This is a play I ran into around 2000. Female Childlove and this story were the two biggest inspirations behind the Chronicles. Minor edits for clarity, such as typos and contradictions as to the reporter's gender. - ,,,^..^,,,
by Andrew Carr
A society survives on rules. Codes of conduct by which we all must live. In Western society, these codes are based almost entirely in Judaeo-Christian morality. In this kind of society, murderers and sex offenders — those who ignore these codes — are, along with their acts, considered 'evil' because they exist outside of conventional (religious) moral/legal structures. One of the most intriguing arguments raised in the debate between religion and atheism, over the existence (or not) of 'the one, the only, the indivisible' mono-deity, is the notion that murderers and sex offenders are not simply driven by impulses brought on by 'evil' (an obscenely simplistic analysis) but are in fact flawed human individuals, in desperate need of much more than simply an abstract concept of an Almighty to guide and protect them… or for that matter, an 'evil one' or 'demon' to justify their excesses.
It's always worth pointing out afresh just how much our lives are influenced by indoctrinated religious prejudices. One of the advantages of rational atheism is the ability to look beyond these prejudices and try to find reasonable, level-headed and truly egalitarian ways in which to address those aspects of our society deemed 'less enlightened'. The disadvantage is that it presents a serious challenge to the faith-based legal/moral standards and, as a result, sets itself up for considerable antagonism, if not outright fascism.
Man, at heart, is a fundamental, primal creature — capable of immense intellectual and spiritual capacities to be sure, but, ultimately, a creature that needs to fuck and to kill in order to survive.
So, why then do religious authorities instil within the impressionable of our society the ultimately fascistic idea that we must either annihilate or ignore those within our society who embrace their primal desires? Power, perhaps? An assumed sense of responsibility over those they consider somehow helpless and in need of guidance (as though we can't assess and conclude on our own)? Who knows? Surely, embracing our primal desires serves to complete us all as human beings. After all, aren't we supposed to embrace all aspects of ourselves in order to become complete?
The trouble is, if you're a paedophile, that doesn't apply.
Organised religions suggest that enlightenment must be mutually exclusive to baseness. You can only be higher if you completely reject the lower. You're either Tamino or Papageno. Apparently, you can't be both at once. It seems they've forgotten the lotus. Or maybe they simply never learnt that the lotus not only grows in mud, but actually needs the mud to survive, and would die if placed in a more rarefied atmosphere.
One of the dearest fantasies held in the paedophile sub-culture is that of the fantasy island — the secluded island community where paedophiles and children roam free, enjoying total sexual freedom. The idea behind this fantasy is the suggestion that away from the oppressive teachings of these organised religions, those who feel a sexual attraction towards the pre-pubescent can indulge their basest desires and, in doing so, also achieve some form of enlightenment… that the freedom to establish their much maligned and negated altruism will result in some kind of mass overhaul of opinion amongst the general population.
However, that's why it's called a fantasy. Because it'll never happen. The irrational hatred felt towards paedophiles is something that few are prepared to even acknowledge as being irrational, let alone try to combat.
But hope springs eternal. Dialogue must be attempted.
This presentation is just that — a dialogue. It is, quite admittedly, a dialogue that takes one side more than the other, but the debate thus far (if that's what it can be called) has never truly been an equal one, so this is an attempt to even up the cards a little. Compromise has never been an easy thing to achieve. But that is not my concern. That, friends, is yours. We, the actors, present the argument. You, the viewer, take it and do with it what you will.
DIALOGUE:
JOURNALIST: Why did you decide, despite the wave of international condemnation, to effectively scrap your nation's age of consent laws?
LEADER: We decided that we didn't need them. In order to establish a truly democratic, egalitarian society, we must respect the basic rights of all of our citizens to sexual self-determination without external intervention. Government, law enforcement agencies, and society in general, should not possess the power to dictate sexuality to the individual, nor should it possess the right to punish them for deeply personal lifestyle choices.
