Pedophilia. We are rightly repulsed by the subject, but it must be addressed. The Church must speak pointedly and biblically into the darkness, or the darkness will spread.
We’ve seen it before. Many people are aware that 1973 was the year that the bleak Roe v. Wade decision altered the landscape of how our country treats unborn children. But another critical decision was made in 1973--and its impact is also ringing through our culture 25 years later.
In 1973, after repeated assaults by pro-gay activists, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Homosexuality was no longer a treatable illness, but to be considered normal and healthy. And now the mental health gurus seem to be taking the next step.
According to the APA’s latest diagnostic manual, the standard for mental health workers worldwide, a person should not be considered to have a psychological disorder simply because he molests children. It’s only a problem if the "fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning."
Thus the lack of protection for children in our culture is deepening, and the doorway is widening to the normalization of pedophilia and the sexual abuse of the least powerful members of society. And the Church must rise from sleeping in the light to battle this spreading darkness.
Just in the last few months, pedophilia and the child pornography that fuels it has been turning up in an increasing number of headlines--and often in a manner very similar to the way that homosexuality was mainstreamed 25 years ago. These are troubling trends that every Christian should be aware of--and be ready to respond to.
Scholarly Inroads
In March of 1999, radio pop psychologist Laura Schlessinger, a.k.a. "Dr. Laura" to her vast audience, blew the whistle on the American Psychological Association for an article published in its Psychological Bulletin late in 1998. The authors, two out of three of them from Philadelphia, are educators who re-examined 59 previous studies on how college students coped with sexual abuse. They concluded that "the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from their child sexual-abuse experiences." As long as the sexual contact was not "coerced" and was "enjoyed," sex between children and adults may not be harmful at all.
Further, "Classifying a behavior as abuse simply because it is generally viewed as immoral or defined as illegal is problematic." Therefore we should avoid negative terms like "molestation" and "victims," so that "a willing encounter would be labeled simply ‘adult-child sex,’ a value-neutral term."
But the insistence on value-neutral terminology for sexual abuse is not neutral at all, but advances the ideology that children are fair game for sexual predators. To speak of "willing," "non-coerced," and "enjoyable" sexual encounters between children and adults ignores the very nature of seduction.
As Gene Edward Veith pointed out in a WORLD magazine article, statutory rape laws, though seldom enforced today, recognize that "it is impossible for a minor, being below the age of consent, to consent. An adult who has sex with a minor is therefore committing rape."
Like Gene Veith and Dr. Laura, we must not be deceived by the haze of doublespeak about things like "male intergenerational intimacy" when severe emotional, spiritual, and physical damage is being done under such nice labels produced by the intellectual elite of our day.
Kiddie Porn-- and Porn Directed at Kids
Children are being sexualized in movies, in the music they listen to, and in the clothes their parents buy them--as well as through the ever-increasing bombardment of pornography that exploits them and is even directed to them.
Child pornography, once available only at the sleaziest of X-rated bookstores, is now at your local Barnes & Noble under the guise of "art" and expressions of the First Amendment. What was considered "hard-core" a decade or two ago is now considered "soft-core" or even de-classified as porn and sold in the art or photography sections of such superstores. Moreover, recent legal decisions in North America are tending to break down old walls.
In January 1999, a judge in Vancouver ruled that "Canadians have a constitutional right to possess child pornography if it is for private use and not for distribution." Judge Duncan Shaw, in his ruling, went so far as to indicate that "there is not enough evidence that total prohibition (of child pornography) reduced...child abuse."
Then in February 1999 a Federal judge in Philadelphia overturned the Child Online Protection Act, which Congress had passed to limit the exposure of children to Internet pornography by prohibiting the free teaser screens which children can easily stumble upon. Though this law was not dealing directly with child pornography, it was an attempt to limit exposure of children to pornography--to prevent children from being exposed at early ages to inappropriate sexual images.
And child porn abounds on the Internet. There seems to be no limitations on the existence of such sites, with new ones among the 200 new porn sites added each day to the web.
