Minor attraction

Are Mental Health Professionals Working to Normalize Pedophilia?

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Written by Dave Bohon The New American

Thursday, 18 August 2011 00:00

As law enforcement agencies around the world continue to round up adults who prey on children, a small group of mental health professionals appears to be trying to facilitate a change in how pedophilia is defined and diagnosed. In fact, as reported by the Daily Caller, just such a group used an August 17 conference in Baltimore to discuss how “pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013.”

The conference was sponsored by B4U-ACT, which the Daily Caller described as “a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.” According to information provided on the group’s website, the focus of the conference was to bring together researchers and mental health professionals — as well as “minor-attracted persons” — in order to discuss, among other issues, ways in which pedophiles “can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process.”

The Daily Caller noted that B4U-ACT has been actively attacking “the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run-up to the conference, denouncing its description of ‘minor-attracted persons’ as ‘inaccurate’ and ‘misleading’ because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality” — a “stigma” B4U-ACT members would apparently like to see changed.

In a July 25 press release, the organization announced that it had sent a letter to the board of trustees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) “notifying the organization of the inaccuracies and misleading information contained in the current draft of its [DSM], currently under revision.”

Howard Kline, science director for B4U-ACT, claimed that the currently proposed DSM revision for pedophilia “is full of inaccurate and misleading information on people who are attracted to children or adolescents. It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding.”

Kline complained that the APA’s “proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever,” and insisted that the revised DSM for pedophilia “should meet a higher standard than that.” Naturally, he offered the assistance of B4U-ACT in the revision process, with the assurance: “We can help them, because we are the people they are writing about.”

According to B4U-ACT conference description, “controversy has arisen” over such DSM issues as the “diagnostic thresholds” of pedophilia (meaning, apparently, the point at which someone is determined by a mental health professional to be a potential or bona fide pedophile); the “stigma” that results from such a diagnosis; and whether or not some pedophilia — such as sexually targeting minors in their early adolescent years (known clinically as hebephilia) — should even be considered a disorder.

Dr. Judith Riesman, who has spent decades researching and exposing efforts to normalize pedophilia in society, told the Daily Caller that the conference fits nicely into that normalization strategy. She said the first step “is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender’s emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize.” She added: “You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioning. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison.”

The Daily Caller also noted that Dr. Richard Kramer, B4U-ACT’s director of operations, as well as conference keynote speaker Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University, “have actively opposed sex offender notification laws.”

In 2009, Berlin wrote on the website ReformSexOffenderLaws.org: “What purpose does calling someone a ‘pervert’ or ‘predator’ serve anyway, other than to express contempt and hatred? How is this productive? It certainly doesn’t protect children. I would urge all SO [sex offender] activists to listen to their own message: Stop buying into and promoting false stereotypes. Stop demonizing a whole class of people, and start learning the facts.”

While Kramer insisted to the Daily Caller that he opposed removing pedophilia from the DSM, and that “society’s interests can best be served by supporting both criminal justice interventions and public health initiatives,” the news website noted that in 1990 the “Baltimore Sun reported that Berlin refused to report pedophiles under his care who were actively molesting children.”

As reported by LifeSite News, on its own website “B4U-ACT classifies pedophilia as simply another sexual orientation and decries the ‘stigma’ attached to pedophilia, observing: ‘No one chooses to be emotionally and sexually attracted to children or adolescents. The cause is unknown; in fact, the development of attraction to adults is not understood.’ The group says that it does not advocate treatment to change feelings of attraction to children or adolescents.”

Dr. Riesman said the efforts by mental health professionals and others to normalize pedophilia is a continuation of a strategy she observed decades ago. “I first met up with what I had come to call ‘the Academic Pedophile Lobby’ in 1977 at the British Psychological Society Conference on Love and Attraction, Swansea, Wales,” Riesman told LifeSiteNews. “I delivered a research paper on child pornography in Playboy 1954-1977.”

She recalled that other researchers and academics at the conference, “some hired by pornographers, presented ‘scientific’ papers advocating the legalization of child pornography, prostitution, and an end to age of consent. They promoted their ‘scientific’ claims for early childhood sexuality to lawmakers and fellow academicians via both legitimate and pornographic media.”

Riesman charged that, even without the changes desired by the people at B4U-ACT, the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders “is typical of this degeneracy since they already had lightened the diagnosis of pedophilia as to make it almost meaningless, requiring that the pedophile be ‘bothered’ by his and her abuse of children and so on. We now have women and children sexually violating children as well as men.”

