosexuality? That's a question I'm sure made some of you recoil in horror, but as scientists, we ask any question and explore, no matter what. Our first reaction is that it's a disease or at the very least, is some sort of deficiency in the person because of the clear negative effects adult-child sexual relationships have on children. What does science say?
It's an orientation that can manifest itself as a disease. Pedophiles' brains are different than normal brains in ways that make them deficient in certain ways. The American Psychological Association does split hairs, and say that it's just an orientation so long as the person afflicted doesn't act on it, but this seems to be a very fine hair to split. People who have tendencies towards pedophilia are clearly deficient.
“We don’t have a smoking gun” to say definitively how pedophilia develops, Cantor says, but it could form from “maternal stress while the mother is still pregnant, or a combination of maternal stress or poor nutrition, or household stress during childhood. If we take out one of those ingredients, we may break the chain and understand the whole system that ends in pedophilia.”
Also, please take note, good reader, that homosexual brains and pedophile brains are quite different and
react differently to the same stimuli.
Now, like good scientists, we don't just stop there. There are other factors. Some pedophiles have other disorders, and some pedophiles target teenagers or go after anyone. We have to break down this complex picture to come to the truth, but the answer does lie in the brain and in chemistry. Now, are gay men more likely to be pedophiles? The answer that science gives us is: no. Homosexuality and pedophilia are distinct. The act of abuse has less to do with sexuality, and more to do with power. The sex of the child abused is usually not the point, the act of having power over a child is.
So, science tells us that 4% of the population identifies as gay or bisexual, that pedophiles and homosexuals are two distinct groups, and that gay parents can provide loving, caring homes, just like their heterosexual counterparts.
What does the Bible say? Where does our objective morality take us?
Well, nowhere. The Bible doesn't really say "Thou shalt not molest small children." There are plenty of statutes against all sorts of "deviant" sex in the Bible, especially in Leviticus. However this information becomes muddied, unclear, and sometimes contradictory. God says man shall not lie with man. Okay, it doesn't give a reason why, but it's God so we have to assume it's for a good reason? Right? Fundamentalists remind us that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for homosexuality. But then, the Bible turns around and says Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because some dudes wanted to get it on with some angels, but rather:
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. -Ezekiel 16:49
The Bible goes into great detail about which family members you're not supposed to sleep with, what time of the month you're not supposed to do it, and what to do if you rape a woman (marry her).
Clearly God cares about who you have sex with. Now, some religious types will say that any sex outside the confines of marriage are not condoned by God, so pedophilia is logically included. Then why does Leviticus spell out in graphic detail each one of your family members you're not supposed to bone?
None of you shall approach anyone who is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness: I am the Lord. The nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother you shall not uncover. She is your mother; you shall not uncover her nakedness. The nakedness of your father's wife you shall not uncover; it is your father's nakedness. The nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father, or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home or elsewhere, their nakedness you shall not uncover. Leviticus 18-6
The lack of clarity doesn't stop there. Can we find nothing about pedophilia in the Bible? Can we turn nowhere? Well, let's ask a question. What did the Israelites do with their female captives after a good day of genocide?
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites ... And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males ... And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones ... And Moses was wroth with the officers ... And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Numbers 31:1-18
Keep alive for yourself? People took slaves at this time, so our objective-morality-that never-changes is okay with that. The "women children" though, why are we keeping them around? Some may say "Hey, they could just be servants!" Well, if that's the case, why not take the older women as servants too? Why kill all of the women who've been married or done it with a guy? How would you even know which is which?
So on one side, you have secular, do-whatever-feels-good morality that uses science to scan people's brains, take down statistics, and carefully weigh evidence to come up with the fact that homosexuality and pedophilia are quite different, and that homosexuality is in no way a sexual deviancy. On the other, we have a book whose God changes drastically half way through, that doesn't say a whole ton about pedophilia except for a lot of verses where Israelites wipe out the inhabitants of a city with extreme prejudice and take the young women for themselves.
The choice is clear here people.