Posted on 06/13/2003 8:17:51 AM PDT by kattracks
(Editor's Note: Contains information some readers may find objectionable.)
(CNSNews.com) - There's something for everyone on the Internet - even for pedophiles who seek support and acceptance for their fixation on children.
Some of the websites that "celebrate" adults' love for minor children are very careful to monitor their content so they don't break any laws. Pornographic images, erotic literature and other sexually explicit content are nowhere to be found on these sites, but advocates for children find them very troubling nevertheless.
At the website Girl Love Garden, pedophiles claim to be on a quest for social acceptance of their sexual preferences. The website celebrates "the emancipation of girls of all ages and 'girl love,' in general."
The website notes that "true emancipation" lies "in a child's sublime assent to becoming self actualized with the keen-eyed help of a loving mentor (gardener) who is willing to carefully fertilize and tend to the growth of the emotions, spirit and intellectual flora of the garden of a child's soul."
The committee's mission statement offers the view that adults who are "naturally, sensuously attracted to little girls and blossoming young women…will achieve full emancipation only by clothing their souls with a childlike personality and agreeing to 'play safe' with each other…"
Here visitors find "an oasis of shade" among the "refreshing waters of reason" where they are invited to "drink deeply of the exquisite delights to be found herein by Girl Lovers everywhere."
But "boy lovers" need not feel left out. At the Free Spirits website, visitors learn that "boylovers have not chosen of their free will to become so."
"It is an attraction most discover within themselves at a very early age," the site explains. "Through no action of their own, they find themselves considered horrible and vile. Most people who are attracted to minors try to live good lives but find no encouragement from a society and a press that labels all people with that attraction, whatever they do or don't do, as evil monsters," the web site says.
Developers of "BoyChat," the chat room at Free Spirits, admit it is not a place where "well-meaning social workers firmly guide people the way they think they ought to go."
BoyChat says it is run "by boylovers for boylovers." It encourages people posting on the website "to work freely through their own issues and questions."
Anonymity
The operators of both the Free Spirits and Girl-Love Garden websites are free to express their views because of the anonymity of the Internet. There are many other online sites catering to "MAAs" (minor-attracted adults, which some pedophiles prefer to call themselves).
Such websites claim to advocate for the civil rights and acceptance of "the most underserved and misunderstood sexual minority remaining in today's human society," according to the Free Spirits mission statement.
Along with chat rooms, these sites include members' galleries, where visitors find personal, historical and literary insights on loving children; and message boards where visitors may discuss issues involving the emotional, romantic and sexual relationships between children and adults.
'Legal'
According to Barry Maddox, spokesperson for the FBI's Baltimore, Md., office, the sites are "totally legal." Maddox told CNSNews.com the sites come close to breaking the law but do not break it."They've done their homework," Maddox said.
Pornographic images, literature or any other sexually explicit content are nowhere to be found on these sites.
"Girl Moments," or stories describing an encounter with a female adolescent that are "tasteful," "well-written," and focus on "friendships or other light-hearted encounters" are welcome at Girl-Love Garden, according to its frequently asked questions (FAQ) section. But it warns visitors not to "include details that evoke a prurient interest in sexual relations.
"Written materials that appear erotic or that advocate or counsel engaging in sexual activity with a minor constitutes a very serious offence" under the criminal codes of Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the FAQ warns, adding that "your material must be in full compliance with these laws so that when viewed with a prejudicial eye, they could not be seen as openly advocating, counseling, inducing, nor encouraging sexual intimacy with minors."
"We're only interested in those who act upon these impulses," Maddox said. While legal, he added, the sites "do make me sick to my stomach."
Ruben Rodriguez, director of the Exploited Children Unit at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told CNSNews.com that while he likes the Internet, sites such as Free Spirits and Girl-Love Garden "have turned sections of it into a sewer."
"Many of these pedophiles act out on their impulses," Rodriguez said. "These kinds of sites are not something I would welcome."
Rodriguez said all the disclaimers and attempts at de-stigmatizing the "deviant sexual behavior" of pedophiles online are "just excuses" for them to "sit in front of a monitor and masturbate." He expressed "disgust" at the notion of society accepting pedophiles as another minority group.
"I see us sometimes going down a different path," Rodriguez said. "I don't see it getting better, I see it getting worse...going in a direction sometimes that just drives me crazy."
