The death of Michael Jackson and the ensuing struggle between those that want to deify him and those that  pardon the pun  want to bury him for his alleged crimes, opens the door for a much needed discussion about child molestation.
Full disclosure: not a fan. A visually compelling artist perhaps, with his innovative dance moves, but the music does nothing for me, especially his mega-hit, “Beat It†with that obnoxious guitar riff.
First up, I am of the mind that Michael Jackson was not a pedophile. I believe he was sincere when he described his behavior with children as “innocent.†In our culture it is indeed unacceptable for an adult man to be in a bed with children that are not his; however, consider: in foreign countries, where a kiss is as customary a greeting between men as a handshake, less fortunate people may have to share beds and think little of it.
Michael Jackson was clearly a very disturbed individual. The Peter-Pan syndrome, the unhappy  perhaps abusive  childhood; the nutty attempts at “fixing†his Negroid-features. This is obvious to everyone. And robbing children of their innocence is a crime against nature. Hardly anyone denies this either (read on). The corruption of a child in such a way is truly an abominable act. And the blame doesn’t end at condemning pedophiles and NAMBLA. The popular culture in general: MTV, the fashion industry, the celebrity culture, Hollywood… all have a share in the blame for the sexualization of our children.
But loving children, enjoying their company, is not a perversion. It is an indictment of the screwed up times we live in that an adult man must be vigilant when in the company of children, and always avoid any suggestion of physical affection. How sad that one of the most natural things in the world, an adult offering a smile or a gentle pat on the head to a strange child is grounds for suspicion and worse.
I don’t discount the possibility that Jackson may indeed have acted on a sexual attraction to children. But it is not, to my mind at least, probable. A jury did acquit him of such charges, and just because two jurors later changed their minds does not make the case against him. It is entirely plausible that after the trial these two people came to be influenced by popular opinion, everyone from the man in the street to the blowhard on talk radio condemning “Wacko Jacko†as a pedophile. Remember, intelligent jurists are the exception to the rule. After dismissing people from the jury pool people who are potentially antagonistic to your client, attorneys next seek to strike jurors based on perceived intelligence. Attorneys want jurors they can manipulate, not intelligent, independent minded critical-thinkers.
But hiding in the shadows of those fans who wish to canonize him despite his personal failings, something sinister is lurking: a movement to normalize pedophilia.
Today, what is considered “normal†is no longer determined by religious strictures and community standards that have served us well for hundreds of years (not to mention common sense); it is now determined by the new brahmins of the post-modern age: psychologists and sociologists. There is a faction within these intellectual elites that believes pedophilia should no longer be considered a “disorder†in the clinical sense. They believe that children are sexual beings and that sexual relations with adults should not automatically be considered abnormal, abusive, and indeed criminal behavior. Rather, they believe it can in fact be beneficial. To the children.
In 1998, an article* was published in the Psychological Bulletin, the premier journal of the American Psychological Association (APA), on the results of a study of adult-child “consensual†sexual relationships. The Rind study, authored by psychologist Bruce Rind and two other academicians, drew conclusions as above: that pedophilia is not necessarily harmful, and can in fact be beneficial.
It’s true that publication of this article did not explicitly establish it as APA policy; however, the APA had recently updated the definition of pedophilia in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the Bible of shrinks). The new definition of pedophilia held that a child molester suffered from a psychiatric disorder only if his actions “caused clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.†Presumably, a child molester who held down a job, perhaps had a family, and was otherwise a functioning member of society, did not have a disorder.
The publication of the paper was a trial balloon to test the degree of opposition to the normalization of adult-child sexual relations.
The proponents of this radical paradigm shift got their answer soon enough. A firestorm of outrage broke out culminating in, believe it or not, a US Congressional Resolution in 1999 condemning the paper**. Clearly, the trial balloon was premature. The public was not ready… yet. Presumably, the pedophilia-friendly faction is hunkering down, waiting until antiquated, patriarchal morality deteriorates further before the next attempt. The APA issued a revision to DSM-IV that restored the previous definition of pedophilia: child molestation in and of itself was now once again sufficient for a diagnosis of a disorder.
This is the price we pay for bestowing scientific legitimacy on the so-called behavioral sciences, allowing shrinks as expert witnesses in court trials and otherwise giving sociological and psychological “studies†the status of scientific legitimacy. Try to imagine NASA engineers suddenly deciding that Newton’s laws of motion rather than Einstein’s relativistic modifications should be used in astronomical calculations because of some ideological revelation within the scientific community. Recall: these are the folks who brought us “recovered memory syndrome†and the child sexual abuse witch-hunts like Wenatchee and Fells Acres. Professionals and educated people who readily embraced the notion that satanic cults practicing ritual sacrifice and child molestation lurked within the local daycare center. The same people who have convinced gullible politicians struggling with universal health care that bi-polar disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, and the dreaded “general anxiety disorder†are as real as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Psychology, psychiatry and sociology are not science. They don’t produce theories which guarantee the same results for identical experiments performed regardless of time and place, and they cannot predict results from initial conditions. Yet these people are called upon in the crafting of legislation and public policy that affect the lives of all Americans. How many subcategories of “depression†are there in the latest DSM? I don’t want to know… And they also decide for us what is and what is not “normal†behavior.
Watch for it. The next trial balloon might be legislative initiatives to lower the age of consent. The full-court press to normalize pedophilia can’t be more than a few years away, and sooner rather later considering the probability of more liberal, fuzzy-minded, Sotomayor-like appointments coming down the road from the present administration. When it comes, will you be one of those traditionalist, elder-generational bigots clinging to outdated moral values, or will you join the next progressive civil rights movement?
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*Rind, B., Tromovitch, P. & Bauserman, R. (1998). “A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples”. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 22-53
**US Congress (1999). “Whereas no segment of our society is more critical to the future of human survival than our children” (PDF). 106th Congress, Resolution 107. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_cong_bills&docid=f:hc107enr.txt.pdf
