Child Molestation is a Sin!Sexual relations between an adult and a minorI'd like to call attention to a couple of things in regards to this thread. The first is an article from Focus on the Family which may be of interest here as it talks about the "pedophilia legitimization movement" and in particular discusses the so-called "Rind study" published by the APA which was specifically mentioned by the poster Amator Puellularum in support of his view on pedophilia.
Molesters Inc.
By Karla Dial
It’s easy to imagine what pedophilia advocates were thinking in 1998 when they published a study suggesting that the sexual abuse of children wasn’t all that harmful. After all, they’d seen the vast cultural and legal gains the pro-gay movement had won since 1973, when homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — the psychiatric profession’s blue book of mental disorders. Why not try to normalize molestation the same way?
So Bruce Rind of Temple University, along with co-authors Robert Bauserman and Phillip Tromovitch, made a case in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin for doing away with the term “child sexual abuse” in favor of “value-neutral” phrases like “adult-child sex” or “age-discrepant sexual relationships.” They even went so far as to say some boys benefit from having sex with men. But the strategy didn’t work as well for them as it did for the gay lobby.
The resulting national hue and cry, led by radio’s Dr. Laura Schlessinger, prompted the U.S. House of Representatives in 1999 to condemn a scientific paper for the first time — by a vote of 355-0. The APA later sent an apology to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, promising to tighten editorial security and prevent convicted pedophiles from using research like Rind’s to reduce their prison sentences.
You’d think that would have been a lesson scientists would take to heart. You’d think it would send a message to pedophiles that the public isn’t going to let them have their way with boys. You’d think, at the very least, it would make child molesters reconsider their tactics.
You’d think.
Late last year, though, the pedophilia propaganda machine was steaming along as aggressively as ever. Rind and his colleagues published another pro-pedophilia study, this time in the Archives of Sexual Behavior — the official publication of the International Academy for Sex Research — saying boys molested between 12 and 17 had as much self-esteem and positive sexual identity as boys who were not molested.
And the APA’s penitence proved short-lived. Its president, Norine Johnson, defended the right of researchers like Rind to have “controversial and unpopular” work published (though the organization has routinely turned away research on changing homosexual orientation).
continued at: http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/features/a0019820.html
The other point I want to bring up is one that was made at least a couple of times already in this thread: that persuasive arguments aren't necessarily correct and/or truthful ones. In fact, they very often aren't. Sophistry, spin doctoring, playing with semantics, rhetoric, and statistics, etc., are means of confounding public debate in order to "win" it at all costs and regardless of the truth, and since we as a society have accepted the legitimacy of persuasive tactics, there's all the more reason to constantly remind ourselves and those we are "debating" that persuasion is actually more akin to advertising/marketing than it is to an honest investigation into the state of things. The material below, excerpted from a textbook on persuasion written in the seventies, is an interesting summation of the perils of persuasive tactics, IMO, although it is perhaps too biased in favor of persuasion, and it may also suggest how the science of persuasion has evolved since then:
(Items in bold are those most relevant to the specific point I'm addressing in this thread. Items not in bold are included for the sake of completeness and the reader's possible interest.)
Some Problems and Limitations of Persuasion
1. Because persuasion allows free trade in ideas, not all suggestions for behavioral change can be expected to meet with approval. As a result of some ethically questionable practices in persuasion, some naive moralists are beginning to condemn all persuasion as of dubious value, forgetting that a free society cannot survive by condemning the free exchange of ideas, however distasteful some of those ideas may be. Our methods frequently need refinement, and our ethical codes need to be sharpened; but let us not discard the system.
2. Attitudes and behavioral patterns change slowly, and thus persuasion may not provide as rapid a change as might be desired. People may become impatient with the sometimes slow, even tedious, processes of a free society and be inclined to revert to violence or to authoritative procedures. We now see many sobering evidences of this attitude.
3. Within a freedom-of-speech framework, competing persuasions are seldom championed by persuaders of equal competence. It can thus be argued that truth may be lost as a result of unequal persuasive skills.
4. In the great density and intensity of contemporary persuasion, people may learn not to listen, or to listen and disbelieve.
5. Attitude and behavioral change are not final, not eternally fixed. Persuasion as a method of influence has to be continuous. Studies of attitude change demonstrate that definite retrogression toward original position tends to take place.
6. There is the danger that the spurious, the insincere, and the insignificant may crowd out the meaningful, the sincere, and the significant.
7. The channels of mass communication, which carry much of today's persuasion, may, because of the costs involved, become available only to the few.
8. What happens to our so-called grass-roots democracy when candidates and government become merchandized much like toothpaste, a bar of soap, or a 24-hour deodorant? This question gives pause not only to the political scientist, the communication teacher, and governmental philosophers, but to every thoughtful citizen.
9. Finally, some fear that, in a day when craftsmen in persuasion are becoming increasingly effective, the consumer of persuasive messages may become a helpless victim, and that the gap between the skills of the persuader and the level of critical evaluation of the consumer may be becoming dangerously great. This is, indeed, a matter for our concern, but the available evidence is neither clear nor adequate. Certainly we know that the pace of the race has quickened, but who has gained on whom is not established.
From Persuasion: A Means of Social Influence, 2nd ed., 1976, 1952, by Winston L. Brembreck and William S. Howell, pp. 19-20.
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