Ah, political blogs. Do you read them often? I do not so much, but I do enjoy critical thinking, and I noticed an article earlier this month from a blog that purports to be oriented around thinking: American Thinker. My first red flag should have been the first comment on the article:

But I get ahead of myself. The article’s title is bad enough, but then the article itself does not even address the reality of what pedophilia is — and is not. They just claim that “the left understands well how to take taboo behaviors and turn them into grievance groups, legal battering rams, and political power.” So, they seem to be under the mistaken impression that pedophilia is a behavior.

In fact, pedophilia is not a behavior, child sexual abuse is a behavior. It is a behavior that is abhorrent and disgusting because it can take many forms, often with the same outcome of psychologically damaging victims. Some heal, some do not.

Pedophilia, on the other hand, is a sexual attraction to children, a feeling very much the same as a heterosexual man’s feelings for a woman, except towards children. And just as heterosexual men do not wish to rape women, a pedophile usually has no wish to rape a child: They want to earn a child’s love, respect, and adoration just as much as a man wants the attention of a woman. This means that being sexual with a child is impossible for most pedophiles, because they do not want to hurt a child… just as a heterosexual man knows that hurting women will not woo them to him.

Pedophilia is a feeling that is present in 5% or less of the male population, so the only way to “normalize” it would be to figure out what causes it, and try to raise the number of people who have pedophilia (a ridiculous notion). I have never heard a great explanation for what “normalizing pedophilia” even means, but you are welcome to try if you like (I have never had any serious takers to that challenge).

American Thinker infers that “the left” is trying to “normalize” child sexual abuse… by saying they normalize pedophilia. As it is, they have no idea what the difference between the two is, and as such, have put no critical thinking skills whatsoever into their article. If they had, they would see that they are merely supporting propaganda that has no basis in reality. I could return tit for tat and say that clearly, conservatives have no idea how to think critically, yet I have observed many conservatives who do just that. Making such a generalization about conservatives would put me in an equally non-thinking position that the article originates from. If we are putting critical thinking first, then American Thinker fails to live up to their name.

Its readers, on the other hand, are a different bunch. While most commenters seemed fairly ignorant of the distinction between attraction and rape, one commenter stood out:

Given that American Thinker also believes that transgendered people have a “severe mental disorder,” despite no appearance in any recent diagnostic manual I am aware of, I think their hogwash claim of “The left is normalizing pedophilia,” is just as suspect and unsupported by fact. I think it is safe to chalk American Thinker right up there with the trolls and haters of the world: Worth ignoring entirely, but it was a nice distraction for a few days while I put the finishing touches on my new website.