Pedophilia is not a disease, it's a crime!

“People with pedophilia are a stigmatized group who risk being the target of fierce discrimination”. Now, with all the serious threats we're faced today, this one was not high on my list. Yet, one of our leading newspapers chose to publish a long piece regarding the attitude the Romanian people have towards people with pedophilia.
I hope you noticed the slight difference it's not 'pedophiles', but 'people with pedophilia'. While the former term is associated with breaking the law, the second one makes it clear it's an illness, like 'people with Aids' or 'people with cancer'. Pedophilia, we are told, is a disease which manifests itself during puberty and it's a lifelong condition. Nothing they can do about it, so maybe society should show some consideration for their suffering. The strengthen their point, the Romanian study refers to the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which lists pedophilia as a form of paraphilia, a larger group of conditions defined as sexual interest in anything other than a consenting adult.
It says so in a book, what more do you want?

First of all, I am ready to admit that there are probably out there people who are only attracted to children, but my uneducated guess is there's only few of them. The rest, the vast majority of them, those you usually read in the newspapers about are perverts and assholes and they deserve to go to jail for a long time.
For instance, in my country, the most recent case involved a middle-aged cop caught molesting two young children, under the age of ten, in an elevator. Not his first offense as it turned out. The guy was divorced with two kids of his own and at the time of his crime was living with another woman. I'm trying very hard not to be crude at this point, but it seems to me the guy had no problem functioning as a man, yet found it fun to molest kids. (The fact that his commanding officer got his back and he was protected only made things easier for him.)
The guys that fly out to Thailand for some fun with the local kids do they strike you as people with a condition? No, just regular scumbags, bored with their mediocre lives, looking for some cheap thrills.
If this trend of normalizing pedophilia is not met with a strong answer pretty soon all the sickos out there will avail themselves of this pretended illness as a line of defense.
All those pedophile rings, those caught with tons of child porn on their computers they'll just say they've been suffering with pedophilia all their lives and they did nothing wrong, they just looked at some pictures.

The phrase in the beginning of this post can be found in a European study, linked in the article I read this morning. Published in 2015, the survey titled Stigmatization of people with pedophilia found that many people have a very negative opinion of these people and they face 'fierce discrimination'. They're stigmatized!
As we all know, discrimination is a bad thing, the implication being these people deserve social acceptance, understanding, compassion. Not only for the one lonely guy battling instincts he knows are wrong, but for the thousands of perverts who destroy the lives of so many children. So what if they committed a crime – do you know how hard it is to live with such a condition, the shame, the discrimination?
The article that had me fuming this morning concludes that most Romanian consider understand 'pedophilia' to be a medical condition, with more than half of those questioned saying that these poor people have no control over their instincts. I'm not one of them, I guess.
Looking for some high-profile case to add to this post I came across the story of one British pedophile, James King (31) sent to jail for raping a three-month old baby. He was found hanging in his cell, taking the easy way out as his fellow prisoners were out to get him. I'm sorry for not being compassionate, but I wish his fellow inmates had had time to show this guy true justice.

Pedophile James King – do you feel any compassion?

Thanks for reading