Moreover, a recent study by a California university noted that the sub-section of the U.S. population with the greatest exposure level to pornography is males age 13 to 18. In part because of their high level of Internet usage--and in part because of the raging hormones of adolescent curiosity. Yet pornographers insist that their audience is "adults only."
Global Chaos
As if all this weren’t enough, the interplay of children and sexual abuse is having global influence. In February 1999, Time magazine contained a disturbing article entitled, "Tourists Who Prey on Kids." Pedophiles are accessing young children in Central America with great ease. In San José, Costa Rica, 10-year-old prostitutes wait for customers at the local Holiday Inn. The article shows the picture of a 14-year-old female prostitute in Guatemala City. And in Guatemala, one half of all child prostitutes enter the sex trade between ages 9 and 13.
Sex tours abound in numerous countries, and are advertised in numerous venues. While there is a 1994 United States law which prohibits Americans to travel abroad for sex with minors, it is very difficult to enforce. The countries where child prostitution is high, may try to stop pedophilia, but poverty and greed inhibit significant changes in these nations.
In Asia, according to Compassion International Child Link magazine, a million teen and preteen children are added to the sex trade industry annually. Thailand estimates there to be 800,000 child prostitutes in Thailand alone. And a study done in Thailand and India revealed a 50 to 90% HIV rate in child sex workers. Three million children are said to be afflicted with AIDS in the world, with 1,600 new cases added daily, primarily due to prostitution.
When one considers that AIDS is more readily spread through bodily fluids if there is damage to tissue, it is not surprising that when small children are subjected to sexual intercourse by infected adults the disease spreads more rapidly to them than to the general population.
Yet the child sex business is booming in the poorer countries of Asia, with the customers coming from the richer nations of Asia as well as the West. Indeed, U.S. dollars are massively fueling the physical, emotional, and spiritual decay we are seeing globally.
Homosexuality and Pedophilia?
On the one hand, we must be careful not to paint homosexuals and pedophiles with the same brush. In March 1999 Philadelphia’s most well-known gay bookstore, under pressure from a local talk-show host and numerous others, disbanded the store’s "transgenerational section" and removed the bulletin of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) from its shelves.
The sad reality, however, is that within the homosexual community, pedophilia is a greater problem than in the heterosexual community. While in absolute numbers heterosexuals (almost always male) commit more acts of pedophilia, the ratios point to a statistically greater proportion of pedophilia among homosexual males.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, in his landmark book Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, reveals, "...heterosexual males outnumber homosexual males by approximately thirty-six to one. Heterosexual child molestation cases outnumber homosexual cases by only eleven to one, implying that pedophilia is three times more common among homosexuals."
There is even a term used within the gay community for someone who is a pedophile. The person is referred to as a "Chicken Hawk." This denotes someone who goes after "fresh meat"--a term referring to a young prospective "partner."
It is understandable that the homosexual community is struggling to deal with this problem. The majority of homosexuals claim to be opposed to pedophilia, yet the very tactics used to normalize homosexuality have set the stage to normalize pedophilia. If it does not bother the pedophile or his victim, then it is acceptable behavior.
There is an open push by many pedophiles to make a distinction between coerced and non-coerced "intergenerational relationships." NAMBLA officially states that "we support the rights of all people to engage in consensual relations, and we oppose laws which destroy loving relationships merely on the basis of the age of the participants."
Thinking biblically, sexual sin is sexual sin. Sexual predators can look a lot different on the outside, but share the same dark heart. Whether it is same-sex inappropriate intimacy (homosexual thoughts and behavior) or age-inappropriate intimacy or both, is not so much the issue.
Our fig leaves come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the fall of Adam (Gen. 3) means there is something wrong with everything--including and perhaps especially our sexual identities and desires. And we all try to cope sexually with our guilt and shame in very broken, foolish, inadequate ways.