JOURNALIST: Which then places the responsibility for an incredibly complex and volatile issue solely into the hands of the individual.
LEADER: Where it belongs. We are empowering people with the responsibility to nurture and to develop that most personal of all psychological facets. Everybody's sexuality is their own. Our country has the most relaxed laws -regarding sexuality - of any country in the world... because we are trying to create here a culture where individual freedom is a guaranteed and celebrated aspect of daily life.
JOURNALIST: So, sexually speaking, it's open slather?
LEADER: Sexually speaking, more or less, yes. Homosexuality, heterosexuality, bestiality, bondage, pain, vegies... as long as it's done in private, feel free.
JOURNALIST: Incest, paedophilia?
LEADER: There are certain restrictions in place, but those are allowed, yes. Look, we're not fools. We haven't just opened up the gates and said "Go mad!". If we had, the whole country would have descended into sexual anarchy and complete social chaos in the first week. There are rules and regulations, but they are as unintrusive and as non-judgemental as possible. We want people to be free, but we want them to be safe, as well.
JOURNALIST: So where do you draw the line?
LEADER: We draw a very clear and definite line at violence and coercion.
JOURNALIST: Violence and coercion?
LEADER: Rape, sexual assault, blackmail, threats. If one individual is unwilling, the other is obliged to withdraw and try their luck elsewhere. That's our line in the sand... you step over it, punishment is swift and severe.
JOURNALIST: It's been six months now since these changes have come into effect. How many offenders have you had?
LEADER: Very few. We've made it very clear in the advertising campaign that sexual assault would not be tolerated. It's no surprise to anyone - except maybe you and your audience - that in a nation of four million, I can literally count the number of serious offenders we've had on one hand. That's not rhetoric, that's fact. Not only that, but all of those offences occurred in the first week. They were dealt with in the second week... like I said - swiftly, severely, and very publicly. Zero tolerance. We've had nothing since then. Groping and flashing is up, but we expected that. And there are laws in place for those infractions, as well.
JOURNALIST: There's been a huge boost in tourism since these laws were scrapped. Not to mention those applying for residency status. People are flocking here to indulge in sexual activities that are outlawed in virtually every other nation in the world. How do you reconcile that?
LEADER: Everyone within our borders is answerable to our laws. They have the freedom of the sexual liberty laws, but they also have the restriction of the sexual assault laws. Everyone is made absolutely aware of the penalties for breaking our laws and they will not jeopardise their liberty - in any way - by offending. Once you are here and you have experienced the freedom, you will not risk it. Not for anything. And there's actually not that many people moving here. Our immigration policies are fairly strict.
JOURNALIST: But by scrapping the age of consent, you're opening up Pandora's Box. I mean, the main sexual aberration that those laws govern - paedophilia -is now openly tolerated by your law enforcement agencies.
LEADER: By definition, the lack of an age of consent law means that there are no age restrictions. So yes, paedophiles - like everyone else here - now enjoy a rare and special freedom.
JOURNALIST: But by openly tolerating child sex, you are blatantly disregarding all conventional wisdom.
LEADER: `Conventional wisdom'. The definitive oxymoron. Nevertheless, can I ask you a question?
JOURNALIST: Sure.
LEADER: Why does the concept of an adult having a sexual relationship with a child bother you and your culture so much?
JOURNALIST: Well, I can only speak for myself. I have a child of my own, and...
LEADER: And you wish to control their sexuality?
JOURNALIST: No, I don't believe that I do.
LEADER: You worry that they have sex at all?
JOURNALIST: That's closer to it.
LEADER: Why?
JOURNALIST: She's too young.
LEADER: How old is she?
JOURNALIST: She's fourteen.
LEADER: So she's dating?
JOURNALIST: Yes, she is.
LEADER: Does that concern you?
JOURNALIST: Of course it does.
LEADER: Why?
JOURNALIST: She's too young to be having sex, which is what I'm worried she's doing.
LEADER: She's old enough to reproduce, which is what sex is for, ultimately.
