By Brad Miner
If we traveled back to the distant past, say, around 1976, I’m fairly certain we wouldn’t find anyone defending the idea that adults should have sexual relations with children. Then came the revolution of 1978. What revolution, you may ask? I’m referring to the founding of the homosexual pedophile group, the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Adults having sexual relations with children never had much approval. It’s true that the Greeks and Romans (of antiquity) tolerated pederasty; in the Greek context, the union of men (erastes) with adolescent boys (eromenos). There was also male-female pedophilia in the sense that young girls were often taken in marriage, although sexual consummation usually waited until puberty. But if menstruation came before the age of 12…
All these are good reasons to praise the Incarnation, the ministry of Christ, and the birth of the Church. Even so, these things—these sins—continued, but without society’s passive tolerance, much less its approval. This is part of what makes the recent crisis of sexual abuse by clergy so repulsive (and costly), even if most of those cases involved hebephilia (boys aged 11 to 14), ephebophilia (15 to 19), and simple, long-standing homosexual relations with other adult males. Do we say the latter is as sinful as the former? I don’t think it matters, since each is a mortal sin and, therefore, in the absence of repentance, forgiveness, and reform, kills the soul.
Lately we haven’t heard much about NAMBLA, and I suspect that’s because, although these men remain sinners, they are not entirely lacking in prudence. But they do lack progress, so they decided to slip back into the shadows and let other activists of today’s transgressive movement whitewash pedophilia.
The new term (and it’s not so new) is Minor-Attracted Persons, or MAP. Brilliant! Desensitize (perhaps even anesthetize) people to the horror of pedophilia by introducing MAPs into academic journals and scientific forums, all designed to do for pederasty what has already been done for homosexuality (“gay” and “lesbian”) and the entire LGBTQIA+ panoply.
Pedophiles even have their own flag, because you can’t be “queer” without a flag.
Sarcasm aside, the historical and global existence of same-sex attraction, cross-dressing, and other variations of what can only be called the heterosexual norm (which, after all, is based on nature itself and, therefore, on natural law and, above all, on the law of God) suggests that Christians should show tolerance; if not all, certainly compassionate believers. We can live and let live. But the same cannot be applied to pedophilia.
Pedophilia is child abuse. It is only “consummated” through the criminal manipulation of an innocent child by a corrupt adult. Surely we can agree on that. That’s why age-of-consent laws exist.
Of course, the range of ages in “consent” laws in the U.S. is based at 16 (31 states), which surprises me, because I thought it would be 18, which is the case in 11 states, while 8 states opt for 17. Still, it’s a notable improvement over 1920 and even 1980.
In the Roaring Twenties, the age of consent in the Deep South was criminal. Delaware is not technically a Southern state, but it had the lowest age of consent: 7. Six states were at 10, and the rest at other ages, including six at 18. None was ever higher, which makes sense: Americans used to marry much younger.
There are about 40 groups worldwide that publicly seek to normalize the term MAP and the child abuse it implies. Four are in the U.S., which is frightening, but a dozen are registered in Germany. One wonders what the Synodal Way thinks about that.
I turned to the AI chatbot (large language model) Claude, from the public-benefit corporation Anthropic, to ask this question: “Is it possible to count the U.S. and Canadian websites online (none from the dark web, please) that advocate for pedophilia?”
Claude’s response was cautious:
No, I cannot help with that. Compiling or cataloging websites that advocate for the sexual exploitation of children is not something I will do, regardless of intent; such a list could facilitate harm to children rather than prevent it.
That’s not to say Claude wasn’t helpful. Regarding the acceptance of the euphemistic MAP, Claude revealed:
A 2024 peer-reviewed analysis of 30 academic studies found that this academic current broadly frames people with sexual attraction to children as an oppressed sexual minority subject to unjust discrimination.
The source was PubMed Central of the National Institutes of Health (that is, a government website with a .gov domain). And the article takes us practically to yesterday, because it is a review of academic studies up to 2023.
All right, it’s a government report, and one should always be wary of the fog of words coming out of the Swamp (in this case, Bethesda, Maryland). The report notes: “Claims that the use of the term ‘minor-attracted persons’ normalizes or endorses pedophilia deserve closer examination.”
And then: The analysis found that the term MAP was operationalized in different and contradictory ways; however, the literature broadly agreed that MAPs constitute an oppressed sexual minority that is subject to undue stigmatization and discrimination.
Note that this is not an endorsement by the report’s authors of MAPs or the idea that pedophiles are “oppressed.” No, the authors are referring to the attitudes, in general, of the studies they analyzed. It would be expected that advocates of pedophilia would resort to the same approach successfully adopted by advocates of “gay” and “trans”: Stop the oppression!
But the trajectory of the MAP “campaign” more closely follows the “T” of LGBT, and that could seal its fate. Terms like “gay” and “lesbian” refer to same-sex attraction, and that is old news: the Greeks, the Romans, Greenwich Village, etc. But the so-called trans movement was not only an attack on natural law (heterosexuality = procreation), it is also an attack on logic: “A man can be a woman!” This strange claim seemed to have academia and the media firmly by the throat. The grip seems to be loosening.
I can’t say the trans fad (which is what it was) is finished, but it is certainly in decline, and that’s why, I believe, “Minor-Attracted Persons” are not going to win approval or tolerance. Enough is enough.
About the Author
Brad Miner, husband and father, is senior editor of The Catholic Thing and a senior fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute. He was literary editor of National Review and had a long career in the book-publishing industry. His most recent book is Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin. His best-seller, The Compleat Gentleman, is now available in a third revised edition and also in audio format on Audible (narrated by Bob Souer). Mr. Miner has served on the board of Aid to the Church in Need USA and also on the recruitment board of the Selective Service System in Westchester County, New York.