“Minor Attracted Persons” (MAPs) are being normalized.

I’m sure you have heard this argued before, but to many people, the attempt is so insane that it is hardly believable that it is hard to accept that this is anything but a fringe movement doomed to fail.

It isn’t. It is happening right here and right now, and what seems impossible today will be accepted wisdom tomorrow.

Drag queen story hour would have been inconceivable not too long ago. If the idea had been proposed a decade ago only the fringiest cities would have put them in their children’s libraries. The movement started in 2015–at the tail end of the Obama Administration, and it would have doomed his campaign in 2008 or 2012 if he had put the idea front and center because everybody would have understood it was perverse.

Today you can find them in Idaho and Utah, places where Mormons dominate the culture. How far we have come.

In my home state of Minnesota, there is a law wending its way through the legislature that seems likely to pass that will, in effect, make pedophilia a “sexual orientation” and hence make pedophiles a protected class. I am not making some arcane point about an obscure part of the bill. It is right there in the bill. Text that had prevented pedophilia from being included in the definition of sexual orientation is struck. They actually are including pedophilia in the definition of a protected class. 

Look at that last line that is struck. They are removing a provision currently in law that excludes “physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.”

The chief author of the bill is a transgender legislator named Leigh Finke, but “she” has 16 other authors to the bill and it has already been heard in committee and is ready to go to the floor should the Speaker accept it. It could also make it into an omnibus bill.

This provision does not legalize pedophilia–yet. But it does normalize it–giving it the status of being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Should it pass being a pedophile will be given the same protected status as being gay, with all the legal protections that attach to that.

This is part of a real movement to normalize pedophilia that has institutional support.

As one example consider this article from Psychology Today. It is one of many that you can find from the credentialed class that explain that attraction to children is, in the end, normal.

Personally, I doubt the rage against pedophiles is performative at all. It is very real, very deep, and nearly universal. But of course they want to change that by calling it prejudice.

Dr. Ley makes a slew of points, but I want to focus on a couple that are striking.

• Less than half (around 40%) of sexual assaults against children are committed by pedophiles. The majority of sexual crimes against children are perpetrated by people who do not have a history of disordered sexual arousal to children. Instead, issues of drugs, alcohol, anger, isolation, and control motivate these tragic events.
• Pedophilia, a sexual disorder involving repeated sexual arousal, fantasy, or behavior toward children, is not, in and of itself alone, a highly significant risk factor for sexual abuse of children. I know this seems hard to believe, but research demonstrates that it is antisocial personality traits, low empathy for the victim, disinhibiting drugs and alcohol, and isolation which lead to sexual abuse of children. People with pedophilic arousal and attraction are at greater risk compared to the general public to engage in child sex abuse, but it appears that these other risk factors may carry more weight. It is when pedophilia combines with these other risk factors that we must be most concerned.

I am not certain how one can claim that somebody who sexually assaults a child is NOT a pedophile, but let’s grant it for the moment. Now do this thought experiment: what percent of the population is a pedophile?

It’s not 40%. More in the 1% or less range. Assuming 1% would consider having sex with an actual child (very unlikely; Ephebophilia, which is an attraction to later adolescents is probably common enough, but these minors are in the 15, 16, or 17-year-old range and are clearly in a different category) then by Dr Ley’s absurd definition pedophiles are still 40x as likely to commit sexual assaults than others.

And this is using a definition that claims that people who have sex with both children and adults are not pedophiles. Personally, I would count them as well.

Given this fact that Dr. Ley asserts that “only” 40% of sexual assaults on children are by pedophiles, his claim that “Pedophilia, a sexual disorder involving repeated sexual arousal, fantasy, or behavior toward children, is not, in and of itself alone, a highly significant risk factor for sexual abuse of children” is plainly absurd.

If your likelihood of doing something is 4000% higher than others’ then clearly being a pedophile is related to committing pedophilic acts.

For instance, the risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is 4x, or 400% higher than non-smokers. Nobody today claims smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. It does. So if a 400% increased risk is causal, what is a 4000% increase? Not causal?

It’s clear why Dr. Ley is making this argument, and it’s not a scientific but an ethical one: pedophilia, while not something to be celebrated, is normal. No different than any other sexual paraphilia that we don’t stigmatize.

He even goes further and claims that stigmatization is harmful.

Anger, rage, and fear over the sexual abuse of children not only hurts our chances of preventing future abuse, but it harms the children themselves. It is exactly our rage and shame over sexual abuse, and sexuality in general, which leads many victims to keep their abuse secret. They fear that they are now tainted, that it was somehow their fault, and that our rage will leak onto them.

Yes. We should not be angry about an adult sexually using a child. It is harmful!

There are countless examples of such arguments, and ones going further than this, making claims that “loving” relationships between adults and children is a positive good. Pedophiles are merely MAPs, and all forms of attraction are natural. Dressing as a dog, a baby, or a furry should all be considered normal and healthy. MAP is just a variation of the theme of sexuality and love.

We have seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well. Look at the range of freaky people the Biden Administration is normalizing.

Sam Brinton gave classes to college students about how to practice bizarre sexual paraphilias. Performing sexualized acts in public as instruction. And he was put in charge of the nation’s nuclear waste–to make a point. To normalize the perverse.

Drag queen story hours are not about drag queens per se, but about shoving men’s barely concealed genitals (and exposed buttocks) into the faces of small children.

Pedophilia is next. They are preparing the ground. And, indeed, coming for the children.

The MSM pooh-poohs all this as conspiracy theorizing, but it is there in black and white. Yet would you know it without the coverage of independent media like Hot Air? Of course not. We are part of a small ecosystem of independent journalists who show you a part of reality the mainstream elite wants to hide from you. I am asking you to help us continue the fight against insanity. So we here at HotAir are humbly asking you to join us in this fight for the Republic. We are offering a discount of 50% on subscriptions to recruit as many of you as possible to join us in our efforts to defeat the Left and save our civilization. You can use code STOPJOE24 to get that discount.