JOURNALIST: But she's not emotionally ready.
LEADER: So whose fault is it that the two are out of whack? If she's biologically ready at 12 or 13, why isn't she emotionally ready as well? Why will that take another five or six years? Maybe if she hadn't spent as much time playing with dolls and Nintendo. Wasting time.
JOURNALIST: Childhood is a time a fun and innocence.
LEADER: No it's not. It's a time of learning... developing skills. If it's a time of fun, why do we send them to school? Sexual skills are among the most important skills to be learnt. They are fundamental to the continuation of our species, if nothing else. (Might not sound romantic, but it's a fact). Educators made learning fun so that information would go in faster, and so that the child wouldn't be bored and decide to stop listening. The fun is not the point, the learning is. And if you shirk your responsibility to teach children about sex, and the function it performs, and the pleasure that function can bring, and the depth of human contact and intimacy that goes hand in hand with the pleasure and the function, of course their emotional maturity will lag behind their physical growth.
And it's not a matter of showing them books and diagrams. You don't use books to teach them how to eat, or how to defecate, or how to blow their nose. Not unless you're a complete moron.
The methods we've employed in the past to teach our children about sex are unique in that they were a technical, impersonal dispensing of scientific fact. If other bodily functions and domestic habits - like defecating or eating - were taught in the same way, and the same social stigmas attached, we'd have the same problem with basic sanitation and nutrition as we do with sex. When the relatively simple task of teaching table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners don't need to be taught at all?
Children gradually learn greater autonomy and responsibility in every single aspect of living precisely because we take a personal, intimate, nurturing hand in that process, and it is an enormous handicap if their development in sexual matters is not also handled in this personal, gradual manner. Otherwise, when they come to committing to relationships and to parenting, they come to it starved of basic human pleasures, willing to barter anything for something that's been denied them through pivotal formative years. And ultimately, unless they take the responsibility later in life to teach themselves - after much pain and disillusionment - they go through life as infantile, gluttonous, guilty and dangerously stupid, rather than as warm, sexually intelligent human beings.
Look, I understand the fear that you have for your daughter, truly I do. It's natural. It's your instinct for protection. You want to protect her from the `evils of the world', and that's only fair enough. But lets not mince words: the culture you've built for yourself is a sexually dysfunctional one. It equates masturbation with picking your nose, or belching, or farting - something not to be done in public and, by implication, not to be done by nice people at all. Sometimes, it's even regarded as something we're to be `punished' for if `indulged' in... which is a horribly destructive notion that leaves so many people regarding sex and sexuality as something to be hidden, or worse, shameful.
As a consequence, the natural need for sexual satisfaction that occurs in these poor tormented individuals, as it does in all of us, drives them to commit the most horrifying crimes in order to quell their demons. This is what your dangerously stupid, sexually dysfunctional culture has wrought. Sex as demon, rather than what it should be: namely a terrifically enjoyable, wonderfully vital and openly celebrated part of everyone's lives. It also means that when you say you want to protect your daughter from the `evils of the world", what you really mean is that you want to protect her from the `evils of sex'.
JOURNALIST: Not everybody in our culture sees sex that way.
LEADER: Maybe not consciously.
JOURNALIST: We have a genuine concern for the welfare of children.
LEADER: Really?
JOURNALIST: I agree with you... childhood is, partly, a time of learning and acquiring skills. Kids do need guidance, and help. But they also need protection.
LEADER: I'm glad we agree on that.
JOURNALIST: But there has to be a line drawn somewhere.
LEADER: I agree. And we've drawn that line.
JOURNALIST: But most people would say that your line is too far along the path... and that that path is facing in the wrong direction, anyway.
LEADER: Maybe they would, but that'd be a moral call.
JOURNALIST: So?
LEADER: So morality - more than anything else - is entirely subjective.
JOURNALIST: Which makes for a good debate.
LEADER: But it doesn't make it good legislation. How can you base any legislation in a subjective morality?
