Megan McArdle wrote a wicked piece of drivel on her Atlantic blog about a week ago that put forward the idea that pedophiles are secretly suffering over an orientation (like gays?) that Nature designed. While she claims she would never suggest not punishing people who rape children, she says we should rethink how we deal with these perverts. After all, they’re victims too.

Her epiphany came when she learned that a long time friend, who went to jail because he masturbated to images of children being raped, was a “pedophile” and since he was otherwise so awesome she rethought her stance on their treatment. She linked to a Dan Savage piece called “Gold Star Pedophiles” which lauds pedophiles who have supposedly never acted on their desire to harm children. He and McArdle both think we simply don’t support these poor perverts enough.

The depravity of this sympathy for the devil approach to child rapists is nicely illustrated by McArdle when she rubs out this paragraph which is little more than an attempt to absolve all child rapists of responsibility for their actions:

Obviously, I am not going to defend the use of child porn at all; it’s despicable, and jail is the appropriate sentence, because the man who purchases child pornography is encouraging its manufacture.  But it made me think of them for the first time with sympathy.  They didn’t choose to be like this–God, who would?  Sex is one of the most powerful drives we have, and as Dan Savage’s columns testify every week, we have little control whether it focuses on something relatively normal, or something . . . um . . . extremely statistically unlikely

Ignore for a second the fact that both McArdle and Savage think they can take the word of a pervert for whether or not he has molested anyone. It goes without saying that their credulousness is linked with a personal desire to have their beliefs validated much the way liberals tend to accept the view that Islam is essentially a peaceful misunderstood religion.  McArdle’s desire to paint pedophiles in a more sympathetic light is likely a coping mechanism of a woman who badly misjudged the character of someone she knows, while Savage has a long history of promoting unhealthy views of sexuality.

Both, however, fundamentally misunderstand child sexual exploitation and the people who participate in it. This is not unique to pundits. Criminologists, psychologists, politicians, and all kinds of self-appointed experts put forward the idea that pedophilia is a sexual orientation in large part because it is a more palatable way to view this sort of criminality. It is easier on society to believe that pedophiles are either mentally ill or born into an unpopular orientation than it is to admit that people have a choice between being good or evil.

As I’ve written before, Evil is like a wool coat in the rain, its warm comfort soon giving way to a cold heaviness that drags on a person’s soul. Pedophilia is simply another example of this; it is sexual sadism taken to the extreme. It is the desire to have power over others, to force one’s will on the weak.

On one end of the spectrum of this supposed orientation you have adults who sexually exploit teens. Clearly a person luring a teen into a sexual relationship is not oriented differently than you and me. A 14-year-old girl looks young to me (at 38), but still has all the same physical characteristics of an adult woman. What is different about them is that they are not adults, thus not equal to the exploiter. It is this unequal relationship that the supposed pedophile is looking for, perhaps because he’s immature himself or is unable to find adult sexual partners. For most, however, it is simply the prospect of easy sex with a pliant inexperienced partner who is unlikely to have the boundaries of an adult that drives them.

Is that a different orientation than hetero or homosexuality, or is it simply an immoral behavior?

On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who are literally looking to have sex with children, sometimes even infants. I frankly doubt the tales of these people finding children “sexy” on their own. Instead, I tend to see the common pattern of all these child rapists. Their “desire” is unnatural and will harm the child, often physically. Infants who are raped can be paralyzed or killed. Children can, aside from the psychological scars, be severely injured by a man penetrating them. All adults know this, yet these pedophiles Savage and McArdle feel so sorry for do it anyway.  Or, like McArdle’s friend, they masturbate to images of it.

Are injurious and potential fatal assaults on children a sexual orientation? Wouldn’t that mean brutal rapes were also part of some person’s rough-sex-o-philia? As a crime blogger, I have spent years seeing what McArdle and Savage studiously ignore, the truth about “pedophilia” and how these degenerates operate:

Jose Robles Fraga raped his 2-year-old niece to death. Authorities found the girl had head injuries, injuries to her anus and vagina, and a ruptured stomach. He had also taken some form of Viagra prior to the attack. I suppose he was born with this “taboo” desire?

Joshua Andrew Stepp murdered his 10-month-old step-daughter during a brutal sexual assault that included stuffing toilet paper down her throat. That, I assume, is also a desire he was born with.

Harold Spurling and Jeffery Brisson, both known pro-pedophilia activists (yes there is such a thing), were caught raping infants on film. Both men expressed an orientation toward small children (Spurling for boys 4-9, Brisson for boys and girls from 2-9) yet they were found to have engaged in molesting a 14-year-old boy. There is also speculation they themselves were a couple as one of their victims told police the men would perform sexual acts on each other while forcing children to watch. Were they “oriented” to such a complex and depraved sex life?

12-year-old Ashley Andrews was killed by her mother and step-father after the woman allowed her husband to rape and beat the girl so badly the couple were afraid to send the girl to school. Of course this couple was simply struggling with their “orientation.”

