This post is going to sound a bit self-important but it is really more through anger than anything else.

I had a whole gang of you down on my back a few posts underneath around the thorny problem of the use of the word 'pedophile' and I thought it might be worth a little discussion again though I know we are unlikely to reach a consensus. The problem arose around whether the word 'pedophile' is an appropriate one to use as a 'blanket' term for people who have a 'sexual interest in children' (in the broadest possible sense).

In my post below I was talking to Chris about the case of a man who was imprisoned for having sex with a fourteen year old girl. Now the staff on my course had no hesitation in calling him a 'pedophile'.
I have noticed a steady slippage (since about 1995?) in the use of this word (usually as a term of abuse, but also in the media and by the authorities) on a growing number of people who have sexual or even just emotional relationships with people below the vague age of even up to twenty (outside direct family members or professionals ie. teachers, social workers etc). This does depend upon their own relative age to some extent but surprisingly little. In the case cited above, the girl was 14 and the man was about 21 at the time of the offence. He was also fairly low iq and very vulnerable in the sense that he did not understand himself as an adult. He still clearly thought and felt like a teenager, maybe even younger - as so many of us do well beyond the time when we would willingly admit it. Unlike most of us however he had no way of pretending to be older than he was: his self-defence mechanisms just didnt seem to work in the way that most people's do. With an age difference between him and the girl of just 7 years, to call him a pedophile is to use the law in a ridiculous and self-defeating way where arbitrary age limits - set up by politicians in far away places pandering to a vengeful and prejudiced public - are adhered to by the courts following the letter, rather than the spirit,of the law. Mitigating circumstances (such as age difference or circumstance) are only looked at after conviction when the person's life has already been rendered null and void in the eyes of the public anyway. The public has no interest in 'mitigating circumstances'. All it wants is Security.

I googled "pedophile definition". The first definition came out (princeton www) as 'a person who is sexually attracted to children' which is the way in which the term is often used on this board and is certainly used by the general public in a thousand different (always entirely negative) contexts. The wiki definition however is much more guarded and more circumspect - as indeed it should be.
I just do not think that the definition of a pedophile as merely someone who is 'sexually attracted to children' is one which is appropriate on this board. For me, a pedophile is only someone who has actually harmed a child in some way. Any muddying of the dividing line between an active pedophile and someone who is 'attracted to children' is one of the reasons why we have got into such a mess over this issue in the last twenty years and it is my firm belief that one good reason for this board is to combat as best as we can - however inadequately - the notion that we are all implicated in this evil merely by attraction.
Perhaps more simply it is a battle between the notion of a humanity which is at the mercy of its chemical make-up, or a humanity which has moral power over that make-up. As Christians we are, surely, firmly on the side of moral responsibility and self-determination are we not? Any idea that we become pedophiles simply because of chemical make-up mists up that crucial dividing line between someone who harms and someone who does good.
Make no mistake about it,society's view is clear: if we are sexually attracted to children we are a potential danger: any attempt at judging us on other criteria is rendered irrelevant after that. It is THIS vicious stereotype that we need to be fighting tooth and nail. We should never be seen to cowtow to this notion.
I have been reading Paul again this week (never a favourite of mine)but his obsession with the false deities of his first century pagan converts is far from being outdated in our own godless age. It is just that the false deities of old have been replaced by different ones. Chemicals, genes and biology are the gods of today: unassailable powers before whom man is rendered more or less powerless.

But as Christians we know that this is not true. We accept responsibility for our own behaviour and we believe that, whatever our chemical make-up, we are given moral control over it by God.
I do not think it any coincidence that the 'threat of the pedophile' has risen in correlation with the disintegration of man's innate belief in his own capacity for Goodness and it is my view that man's sense of his capacity for Goodness is, whatever the atheists and the humanists might say over and over again, ultimately a matter of faith.

The problem of course comes at that deadly borderline between the active pedophile and "we who are attracted to children". There is no barbed wire there, no high wall, no protection whatever except our own sense of right and wrong, our own moral integrity and our own God-given determination to live by the law of love. A society which does not officially recognise the existence of God is not going to buy any of that. Society, in its fear of everything, will never be happy with any of our tearful reassurances. It wants barbed wire, high walls, and armed guards all along that border just like we want them all around our homes and our countries and our possessions.

Society seeks a security it cannot have and it hates us for it.

The only hope for us is to take every opportunity we can to show this fearful society that there IS that borderline, that moral certainty CAN be enough, and that humanity CAN be good, and kind, and unselfish and generous. It's an unwinnable battle but it's the only battle we are fighting here.

To sum up, if I use the word 'pedophile' it is ONLY in reference to people who have molested children and it is my earnest wish that we could somehow establish that clear definition (or at least A clear definition) on this board - if nowhere else.

Enough already, its time to cook some dinner.