JOURNALIST: But how can you not include the morality of a nation in a piece of legislation?
LEADER: There is no such thing as the morality of a nation. A nation is comprised of individuals, and every individual has a different set of values. And this must be respected by government. What is more moral: to respect the individual's set of values, or to impinge upon them?
JOURNALIST: For the national good...
LEADER: The national good is to respect the individual. Individuals affect change. Individuals help us to evolve. If it weren't for individuals, we'd all be living inside one of George Orwell's nightmares.
JOURNALIST: But what does all of this have to do with adults having sex with children?
LEADER: I thought I'd made it fairly clear. I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
JOURNALIST: Even with the disparity of individual moral values, most people, I believe, would frown on the kind of exploitation this law would condone. In spite of your claims to an altruistic agenda for the complete and all-encompassing human development of the child, I think most people would still see beyond that to the inherent flaws in such a piece of legislation. There are clearly people who would exploit this law... take advantage of it to further their own erotic obsession with pre-teens. And I think it's fair to say - once again - that even with the disparity in moral belief systems, most people in the world would find the `erotic appeal' of a pre-teen impossible to fathom.
LEADER: Oh, get off the grass! You're an intelligent woman, you see the world as it is, you're not that deluded.
JOURNALIST: You think that's not true?
LEADER: Of course it's not true. Have you picked up a magazine lately? Turned on the TV? Modern popular culture is saturated with images of youth. It's obsessed by it. The younger the model, the more attractive she is.
JOURNALIST: So?
LEADER: The more hairless the man's chest is... the smoother to the touch... the closer the shave... the more boyish he is... the sexier.
JOURNALIST: So?LEADER: How many billions of dollars a year are spent on cosmetics to make women look younger - more attractive? Why are some women attracted to boyish men? In your culture, the younger you look, the better. The smoother your skin, the tighter your arse, the firmer your breasts, the younger you appear to be... the more sexually attractive you are. Men's magazines repeatedly feature photo-spreads of women with shaved pubis - to make them look younger. Or dressed as schoolgirls - to make them look younger. Or with imperfections (like wrinkles) removed by computer technology - to make them look younger.
Here's a popular culture that appears - at least - to be innately paedo-erotic. How else would you explain a 13 year old girl selling wrinkle cream to 40 year old women? It would seem that the '13 year old' look is the ultimate objective. The ideal to which all women who purchase these products aspire. And the women that aspire to this look do it because they want to be... desired.
Cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, super-fitness, the 'waif' look.... it's all part of an obsession with youth, and that is part of an obsession to be desired. Youth and desire - youth and sex - they go together. And that - by definition - is paedo-erotic. But your society doesn't want to admit this, so it turns to other areas. To wit; your obsession with violence. Violence on the streets, violence at home, violence at school, violence on television, violence in the cinemas.... the seemingly endless parade of monosyllabic action stars trundling out their seemingly endless parade of soul-destroying Hollywood tripe... mindless and totally irresponsible celebrations of guilt-free murder. Worship the murderer and make him an icon. But don't whatever you do talk about sex. Don't show a dick on the screen. And don't talk about adults and children having meaningful, consensual sexual relationships.
JOURNALIST: So you would allow a child as young as 6 or 7 to have a sexual relationship with an adult?
LEADER: Teaching is about letting the child `practice'. We have to teach them what they need to know well before they're placed into a situation where they'll actually need those skills with potential life partners. So, if a child matures physically at 12 or 13, then yes, we'd need to start at about 6 or 7.
JOURNALIST: But a child's body at that stage of their physical development is nothing like ready for that kind of physical activity.
LEADER: Which activity?
JOURNALIST: Penetration.
LEADER: Sorry, when did I mention penetration? I'm not talking about penetration. What about oral sex? Hugging and kissing? Touchy feely? Mutual masturbation? Playing around? What about cuddling?! Of course a child of 6 isn't going to be ready to receive an erect adult penis directly into the vagina or the anus. That's just insanity. That's not all there is to sex and intimacy, you know. You don't start with that. You start gently.