How The Church Must Respond:
New Ministry Opportunities Amidst the Wreckage of Sin
The Church is tempted to respond viscerally in repugnant withdrawal from the entire topic of pedophilia--and while such a gut reaction is understandable, the Gospel calls for something deeper. Here are some guidelines to shape our ministry in our day:
1. Look in Mirror Before You Look Out the Window -- The Lure of the Forbidden has been with us ever since the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. And in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a character known as the wife of Bath put it in 14th-century prose, "Forbid us thing, and that desire we." If we are honest with ourselves, as God calls us to be, we must admit that there is no sin that we are not capable of in the darkness of our fallen hearts. We cannot afford to place this sin in a special category, even unintentionally, by our self-righteousness and pride.
Read Psalm 106 if you need to be reminded of the sobering laundry list of sins that God’s people can commit--even child sacrifice is there. Satan wins whenever Christians whisper to themselves, "Well, at least I never did THAT."
2. Stand for the Truth -- Sin is destructive, even if those engaged in it are deceived into thinking otherwise. And sin always destroys from the inside out. Yes, our children are at risk, and the culture war is real. Do we weep for our children--and equally for those who have made idols out of them?
The church needs to repent of its silence. If we continue in silence, feeling these issues are too shameful to speak of, we will reap the consequences--and so will our children’s children.
Speak clearly and pointedly in order to dispel lies, myths, and cut through the doublespeak of our day. Phrases like "male intergenerational intimacy" hide the fact that those who commit sexual sin with young boys are vainly acting out in an empty attempt to numb the ache from the genuine male intimacy they never received. We must not allow others to be deluded as to the damage really going on, and speaking the truth, in love, is the best antidote for deception.
3. Speak about the Heart Issues -- Consistently, boldly, in every setting. Pedophilia, like homosexuality and every form of adultery, is a "disorder of worship." All forms of sexual sin have their root in idolatry, in a longing for the overwhelming, in a looking for a worship experience. As G.K. Chesterton put it, "Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God."
In an age which adores and exalts youth, why should we be surprised that the young and the innocent are targets of abuse? Such idolatry is a temporary, destructive, and addictive balm for aging and guilt-ridden souls. Are we preaching a Gospel that is potent enough to address all the idols of the heart that seduce our young people?
Expect to have to deal with victims of sexual abuse in your church. Expect to welcome sinners--even all sorts of sexual sinners--to the Savior. Invite all kinds of sinners to change, to repent, and to be made new from the inside out.
The God-given hungers for intimacy, beauty and adventure are the drives that capture all our hearts. And desire is not a bad thing, in and of itself. As C.S. Lewis has said, our problem is that "we are far too easily pleased." Yet only Christ satisfies--now and forever. Only He can touch that aching place in our souls that longs for significant intimacy, ravishing beauty, and the thrill of adventure.
Invite all to the Savior and Changer of hearts--the only One truly worthy of our worship.
Mordecai told Queen Esther of the threat to the people and asked her to go to the king. When she hesitated he rebuked her and concluded, "And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).
The church still stands in our society. The call goes out for us to stand firm and protect not only our own children, but all the children of society. Even Dr. Laura, to her credit as a professing Jew, has taken great heat from the American Psychological Association, but has stood her ground. Will we, as Christians, be willing to take those kinds of risks, too?
The darkness is great and getting greater--but the hope of the resurrection is real, and the light of Christ can dispel the darkness in any heart, in any culture. May the Church break its silence and shine with the power of the Gospel... in such a time as this.
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About the Authors:
Mark Hartzell has been sharing the Gospel with and discipline men who want freedom from homosexuality for over four years. Likewise, David Longacre ministers to men who want freedom from the power of pornography and other sexual addictions. Both authors are ordained Teaching Elders in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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Originally published under the title, "When Sexual Addiction Meets Children: The Normalization of Pedophilia and How the Church Should Respond."
Copyright 1999, 2000 HARVEST USA. All rights reserved. For other excellent articles, go to www.harvestusa.org
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