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Do they really need to celebrate a sex offender?

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You would think that in the entire Charlotte, North Carolina region the gay community could find somebody to honor other than a sex offender.

Apparently, you would be wrong. The most worthy gay man, according to the geniuses at Charlotte Pride Chad Turner is the one man who deserves the Harvey Milk Award for exceptional LGBTQ advocacy.

Make it make sense.

There was no secret about Turner’s past dalliance with pedophilia. Not only was he a registered sex offender, he had been outed in 2016 and was forced to resign as LGBT+ Chairman of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce when his history of ephebophilia was revealed.

Since being released from prison, Turner has become an active and notable member of the Charlotte LGBTQ advocacy community.

In 2012, Turner was elected the president of the LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, immediately heading efforts to push for an expanded “nondiscrimination” ordinance which many complained would have prevented businesses from maintaining spaces such as washrooms as single-sex.

He was named “Person of the Year” by LGBT news outlet QNotes in March of 2015, but would resign from his Chamber of Commerce post in 2016 after his history as a child sex offender came to light. The month prior, the “nondiscrimination” ordinance was passed, and Turner was awarded an honor by the Human Rights Campaign at their annual gala. HRC officials refused to state whether or not they were aware of his child sex offender status prior to giving him the award.

Despite his previous resignation, Turner would once again join the LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce as its inaugural CEO in 2021. Under his leadership, the Chamber secured partnerships with prominent organizations like Fifth Third Bank, NASCAR, Duke Energy, Wells Fargo, Sonoco, and Novant Health.

In July of 2023, Turner was appointed by Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles to serve on the city’s Business Advisory Committee.

The case for which he was convicted happened in 1998 when three boys accused him of grooming them for sex as a church music director. He was convicted in one of the cases and served 2 years of a 10-year sentence in prison before getting parole and being put on the sex offender registry.

Of the incidents Turner was convicted on, a 14-year-old boy had testified that Turner had invited him to spend the night at his house in the nearby community of Bessemer City, North Carolina. The victim stated that during the visit, Turner had questioned him on how he’d feel about a man performing oral sex on him.

“I thought he was joking,” the boy told the court. He explained that Turner frequently questioned him about sexual acts between men and women, which upset him because of the man’s position in the church. The victim continued that, following a revival meeting, he and Turner stayed overnight at the home of one of the other alleged victims.

The teen says he awoke to find Turner fondling his genitals, but didn’t immediately report it due to shame.

The second minor, who said he was 15 when the incident occurred, stated he was invited to Turner’s home where the older man showed him a pornographic video of a man and a woman having sex. He then said that later that night, after he and Turner went to sleep in the same bed, he woke up to find the Turner fondling him.

The third alleged victim, who was also 15 at the time, said Turner had made the same advances to him over a three-week period when he stayed in the boy’s home. The minor said Turner had fondled him several times.

“He told me if I ever told the pastor, he’d make me look like a fool and a liar,” the boy said.

Technically this is not a case of pedophilia, which involves younger children. Ephebophilia is an attraction to youths in mid-pubescence and is generally considered a less serious offense, but still a crime. When it involves non-consensual sexual activity it is a very serious crime indeed, as was reflected in his sentence.

In either case, it is morally unacceptable, as well as reinforcing the fear people have that too many gay men are sexual predators. For this reason alone it makes no sense to celebrate Turner as an exemplary member of the gay community. It confirms the very fears that have proven in the past to be a serious obstacle to the embrace of gays as accepted members of the community.

Yet Charlotte’s Mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and Charlotte Pride do just that: they proudly promote a sex offender who preyed on youths as their most praiseworthy gay citizen this year. The award itself is named after a pedophile, which is totally on brand.

Make it make sense.

Knowing many gay people I can attest that not all gay men are inclined to commit these acts, although statistically speaking they are about 4x as likely to do so as the general population. Given the fears of heterosexual parents, why would these people elevate Turner to celebrity status?

I think the answer is simple: alphabet ideology celebrates all expressions of sexual desire as the natural expression of one’s inner identity. Moralistic objections to sexual expression are seen as oppressive manifestations of a White Supremacist Eurocentric and homophobic society and that the mores of society should be rejected.

It is an ideological commitment to breaking down social barriers to people embracing their inner identity. It really is simple as that. People should be who they are, and if you are a pedophile or ephebophile you should be proud. That is the meaning of Pride, which is simply a celebration of sexual appetites.

It may be true that many gay people are just like us in all ways but one, but it certainly isn’t the case that the Pride movement is about anything but promoting alphabet ideology with all its celebration of perversion.

I am perfectly happy–thrilled, actually–to partner with groups like Gays Against Groomers. All decent people should join together to fight this attack on civilization.

More exist for a reason. Without them, our desires are indeed released, and that is a bad thing. Civilization requires us to tame our appetites and channel them into socially productive avenues.

Humans are predatory, and it’s not just sexual desires that have been liberated. All social mores have been breaking down, and as a result, our society is falling apart. Ideologically speaking there is little distance between the embrace of Pride ideology and the breakdown of criminal justice. The behavior is different, but the common thread is rejecting the restraint of our desires. Once you reject self-control, you get things like this:

There is nothing to be proud of here. The fact that so many people have decided that embracing criminals and degenerates is a good thing is but one more example of how our society is being torn apart.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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David Strom 11:20 AM | November 21, 2024
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