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08/19/2011
NOM-ALIZING Pedophilia
In his latest weekly newsletter, National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown includes the following little blip. You know, just to throw it out there:
NORMALIZING PEDOPHILIA
When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine Biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences. Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?
The Daily Caller raised the question by pointing us all to a high-level academic conference in Baltimore this week, "Pedophilia: Minor-Attracted Persons and the DSM: Issues and Controversies."
The DSM is the diagnostic manual that defines mental illness. You probably recall that a key moment in the gay rights campaign was the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association, the organization that produces the DSM, to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
...
Enquiring people want to know: Will pedophiles become "minor-attracted persons" in our culture? Will courts which endorse orientation as a protected class decide down the road that therefore laws which discriminate against "minor-attracted persons" must be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest?
Here's the fundamental truth: Ideas have consequences and so do words—because they contain ideas, because they are the vehicle through which and by which human beings describe reality.
The reality that men and women need each other, and that children need a mom and dad, is the truth most at risk in the same-sex marriage debate.
*SOURCE: NOM Weekly Newsletter, credited to Brian Brown
Brian knows exactly what he's doing here. Like a really disturbing game of telephone, far-right groups like Focus on the Family have been doing their best to make a connection between this conference and homosexuality. And now NOM is continuing the game, hoping to put the worm into their supporters' ears. NOM staffers would never directly say "homosexuality=pedophilia," and probably (hopefully?) don't even believe that. But by bringing up this conference which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the modern LGBT rights movement nor the civil marriage equality fight (i.e. NOM's supposed purpose for existing), they are trying to drive home the idea that all things other than man/woman coupling are part of a same slippery slope. As the meme gets further repeated and NOM readers take this story back to friends and family, the verbiage will change little by little until the same-sex marriage debate and this conference are presented as birds of a "marriage-redefining" feather. And that's the goal.
Forget normalizing pedophilia (please!). Brian really should have titled this section: Normalizing Extreme Politic Attack Lines. That is, after all, the business into which this newer, coarser version of NOM circa 2011 seems to have most invested its political capital.