We're safe from the pedophiles (for now)

Pedophilia is NOT the next development in LGBT, but watch out for your kids anyway

The right wing is obsessed with LGBT. Pride flags, trans swimmers, drag queens — these are the hot topics animating right wing Twitter today. Many conservatives, seeing mankind as near the end times, believe that LGBT represents the unshackling of all manner of sexual perversion. First we normalized the sin of homosexuality, then transgenderism. What is next? The only remaining taboo is pedophilia, and I have heard many conservatives say that we will soon see a push for the normalization of sexual relations between adults and children.

Fortnuately, this conclusion is wrong. Although LGBT will only grow in political importance, and there is a tension between the innocence of children and the widespread promulgation of LGBT ideology (as we’ve seen in DeSantis’s recent battles in Florida), we will not see a political push for legalizing sexual relations between adults and children.

To understand why, it’s worth taking a close look at how we got here. Rather than sinking into despair and bemoaning the collapse of civilization, we would benefit from understanding the social and political movement that is LGBT, and how it took over the world.

The world is created through activism

The world we live in is the creation of activists of prior generations, and LGBT activists have been some of the most successful activists in modern history. Despite being comprised of various distinct subgroups, each with its own interests, the LGBT community has developed a coherent political project, and has by now achieved many of its core goals. These goals were set forth years ago and we now live in the world that they created, with the policies, institutions, and cultural support that that they fought for.

Some of these goals are: legalization of homosexual activity, delisting of homosexuality and transgenderism (gender dysphoria) as mental illnesses, legalization of same-sex marriage, civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, gender affirming healthcare, recognition of LGBT Pride, and much more. Many of these goals have been achieved, some long ago, some recently, and others are in the works, and will be attained soon.

It’s worth reading about the long and fascinating history of LGBT activism. The LGBT political project has been decades in the making. For every aspect of today’s world that has been molded by LGBT, there are key figures and institutions that are responsible for it. Myriad conferences, marches and pride parades have gone by, many organizations have formed, many have withered away, continuous bickering and infighting has slowed down progress, but nevertheless the LGBT project has marched forward steadily and relentlessly.

The rise and fall of NAMBLA

Despite its success, the LGBT community has always had internal tension due to the fact that it is comprised of multiple subcommunities, and throughout its history, there has been conflict over who the LGBT project is really for. This tension is underscored by the continual rehashing of the acronym to be ever more inclusive: LGBT, LGBTQIA, LGBTTIQQ2SA, LGBTQ+, etc. Before the inclusion of transgender people, the acronym was just LGB (!)

In this respect, pedophiles are an interesting case, and there has always been controversy over whether pedophiles deserve a place in the LGBT tent. The zenith of pro-pedophilia activism was in the 1980s, closely tied to a pro-pedophilia and pro-pederasty organization called NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association). NAMBLA had political goals of its own: abolishing age-of-consent laws and freeing pedophiles from prison who had engaged in ‘non-coercive’ sexual contact. Several early gay liberation activists were pedophiles and associated with NAMBLA: it included among its members Beat poet Allan Ginsberg and prominent gay activist Harry Hay.

At the 1983 Gay Academic Union forum at New York University, Hay said, “If the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.” The audience didn’t buy it, and NAMBLA on the whole never had broad support among gay rights activitists.

NAMBLA was once a member of ILGA (International Lesbian and Gay Association) which had consultive status with the UN. But when this was discovered, a huge public blowback ensued. In 1994 US Senator Jesse Helms introduced a bill to cut funding to the UN unless it could certify that it did not grant any official status to “any organization which promotes, condones or seeks the legalization of pedophilia”; it was unanimously approved by the Senate. ILGA quickly expelled NAMBLA, and HRC (Human Rights Campaign) and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) criticized NAMBLA in the strongest terms. According to Gregory King of HRC, “NAMBLA is not a gay organization... they are not part of our community and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights.” GLAAD adopted a document called “Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA,” which said GLAAD “deplores NAMBLA’s goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD.”

HRC and GLAAD today are some of the most prominent LGBT advocacy organizations while NAMBLA is dead as a doornail. It’s worth emphasizing the scale here. There are hundreds of documented LGBT organizations in the US with billions of dollars in funding. Meanwhile, there is today not even one documented pro-pedophilia organization which is the modern equivalent of NAMBLA. Today, no mainstream LGBT organization has any plank supporting pedophilia or any of NAMBLA’s political goals.

Indeed, Jeffrey Epstein recently defended his own sexual interest in minors, arguing that it was taboo only in the way that homosexuality has been taboo throughout history. But such an argument elicits no sympathy from modern LGBT. According to the magazine Queerty, “It’s a disgusting comparison made by a disgusting man… Being gay and being a pedophile are nothing alike.”

The future of pro-pedophilia

Let’s summarize what we have so far. The future is in the hands of those who have real political power. This includes prominent LGBT organizations, who have already succesfully achieved many of their political objectives despite their deep unpopularity with the American public. But LGBT organizations harshly reject pedophilia, and there are no organizations that represent the political objectives of pedophiles. Thus, we will not see pedophilia becoming an important issue in the future of American politics the way gay rights and transgenderism have been in recent history.

Drag queens, pansexuality, two-spirit, furries — I predict these are the sorts of words we will hear a lot more in the future instead. This is what the rising generation is passionate about, and what the power centers of LGBT activism view positively. The various queer identities which kids are creating today may become politically relevant as gender ideology becomes enshrined in civil rights law (it already has to some degree by Bostock vs. Clayton County). But that’ll be the subject of another post.

Just because pedophilia isn’t being normalized doesn’t mean your kids are safe. LGBT activists would love to teach your kids about queerness and genderfluidity, if they aren’t already getting a rigorous education in white privilege and critical race theory. And of course they would love to bring in a drag queen to school to read stories, maybe even do a little dance. All of this can and should be called ‘grooming’ by conservatives. But this is quite distinct from the normalization of pedophilia.

What can we say about the future of pro-pedophilia activism? There are some professors and activists who would like to reduce the stigma for people with pedophilic inclinations. They like to say that pedophiles are simply ‘minor-attracted persons,’ people born with an attraction to children the way heterosexual men are attracted to women. And no one should be stigmatized for something they can’t control. And there is nothing wrong with feeling a certain inclination, as long as you don’t act on it. And while non-consensual sexual contact with children is abhorrent, maybe, just maybe, children above a certain age may be mature enough to consent.

If there is any development in this area, it will probably sound like this. But it will not dominate mainstream political life because, as I have argued, there is no political apparatus supporting it. The professors who have made these statements were quickly cancelled and receieved no support from LGBT groups. Unlike professors of Gender Studies who write about queerness, they are not dominant in academia; they really are ‘marginalized.’

I do not say there couldn't ever be a successful movement on this issue. But it would have to be decades off, since the institutions do not exist yet. Allyn Walker, the professor who coined ‘minor-attracted persons,’ could be the beginning of a revolution, but it could only affect politics far out in the future, once the necessary academic conferences, activist groups, political organizations, etc are built up.

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Conservatives were rather quick to jump to the conclusion that pedophilia must be coming next, despite the complete lack of evidence for it. In a future piece I will explain why, and how this speaks to fundamental shortcomings in the conservative movement, as well as the darker truth of what modern conservatism is really energized by.