NGLTF today demanded that (unnamed) people stop extending sympathy to Spokane, Wash., mayor Jim West (because he’s an antigay conservative?), and insisted that West resign and face up to accusations relating to pedophilia.
Tough talk — but kinda half-baked, I think.
Is anyone demanding sanctions against gay.com for hosting illegal activities? I welcome links to other sites questioning gay.com’s role in facilitating illegal or unsafe sex.
Mike, I think holding gay.com accountable could open a huge can of worms that no wants to get int.
“Pedophilic behavior is always wrong and has nothing do with sexual orientation.”
How utterly idiotic of NGLTF to make such a statement.
First of all, a man who likes little boys is a homosexual pedophile. A man who likes little girls is a heterosexual pedophile. Someone who likes both is a bisexual pedophile. End of story Sexual orientation plays a role in the gender of the child-sex-object. You cannot divorce sexual orientation from pedophilia. They intertwine (sometimes in a complicated manner).
Furthermore, we should ask, is pedophilia wrong because it goes against societal norms? Or because it is scientifically wrong and harmful? The same has been asked again and again of homosexuality.
I believe it all comes down to philosophico-cultural norms of what constitutes normalacy. Perhaps 200 years ago pedophilia will be recognized as a legitimate sexual orientation, and pedophiles will hold pedophile-pride parades celebrating their emancipation from an agist society.
Yu
PS: I’m personally against pedophilia, but I’m playing Devil’s adovocate for sake of sparking discussion.
Doubtful Yu or at least doubtful that it would occur in the same sense of sexual freedom.
Centuries ago when people married at age 7 and 13 it might have been more tolerable, but our culture has very different expectations about what childhood should be like. We don’t tolerate pedophilia in our culture because children are not considered able to make decisions regarding themselves nor are their any benefits to the child or adult in this situation.
Cultures that have pedophilia usually have some benefit to the child (i.e. child learns new skills in exchange for sexual services) or to the family (child married off in exchange for bride price or one less person to feed). Given the complex nature of the skills that a child needs to learn and our constantly changing job market, I don’t see any one person being able to train a child enough skills to be able to function. Nor do I see a return to bride price or one less person to feed unless the economy tanks back to a point at least 200 years ago.
Heck I got a chuckle a few months ago about some of the reforms taking place in Iran. In Iran they are trying to increasing the age of marriage to 13. Apparently having nine year old brides is not a good idea. After all shouldn’t such a child be in school instead of trying to run a household? Not a good thing when such a mother can not read and understand the directions on the bottle of medication for her child.
Yu,
I think you need to go back and check your sources.
Although it may not be intuitive, from what I’ve read it seems that pedophilia doesn’t have a direct correlation with sexual orientation. Usually whatever children are available are molested, pretty much regardless of their sex.
I don’t have the sources right at the moment, but I think this is an understood position in the psych field. If need be, I could probably do a google search and get it fairly easily.
Timothy,
You are asking me to check my sources when you have nothing yourself. LOL.
The assertion that sexual orientation has nothing to do with pedophilia is moronic, in my opinion. After all, pedophiles are known to prefer particular genders. Some pedophiles only get aroused by young males (Michael Jackson), while others only get aroused by young females, while others get aroused by both.
You say, “Usually whatever children are available are molested, pretty much regardless of their sex.”
I suggest you take the time to back this up with some source, as it is easy, right? That’s what you said after all.
Furthermore, you fail to see the distinction between molestation and pedophilia. Just as there is a distinction between homosexual behavior and homosexual orientation–just look at the homosexual behavior in prison that heterosexually oriented people engage in. Sure, some people will molest and abuse whatever they can find, but then there really are pedophiles who only prefer a particular gender; let me spell that out: they are “oriented” towards a particular sex.
