Debate Guide: Pedophilia is unnatural

Pedophilia is sick, unnatural and just plain wrong!

Even though no known religion formally condemns pedophilia, many religious people are taught that it is sinful, with the post hoc reasoning that it is "unnatural" or "perverse" and thus against God's will.

Pedophilia is not unnatural. Hebephilia, in particular, is probably "normative". But let's first address the central fallacy of the argument from nature.

The opponent appears to believe that something is wrong simply because it is "unnatural". But, hold on. We do not dispute the morality of chemotherapy, HIV drugs, the motorcar or modern agriculture, all of which are the products of industry. Instead, our civilization is dependent upon them. If we are to assert that something, by not serving the immediate interests of nature is less moral, not only would we be able to justify infanticide, but as skeptical scientists like Richard Green might remind us, we would also have to condemn homosexuality. Yet, we celebrate gays and their culture in western society with an annual Pride Festival, and condemn the slaying of other people's children.

Evidence suggests that humans and close animal relatives have a historical tendency towards relationships (including sexuality) between mature and developing individuals. See, for example, Intergenerational Sexual Behaviors in Animals, Nonwestern Intergenerational Relationships and Intergenerational Relationships in History.

Assuming that the average child begins puberty at fourteen years, the vast majority of preteens would be prepubescent. Sexual attraction also requires either masculine or feminine secondary sexual characteristics and therefore, a preteen child would be as sexually attractive as a broom or pot plant.

To the above, a participant then argued back that a "child" - in representing a marginally less developed version of a fully developed adult, will always be to some extent sexually attractive.

Putting aside the proponent's flawed puberty projections, pot plants or utensils do not have the physical and genetic make-up of small humans who are soon to reach optimum sexual attractiveness in late puberty. It is also simplistic to suggest the only purpose of erotic interest towards a young person would be reproductive. There are numerous evolutionary biological incentives that are known to underpin strong attractions towards prepubescents, and a lot of theory to go off. The cross-cultural and cross-species perspectives already mentioned would appear to confirm at least some of this theory by identifying an apparently non-maladaptive behavioral end-point.

Considering that most adults find prepubescent children generally attractive (as exemplified by the child nude's history as an object of artistic study), where do we draw the line between this and "pedophilia"? This question cuts to the very heart of sexuality as discourse. One's sexuality can be seen as a cluster of feelings and dispositions which are only given significance within a social and cultural context. It is this social context that forces us to deny there is some common meeting place between a parent's love for a child, and an erotic bond. Instead, we split and dichotomize the erotic and non-erotic, in order to feel comfortable about ourselves, which is perhaps understandable, but nevertheless an obvious coping mechanism.

See also

• Debate Guide: Religious arguments
• Debate Guide: Pedophiles chose their condition
• Mythology and popular cliché surrounding this topic is very often pseudo-religious
• Is–ought problem - Proponents of this argument may also show a general inability to distinguish is from ought statements.