Riesman warned that such degeneracy “will continue to spiral down into, well, we’d have to say the abyss of hell, unless we retrieve our laws, our mass media, and our schools.”

Pride Week!!! The pride to play fair

originally posted July 17, 2010

Mark Barna, writer of the Gazette column, "The Pulpit" recently asked:

Is the polygamy card a valid one to argue against gay marriage?

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It’s absolutely valid.

These days, gays can and do choose to be whatever they want to be, whenever they want to be – white, black, man, woman, or anything else in between…putting it on and taking it off like Peter Pan and his shadow. The rest of us either can’t or don’t pick and choose the color of our skins and the gender of our beings as though they were mix-and-match accessories; most of us neither have it nor want it any which old way.

It’s bemusing how quickly some members of the GLBT community -- or is it the LGBT community...or is it the  LGBTIQABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP community... -- will step forward to shoulder the black burden as their own – just for a moment and only when it suits them…however awkwardly, and only for the sake of appearances – like the drag queen who dons a man’s business suit and eschews the false eyelashes on his day in court. In sharp contrast, blacks aren’t able to pick up and put down their blackness according to their circumstances and associations; they are black, all of the time.

Whilst posing as blacks, gays wave their dark veil as though it were some sort of noble flag, and people stand and clap and cheer; but when blacks do the same, people are just as likely to wave a confederate flag in their faces and advise them to go back to Africa. How convenient it must be, to only be black when it’s in vogue…to be a boy or a girl whenever and however the fancy strikes; every day is a costume party.

But the truth is that slapping on a black mask for the sake of convenience is something that only bank robbers and minstrel singers do. Waking up one morning feeling ten feet tall doesn’t mean that you are. Claiming you feel like a girl inside doesn’t make you one. Not to over-simplify things, but my own experience is that taking a good hard look in the mirror can help clear up confusion, and show that you are what you are.

Being proud is a good thing – it’s certainly better than being ashamed. It’s good to have pride in oneself and one’s people: it’s why doing things like brushing our hair and teeth are good for us individually, and events like Fourth of July fireworks in Memorial Park are good for us as Americans. But too much pride is always a bad thing – indeed, it’s often said that it cometh before a fall…

…and I’m sorry, but what is it exactly again that the GLBT community is so darn proud about — their talent at holding their breath and stamping their feet until getting their way? Or perhaps their habit of changing the rules that everyone else is playing by, just because doing so is more advantageous for them and them alone?

What good is the sign that says, “You must be at least five feet tall to ride the roller coaster” if a passel of bad-tempered, rule-hating short people are intent upon jacking the coaster and riding it anyway? I, for one, am not going to try and dissuade them from boarding that roller coaster…but it will not surprise me if and when they slip out beneath the safety bar and bump their soft heads – and damned if I rush toward them afterward to kiss their owies; they should have heeded the sign.

Why insist that the whole world suddenly stop, change course, and start dancing to the arrhythmic beat of one’s own peculiar drummer? Dance however you like to dance, to whatever music happens to sway you; but throwing a temper tantrum until the music is changed, and bullying everyone else into dancing like you do is just plain bad manners and bratty behavior, no matter who you are.

No one is extra-special. No one is the center of the universe. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they hate you. Rules are established for the general good of society, not just for you and your friends…and rebelling against the rules doesn’t necessarily make one smarter or cooler; a lot of times, it just reveals one’s density. Learning these lessons are essential if one ever hopes of getting over one’s self.

In a game of cards, players are dealt a hand, and then they play it; there’s no reason to “argue” a card, as its face value argues itself. Changing the rules midway through the game is not permitted…and never are certain players afforded the special permission to pick and choose only the cards that work to that player’s exclusive advantage.

It is disingenuous any time gays compare their struggle for inclusion to being black; hence, playing the polygamy card when arguing against gay marriage is just as valid as playing the race card when arguing to defend it. The purpose of marriage has always been to join one man together with one woman – not one man to another man, not one woman to another woman, not one man to many women, not one man to his sister, not one man to his dog, not one man to a tree – those are the rules.

Why are those the rules? Simple answer: Because. And if you can’t handle that answer, then you’re a spoiled brat.

Color outside the lines if so you desire; promise and devote yourself to whomever or whatever you choose; but have the pride to play fair. Don’t have a hissy fit when the rest of us call a spade a spade – don’t kick and scream to change the rules, just so that your hand will be stronger. If you don’t like the rules, then don’t play the game; just move on and live your life, regardless of what others might think.

Otherwise, you might not be quite as at ease with yourself as you like to pretend.