Some MAAs claiming to be Christians say they have found comfort at a website called Philia, which provides news and resources to religious support groups for adults who are attracted to minors. Philia, along with the Christian Boylove Forum (CBLF), are for those who "find themselves in the position of having no one to turn to who shares their faith as well as their sexual feelings.
"This (online message) board attempts to fill that gap by providing a friendly, safe place where we can be honest about our feelings and struggles with sexuality and faith, without fear of destructive criticism or harassment," the CBLF site states. "This is a place for mutual encouragement, support and advice as we seek to deal with our sexuality and society's reaction to it in responsible and healthy ways, to live out our lives with integrity and to express our faith in a way that honors God and demonstrates the love of Jesus Christ to all people."
Both sites are run by "Bach" - the screen name used to protect his identity - a boy lover who told CNSNews.com via e-mail that he has never acted upon his feelings and that he found support through a Christian service agency with which he volunteered.
"I am in a committed relationship with another man and have found that I am able to gain some satisfaction with this compromise," Bach wrote. "We discussed the fact that many message boards didn't allow for a Christian boylover to explore his faith in the context of his sexuality. We were often confronted with boylovers who had a strong hatred for the church, and we were constantly defending ourselves. This was the impetus to form the Christian Boylove Forum."
From CBLF sprung "Christian Consultations," "an annual gathering to bring together Christians (and some non-Christians) who are willing to enter into dialogue about adult attraction to minors," according to the Philia website.
"We have had involvement at the Christian Consultation from various pastors, Christian service workers, members of...Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Persons," Bach stated in the e-mail to CNSNews.com. "The goal of these encounters was to provide a non-threatening place for dialogue ...to help break isolation and fear.
"I would hope that Christians could come to accept that minor-attracted adults are not monsters, not sex maniacs, not uncontrolled freaks, but folks who have to live their lives with a desire that is demonized by society and the media to an extent that they are fearful to speak of it to anyone," Bach explained.
Julie Posey, a self-described "cyber-crime fighter" runs the website Pedowatch.org. Posey's website claims that "since 1996, she has passed on hundreds of tips to law enforcement involving child sexual predators who use the Internet as a tool to gain access to children who are later sexually assaulted and in rare instances murdered."
Posey is also the author of They Call Me Kendra, which Pedowatch.org describes as an autobiography of "her life experiences as a sexually abused child and tells how she later became one of the nation's leading experts on child sexual predators."
Kendra was the onscreen name Posey used to trap sexual predators online. She told CNSNews.com that Christian Consultation sounded a lot like prison ministers who work with convicted pedophiles.
"They go into prisons and try to help the families," Posey said. "They say, 'Oh, what your loved one did isn't so wrong...he has a love for boys,' and they try to get them (the family) to accept it. But they're trying to get all of society to just accept it, and it's unacceptable to me."
Posey said sites like Free Spirits and Girl-Love Garden are "just working to make their stories sound good.
"I read the North American Man Boy Lovers Association's manifesto one time, and they were like 'sex is actually good for kids,'...well, I can tell you it's not," Posey said. "If society doesn't get a grip right now - and even right now it's going to be difficult, they are definitely going to have the same rights that we have."
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If you mean to say that nobody should be forced into therapy, I would agree with you.
Shalom.
You: Oh? Really?
Yes, really. Humanity has known homoerotic behavior was a behavior throughout recorded history. Until someone comes up with a test for a corpse to determine whether it was gay or straight we'll have to accept that knowledge as fact.
Shalom.
The statements don't start with a premise. They start with the statement of the mentally ill. "I am this way, and that's ok." Neither says anything about whether they are this way with consenting or non-consenting anything. That's something that the libertarians added later to justify closing their eyes.
The statements, "we're born this way" and "we're not monsters, we're just misunderstood" say nothing about consent.
If they did, then I would have to remind you that the entire consent argument is a strawman, but that's a subject for a later post.
Shalom. Shalom.
Somebody give this guy a towel. He is frothing at the mouth.
I agree. Simply saying that is not bigotry.
I'll further go out on a limb and state (hopefully appropo) that saying sodomy is perverted is not bigotry.
Nope. That is not quite bigorty either.
I'll further go out on a limb and state (hopefully appropo) that saying sodomy is deviant is not bigotry.
Nope. Like the last one, this is not quite bigotry.
I'll further go out on a limb and state (hopefully appropo) that saying sodomy is just plain disgusting is not bigotry.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. I am begining to smell the scent of bigotry.
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