Pedophilia vs Homosexuality - Tool Kit

[Kitsune]

I delve a bit into some conservative groups and a common argument by them on homosexuality is that allowing it will mean allowing pedophilia.

What I am looking to do is create a standard tool kit with sources to argue against that premise.

[Darth Wong]

It seems odd to have to marshall complex arguments or sources against such an obvious non sequitur. How do they justify the claim that homosexuality is equivalent to pedophilia? Doesn't there mere existence of heterosexual pedophiles crush this argument?

[Kitsune]

They have gotten more sophisticated in a way, basically the slippery slope argument....
Once you allow Gay Marriage (for example), you have to allow marriage to six year olds

[Broomstick]

It seems odd to have to marshall complex arguments or sources against such an obvious non sequitur. How do they justify the claim that homosexuality is equivalent to pedophilia? Doesn't there mere existence of heterosexual pedophiles crush this argument?

Of course not. Men fucking men is EVIL. Men fucking children is EVIL. In their black and white world they don't distinguish between types and grades of EVIL. Someone doing one type of evil is, in their minds, capable of any evil and will probably actually do any form of evil they can, given the chance. It is inconceivable that a homosexual might find pedophilia just as wrong and vile as any heterosexual because homosexuals are PERVERTS and "those people" stick together. If homosexuals knew right from wrong they wouldn't be homosexuals but since they are, well, God knows what they'll do, given a chance!

There is also, of course, a genuine fear that their little sons will be "recruited" into the gay lifestyle. It does matter how heterosexual a male rape victim may be, ever after his sexuality will always be viewed with suspicion because he "yielded" to rape rather than, I dunno, die fighting or something. Nevermind that, say, a six year old boy would have jackshit chance against a healthy adult male determined to rape.

These fundies find men raping little girls terrible, but the act of a man inserting his penis into a female, even an abnormally young one, is seen as more normal or more natural than a man butt-fucking a boy. Nevermind hetero pedos will also butt fuck little girls sometimes. Somehow raping a young boy is more offensive than raping a young girl.

Or something like that. Rather hard to get into a mindset you don't share, ya know? And I don't understand how they got the notion that Teh Gay Secks is sooooooo wonderful that even a forced experience of it accompanied by violence or even bodily harm will somehow "convert" a boy or man into homosexuality. Seems to me that kind of an intro would tend to work the opposite way, but hey, I'm a heathen so according to them I don't know shit anyway.

[bilateralrope]

They have gotten more sophisticated in a way, basically the slippery slope argument....
Once you allow Gay Marriage (for example), you have to allow marriage to six year olds

Then point out their use of the slippery slope fallacy. Point out why it is a fallacy.

Then ask them to justify how it will lead to paedophilia. I don't think many of them will be able to tell you why, they just take that argument on faith.

Pull up the statistics on homosexuality acceptance and paedophilia for a few areas (the more the better). If those statistics show no correlation*, bring them up and ask the fundie why they expect a correlation now when there hasn't been one before.

*I haven't looked. Though if they did show a correlation, I'm sure the fundies would be telling everyone about it.

[Samuel]

Point out that men is prison may switch to being homosexual, but they will kill pedophilias.

[Stark]

In what sense is 'two consenting adults can marry' going to lead to 'you can marry minors'? I don't see any real connection at all, unless they're saying any change from the FOUNDATIONS OF MARRIAGE will cause the entire structure of society to collapse.

[Broomstick]

That's EXACTLY what they believe!

[Junghalli]

One thing that may help is to keep in mind that the objection to pederasty and the objection to homosexuality have different basis.

The objection to homosexuality is entirely religious, basically.

The objection to pederasty is that it probably represents harm to the child, and therefore is unethical under a rationalist humanist ethical system.

Ergo, rationalist humanist ethical systems have no objection to having sex with other men (or women), but do have an objection to having sex with children too young to really give informed consent.

The thing to remember is a lot of people are still in the primitive mindset that religion is the source of morality. They have trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that there are moral systems that don't depend on "it's good because a diety says it it's so". It may help to explain a bit how rationalist morals work, and how they don't have a problem with things that don't harm people but do have a trouble with behaviors that cause harm. Of course, hard-core fundies will probably think this is just Satan's evil lies, but it may help with the fence-sitters.

[Darth Wong]

They have gotten more sophisticated in a way, basically the slippery slope argument....

Once you allow Gay Marriage (for example), you have to allow marriage to six year olds

Fair enough. I just have a problem with the idea of trying to combat this sort of argument by marshaling evidence to refute their claims, because that humours the broken logic of their argument. They have utterly failed to substantiate their accusation in the first place, and in case they forgot, we live in a society where people (and by extension, entire minorities of people) should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

In short, by trying to combat this sort of argument with referenced sources of data to disprove it, you are implicitly conceding to him that gays should be presumed guilty until proven innocent, rather than innocent until proven guilty. Why shouldn't he have to produce real academically acceptable evidence?

[Darth Wong]

Of course not. Men fucking men is EVIL. Men fucking children is EVIL. In their black and white world they don't distinguish between types and grades of EVIL. Someone doing one type of evil is, in their minds, capable of any evil and will probably actually do any form of evil they can, given the chance.

I would agree that this is certainly a strong thread in anti-gay fundamentalist thought. For that matter, many of them consider atheism to be equivalent to pedophilia too: in their minds, if the country was ever run by an atheist there would be an immediate revocation of all laws: it would become legal to murder, rape, and steal.

Having said that, I doubt that the kind of massive 80% victories we're seeing for anti-gay ballot propositions are driven entirely by this kind of extremist mindset. There are just too many people falling for it.

I think there's a lesser category of anti-gay bigot, which recognizes that homosexuality is not necessarily equal to all other forms of evil, but which nevertheless will adopt any argument which is convenient for their ultimate goal, which is to live in a society that has been entirely cleansed of homosexuals. They're OK with homosexuals who are isolated from their own society in segregated communities or ghettoes, or caged like animals in a zoo, but they're not OK with homosexuals who are allowed to move and live and love freely in society. They're particularly not OK with "normalization" of gays, where gays are allowed to blend in and act like everyone else. They must be kept apart: they must be readily identifiable. If it didn't evoke the Nazis, they would be calling for pink armbands right now.

I wonder if they recognize the ramifications of their own argument. If one believes that legalizing gay marriage will lead to the legalizing of pedophilia, then he must believe that the definition of marriage has something to do with the morality of pedophilia. Which, in turn, begs the question of whether he thinks an unmarried pedophile is more morally or socially acceptable than a married one. After all, the definition of marriage is completely irrelevant to unmarried pedophiles.