Yu
So did this guy actually post an ad, indicate in his profile, or announce in a public chatroom his intent to do anything illegal? Honestly I’m not up on the story and it seems to me that everything illegal that went on took place via “private messages.” Mike are you seriously expecting any chat service provider to attempt to control private messages?
oh and World Magazine Blog had this to say:
Dan,
1. It sounds to me as though gay.com’s age-verification and enforcement procedures are way too weak. I don’t do online chat and messaging, so someone please educate me: Are there avenues by which gay.com can improve its initial age-verification procedures and better enforce age limits thereafter?
2. Regarding World Magazine and other excuse-makers: Is West a hypocrite, or a bigot?
What do you call someone who may be a pedophile, and who, while he is at least partially same-sex-attracted, assumes everyone who is same-sex-attracted is also attracted to children, and who, based on that assumption, battles as hard he can to persecute all other same-sex-attracted people?
Yu,
OK, point well made… but I’ll try in the next day or so to hunt down a source on this.
“What do you call someone who may be a pedophile, and who, while he is at least partially same-sex-attracted, assumes everyone who is same-sex-attracted is also attracted to children, and who, based on that assumption, battles as hard he can to persecute all other same-sex-attracted people?”
Easy Mike, you call him a dip shit.
Case in point: my brother is homosexual, and the thought of making it with a 13 year old makes him want to puke.
It’s kind of funny: some people argue that heterosexuals who prefer really skinny, hairless girls, the (typical modern day fashion model) are actually latent pedophiles who want to molest young girls, so they seek out women who have the same features (hairless, skinny).
Sounds like a stretch, but still quite funny.
Yu,
The following doesn’t address the difference between abuse and pedophilia. However I think it does go to the issue of whether there’s a link between orientation and the sex of the child.
William C. Holmes, Md, MSCE, Gail B. Slap, MD, MS, ” Sexual Abuse of Boys,” Journal of American Medical Association, December 2, 1998 – Vol. 280, No. 21, pp.1855-1862, is available here: https://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/280/21/1855
Unfortunately, I don’t have a subscription to the Journal of American Medical Association so I can’t pull the report in complete detail. However, here’s a (second-hand) quote from the article:
“One study noted that 98% of these male perpetrators self-identified as heterosexual.” Note that the article was addressing specifically sexual abuse of boys.
Yeah, I know one quote which I can’t even connect to is not very conclusive, but when I have a bit more time I’ll do better.
I use gay.com at least weekly. Gay.com is no different than any other site when it comes to age verification, it always comes down to checking a little box that says “I agree to the above terms” and clicking “submit form.” Gay.com is like this, Friendster, facethejury, the vast majority of free porn sites and virtually every other dating site in existence. There’s NOTHING special about gay.com other than you singling it out. (sorry if I’m being tough but continue to share if you see it differently)
It sounds like the problem (I see it as one, anyway) is widespread, then.
I agree that gay.com shouldn’t be singled out, but the absence of solid age verification at dating sites still bothers me.
Requiring a credit card isn’t hard to do, and ID verification isn’t much harder these days.
So shall we pass legislation requiring Craigslist to require ID?
https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/m4m/
Maybe just the “personal” ads but not the ads to sell your couch?
If the DC craigslist ads are anything like LA you can get everything from bareback sex to sex in exchange for drugs.
The very nature and design of the internet is resistant to control. The only time controls come into play is when a site deploys its own in the interest of making money. Pornographic material continues to be readily available to anyone regardless of age despite laws attempting to regulate this. I see no reason why this would work for dating sites, something few people have an interest in regulating.
oh and XY.com… So some 16 year old closeted kid in South Dakota who has never met another gay person in his entire life wants to sign onto xy.com to talk to his peers and learn there are other kids out there like him, BUT alas he has to get mom’s credit card first.