Juan and Dawn Corral were arrested when they were found to have used sexual abuse and sado-masochism to “discipline” an 8-year-old girl. The girl was made to eat naked on the floor “like a dog” and Juan Corral sexually assaulted the girl as a form of punishment. What would we call these degenerates’ orientation?

A Juggalo was found to have raped his old lady’s 12-year-old son several times. He said it was a punishment when the boy “didn’t follow instructions.” I guess the desire to punish little boys with rape is an “orientation.”

James Phillip Edwards drugged little girls with Ambien, then made child porn videos which included one where he repeatedly spit in one of his unconscious victim’s face. He told police that there was nothing wrong with what he did. Shall we show some sympathy for him because he was supposedly born wanting to do this?

Antwan Maurice Pittman was a “pedophile” who turned out to be a serial killer who murdered at least six adult prostitutes. Clearly his sexual peculiarities were not simply a matter of “liking” children. It should be pointed out that the drug addicted prostitutes he preyed upon shared a characteristic with the children he preyed on: they were vulnerable and essentially helpless.

Alia Loren Jacobsen was an active participant in pro-pedophilia forums where she expressed her desire for both pedophilia and blood fetishism. She spoke of fantasies where she tortured girls from 8-14 by cutting designs into them, crushing them and biting them until she drew blood. I later had an exchange with her in which she said she no longer had such thoughts, but was encouraged by the online pedophile community to dwell in some mental problems she had. What “orientation” is she?

19-year-old Joy Babcock was arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old at a party. She claimed she was drunk and raped by the younger teen. Yet while out on bail, crime bloggers found her posting pictures of herself fondling a guy using a toddler as a prop for a perverted photo shoot. She also had a video online of her laughing about the abuse of children. Is she the victim of an unpopular orientation or a gutterslut with no personal boundaries?

In commentary on the BBC report on the Coalinga Treatment Center for sex offenders, I pointed out that one of the patients interviewed, a Mr. Rigby, was married with two children and in a relationship with a fellow male patient who was also a child molester. This was in addition to his desire for children. The omnisexual Mr. Rigby seemed to be operating outside his supposed orientation rather well.

On the blog The Dead Kids of MySpace, I found this story of Michael Marceau and Lisa Ford who are accused of molesting their children, one of whom is mute, wheelchair bound, and hooked up to a respirator. Marceau claimed that one of the victims, a little girl, was to blame because she “wanted it.” The couple molested the children together and recorded it to watch later.

I could have an entire site dedicated to stories of pedophiles whose interest in children has little to do with attraction and everything to do with sadism, but the Libertarians of the world would claim that these were simply anecdotes. But these anecdotes are reality and not the fevered dreams of pundits who theorize that one day we can live in harmony with pedophiles. These stories are just ones that I have blogged about or intended to in the case of the last and they are repeated again and again thousands of times a week. The children victimized by this culture of sexual entitlement must be put before our desire to explain away the evil of people we know.

CrimeShadows News has a been running a series called Predator Smackdown where registered sex offenders who are surfing social networks are reported. In a few weeks he’s found dozens. Are they “driven” by impulses beyond their control to make profiles on Facebook and “friend” children?

There is no pedophile orientation, only pedophilic behavior. The above list of stories is an illustration of people Savage and McArdle would consider pedophiles, but who in fact have sexual lives that revolve around having power over others and hurting people to receive sexual gratification. This idea of a pedophile orientation is a rhetorical device used by a secular society unable to explain Evil, and the inner workings of people who do Evil, and embraced by predators as a way to minimize and normalize their criminality with an eye on eventual legalization. McArdle’s comment section were filled with pro-pedophilia activists as were Dan Savage’s. One comment I saw on McArdle’s piece was a person arguing that cartoon depictions of children being raped should be legal. Boilerplate libertarianism until you realize that what he is arguing for is acceptance of virtual child rape as a masturbatory aid for perverts.

He was arguing that we shouldn’t care if a person in our community masturbates to images of children being sexually abused as long as they are hand drawn.

This path is the road to madness. It is popular these days to see the world as not having black and white morality, not having good guys and bad guys. It ensures the sophisticates’ credentials remain unchallenged to voice this pretension, but it is an illusion fed by our cowardice. While you read this, one of these people who McArdle feels deserves sympathy is raping a child, injuring them internally, and scaring them psychically. Megan McArdle asks us to save some shred of sympathy for these monsters because she would like to think that on a certain level they have no choice but to be pedophiles, but this is like saying people have no choice but to be wife beaters or drug addicts.

I’ll save my sympathy for the children who are victimized by these poor long suffering child rapists, and leave the soul-killing task of advocating for the most despicable among us for those whose desire to seem compassionate trumps their ability to see reality as it is. There are no “pedophiles,” only sexually sadistic criminals who use our inability to process evil against us and prey on children because they are the weakest among us and increasingly the least protected.