Just because a child can't physically accept what we as adults accept, that doesn't mean they should be denied completely. Infants can't eat steak, but we don't refuse to feed them because of that. Penetrating a 6-year-old! You seemed so intelligent at the top of this, too.
JOURNALIST: So penetration isn't allowed?
LEADER: Of course it's allowed.
JOURNALIST: So, what happens if somebody wants to penetrate a 6-year-old child?
LEADER: Okay, do you believe it's possible for an even modestly endowed adult male to penetrate - with his erect penis - the vagina or the anus of a 6-year-old child without some physical distress occurring?
JOURNALIST: No, I believe that would be impossible. I believe some tearing would occur.
LEADER: And would you regard the tearing of flesh as an act of violence?
JOURNALIST: Absolutely.
LEADER: And what have I told you about our sexual violence laws?
JOURNALIST: I see your point.
LEADER: It's all in the statutes. And more importantly, it's all in the public arena. People know where the line is. And besides, if you raise a child who's aware of their body and what it's capable of doing, then a decision like when they're ready to be penetrated will absolutely be one they'll be able to make for themselves.
JOURNALIST: That places an awful lot of responsibility into the hands of a child.
LEADER: The child isn't alone in the decision, that's the point. We don't just open the door and then let them flounder unguided. Their educators are there to help them. And if the dialogue between child and educator is open and unrepressed, as it is under our laws, the decision will be informed and valid.
JOURNALIST: So you just leave it up to the child?!
LEADER: How does anybody decide when they're ready for penetration? You can't legislate individual sexuality.
JOURNALIST: But there have to be strictures.
LEADER: And there are. But when a child wants to start, and who they choose to start with, and the willingness of those chosen to be involved, isn't among them. If physical or emotional distress occurs, there are laws in place and support available. And everybody knows that. If not, knock yourself out.
JOURNALIST: 3, 4 years of age?
LEADER: Look, people still have a sense of social responsibility. Parents, educators, friends, family, neighbours... if anyone thinks that something damaging is taking place, all of the necessary avenues are open. And because of the nature of our laws, action will be taken swiftly and decisively, and in full possession of the facts. We haven't declared anarchy.
JOURNALIST: I'm sorry, I still find it impossible to grasp the notion of no age of consent... at all.
LEADER: The very notion of the individual negates any attempt to impose any one, single, decisive age when everyone is ready for sex. Even in countries like Spain, where the age of consent is 12, there are always going to be people who are ready and willing several years before the legal age of consent, and some people who won't be ready or willing until several years after it. If ever. How defiantly simplistic is this `hammer-fall' notion of a magical, overnight transformation - the instant maturation, both physically and emotionally, of child into adult? And even under this misconception, there are so many disparities wherever one travels. The age of consent varies from country to country... 21, 18, 15, 12. No-one appears to be able to agree on one uniform age when the female body is ready for penetration. And let's not even begin to get into the laws governing penetration of the male body.
JOURNALIST: But by abolishing the age of consent laws completely, you open up the flood-gates to all manner of sexual predators to rape and abuse your children.
LEADER: Age of consent laws don't protect children from rape and sexual assault. The rape and sexual assault laws do that. Criminal law is designed to protect property and persons, and if the only interest authorities had in controlling sexual behaviour was to protect people from rape and sexual assault, then the rape and sexual assault laws should provide sufficient protection. Age of consent laws exist as separate entities to those that protect persons from assault. What, then, is their purpose? To preserve custom.
Young people should have the right to have sex, as well as not to have it, and with whoever they choose. The single most disturbing aspect of age of consent laws is that under them, an entire range of sexual activities are legally defined as molestation, regardless of the quality of the relationship or the amount of consent involved.
JOURNALIST: And the psychological damage?
LEADER: The mental scarring of sexual abuse? Let me ask you one thing. What is it exactly that scars a child psychologically? If we confine ourselves in this question to non-violent and non-coercive encounters, what is it in the sexual play-time that scars the child's psyche?