Pedophilia is generally considered an orientation aside from gender. Also, pedophilia actually refers to a specific age frame (it is not any child between 1-17). People tend to misuse it. The idea of orientation is interesting though because it is based on attraction not behavior. A pedophile is a pedophile even if behavior is not involved. Also, behavior can be modified possibly, but pedophiles do not change orientation (one reason why people want them locked up forever–they don’t change). This is interesting to the exgay issue–do exgays really change their attraction? Pedophiles do not generally, so why would gays? Also, only some pedophiles have been molested. The majority have not. Most pedophiles have preferences, but it is seen different than their adult orientations. For example, the pedophile may be straight but be attracted to same-sex children. That does not mean that the pedophile is gay.
Ultimately we run into a semantical issue here.
So a man who ONLY likes a little boys is not a homosexual, but a pedophile?
I don’t see pedophilia as being distinct from being a heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual. In the above example, I would define such a man as a homosexual pedophile. This would seem to be the most logical and descriptive definition, given that his attraction is multi-dimensional; not only does he prefer a particular gender, but he also prefers a particular age. The fact that he only prefers the male gender does overlap with our definition of homosexuality.
Those who see pedophilia as an orientation apart from gender make this distinction arbitrarily (as do I with my own definition), and this arbitrariness is a corner-stone of the so called social (psuedo) sciences, i.e. psychology.
Also, the term “sexual orientation” often gets tossed around a lot by researchers, but at bottom, researchers don’t really have a precise definition of it. It is not a singular entity, and as Mike A. pointed out, sexual orientation is different for everyone and may have different origins for everyone as well.
So, in the end, we create our own meaing with regards to these affairs.
Lastly, for a truly disturbing look at pedophile propaganda, please see
https://pf03.wz.cz/en/text/opf.htm
The arguments they make are virtually identical to that of the gay rights movement. Scary.
Aaaron Race: …pedophilia actually refers to a specific age frame (it is not any child between 1-17). People tend to misuse it.
Actually, you are mis-using it above. Pedophillia refers to attraction to prepubescent adolescents (approx. 0-13). Ephebophilia is the seperate attraction to postpubescent adolescents[1]. These definitions are wholly seperate to the legal definitions of child abuse.
Yu- I think the reason some people are saying that there is a distinction between sexual orientation and pedophelia is because of the tendency of the right (or anyone that disagrees with homosexuality) to link the two together (i.e. gays are more likely to be pedophiles than straights).
If you assume that any male that molests a boy is gay, then that may be the case.
But, it doesn’t seem fair to say that a man that lives his life as a heterosexual (dates women, possibly married, etc.) but then molests boys is gay. Many people would call this person gay, wrongly imo. The person in this example lives life as a straight man. Just because he molests boys doesn’t make him automatically a problem of the gay community- and these are the types of statistics many supporters of the Boy Scouts ban on gays and lawmakers that want to keep gays from teaching positions look at. They don’t make the distniction, but someone needs to point them out.
Keeping gays away from kids wouldn’t have stopped the mayor nor most of the men that molest boys. Putting the focus on gays really only hides and scapegoats the problem.
Ricardo is largely correct, up to the phrase “legal definitions of child abuse.”
There are no “legal definitions of child abuse”–not that I know of, at least, and I’m a lawyer. There are legal definitions of things like “statutory rape,” and they vary from state to state. And those definitions may differ as between opposite-sex sex and same-sex sex. And between married and unmarried couples.
Differentiating between “pedophile” and “ephebophile” is a matter of labeling. So does differentiating between “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” It has long struck me as being counter-productive to unduly concern oneself with labeling. (I recognize that “unduly” is in the view of the beholder.) And, at some point, the labelling gets to be a bit silly. A boyhood friend of my partner was molested by his father. And the father also molested his eight sisters. And, given the fact that the father apparently had sex with the mother, apparently he was somewhat heterosexual.
But what was that father? Heterosexual? Homosexual? I’ve mentioned this story (which is true) on several conservative web sites over the last 10 or so years. More than a few commenters have opined that the father must have been homosexual–because heterosexuals do not have sex with males. Helped produce 9 children. Sex with his sisters? Note hetero?
At some point, it becomes comical. It became comical years ago.
Ricardo. Reread what I wrote. I did not say a pedophile is attracted to ages 1-17. I said it did not. It is someone who is atracted to ages 1-13. Also this labeling is important. I think it is much more disgusting if a person is attracted to someone who is 8 vs. someone who is attracted to 17 years old (remember Bob Dole said he was attracted to Brittany Spears and she was 17–he was not a pedophile). I think there is an important distinction. Although, both are still crimes.
Apologies, Aaron if didn’t read your post properly. That aside, the age of consent in my own country (UK) is 16, not 17 and is lower in other countries.
Mike, it seems to me that the real issue here is not whether sites like gay.com apply appropriate identification procedures or not but where we place the onus of responsibility for when those identification procedures do not work. For example, will requiring a credit card work? Not for teenagers, that tend to have a copy of their parent’s credit card. I’m not sure what other solutions one might come up with either.
But even more important is your original question: “Is anyone demanding sanctions against gay.com for hosting illegal activities?”
Upon what basis do you assert that gay.com should be sanctioned for illegal activities that occur on their site? Would you demand the same thing in other situations? Should a property owner be held responsible if I sneak onto his property and sell drugs from his yard? If I am a landlord, should I be held responsible if a serial killer’s residence is traced to my building? If I shoot a gun in a McDonald’s, should we sanction McDonald’s because of what I did? To any of those questions, I’d bet the answer is no. In what ways is gay.com different than the property owner, the landlord or McDonald’s? they certainly do not condone pedophilia, they don’t advertise it, and they make at least as much of an effort to keep pedos out as McDonald’s does to keep out people carrying firearms.
One of the understated issues here — and always the tough one to talk about — is what exactly the age of consent should be. I only skimmed the West articles so I’m not up on all the details, but most of the guys he slept with were 16 or 17. Given the age of consent in Washington state is 16 (at least according to http://www.ageofconsent.com), on the surface, West didn’t do anything illegal by sleeping with minors.
We still have this virgin/slut mindset about young people — hell, old people — and a cultural idea that people under the age of 18 don’t or shouldn’t have any sexual feelings, wants, or desires. We’ve got to get over that mindset or we aren’t going to make any progress.
Actually – just to clear things up – as best we know West only hooked up with guys over 18. The fake identity he was stung by first claimed to be 18, then after establishing contact with West said he was 17, but had an upcoming birthday.
There are a couple of claims from felons that West molested them when they were little kids – no one knows if these have any credibility at all (one has a lawsuit against the county against another guy).
Additionally, West apparantly (per some kid’s claim) asked some 16 year old if he wanted to hang out with him.
I’m not defending West… just trying to get the conversation back on firmer basis.
From the post
Is anyone demanding sanctions against gay.com for hosting illegal activities?
Probably not.
I hate to tell you, but the fact is that, at some point some of this gets to be a bit silly.
The number of variables is way too large to respond completely. But…(and I apologize if this sounds a bit disjointed)…..
When I came out in the mid to late 1970s, there were no computers. People would go to gay bars and gay areas to try to get laid. But the age of entry to bars then was 18. So 18 year old kids (probably younger guys with fake IDs) could go to those bars to get laid. Shortly after I moved to Boston, when we would go to gay clubs, I noted that there were some young guys outside the gay clubs who probably were too young to get in, but who were obviously trying to get laid. Or make some money. Or (probably) both.
Gay.com is nothing more than the “meat rack” that we noted in P’Town. Actually, it’s bigger than the “meat rack,” since it allows straight men who want to be serviced by gay men during “business hours” to make themselves known. If you believe that I’m joking, I am not. I’ve monitored gay.com boston chat room activities off and on during for a number of days over the last few years. It’s dumb as heck, but unless someone is a total dolt, one discovers the “code” quite quickly.