JOURNALIST: The fact that their natural development is being distended... perverted.
LEADER: Perverted?
JOURNALIST: Yes, perverted. You're perverting the young.
LEADER: Perverting the young?! Have you heard a single word I've said? I sincerely hope you're playing Devil's Advocate here, otherwise I have grave concerns about your qualifications. Initiation into sexual pleasure isn't an act of perversion. My god, the men of the Age of Enlightenment must be cheering in their graves. Well done, my friend... you have successfully fallen prey to the institutionalised negation of deeply personal human bonds.
Your culture - and people like you, who so passionately espouse its ideals - has made an artform of removing all personal, intimate, erotic relationships from the educational structure. You've removed any danger that they might pollute the sanitary, aseptic atmosphere of the classroom.
You've cleansed education of every last vestige of initiation, and reduced it to nothing more than the dispenser of useful, saleable knowledge. And by labelling the natural sexual development of a child during the pivotal formative years a perversion, you are legitimising the suppression of debate, and also the desperately incorrect notion that sexually active children and their adult sexual educators are deviants, deserving nothing less than the usual brainless, fascistic abreactions inflicted upon them.
Can I ask you something? What has happened to the true and complete initiation? What has happened to that other obscure, warm, magical half of education? We're not machines. We have hearts, we have flesh.
Or would you rather young people were raised by television? An impersonal, contradictory, one-way relationship, teaching morally ambiguous lessons, but never offering the chance for an exchange? This is why the Internet is so wonderful... the free and open exchange of ideas, regardless of international boundaries. But even this cannot possibly hope to replace the moral and physical contact between a child and their initiator.
JOURNALIST: Sounds very poetic, but it doesn't sound like the real world to me.
LEADER: How do you know? How do you know what goes on in the mind of a sexually active child?
JOURNALIST: There is no such thing.
LEADER: How do you know?! You assume, first of all, that a child cannot have a sexuality (which it can... medical science has proven that), and then secondly, that if it has, that it can never be directed towards an adult, which is patently untrue. You deem the child incapable of self expression and immune to sexuality. Don't underestimate the mental faculties, the maturity, or the innate sexual awareness of a child, my friend. They know and celebrate much more than you would give them credit for.
JOURNALIST: And how many times do paedophiles use that argument? "Treat kids with equality, they're smarter than you think".... blah blah blah!
LEADER: Why do you think farts are funny to children? Why are infants obsessed with shit? Why do toddlers prefer to run around naked? Why do children love to play `Doctors and Nurses'? Children love their bodies. They're fascinated with them. It's the child's job to explore their bodies and to discover what the various parts do. I can't even begin to recall the amount of times I've seen children - cousins, nieces, nephews, even total strangers, playing with their genitalia. Exploring it, searching around for its purpose. Some of them even find that purpose... it's a medically proven fact that children as young as infancy not only masturbate, but gain enormous pleasure from it. And yet, right through their childhood, right up into the teenage years, young people are told that it's inappropriate to be sexual. And yet they remain an innately curious bunch.
Any sexual contact a child has with an adult, as long as it's loving, is healthy. A true paedophile loves children. And a true paedophile wants to help a child through that journey. All we're doing is removing the wall that separates the children who want to learn from the adults who want to teach.
The only contact that isn't healthy is violent or coercive. And frankly, there would be no need for a paedophile to be coercive if the child had a healthy and - key word - unstifled love of their physical and sexual being. In cases of mutual consent and mutual sexual attraction, sexual activity between children and adults produces no damaging effects. Has it occurred to you that in these cases, the reason for the trauma of sexual `abuse' is not the `abuse' at all?
JOURNALIST: What then?
LEADER: In the case of a child who actively enjoys sex with an adult, and who doesn't realise that anything is unusual until the relationship is discovered, what disturbs them once that happens is not what they and their adult lover have done, but the attitude of the authorities, their parents, and the psychologists. They assume that the child must be traumatised and disgusted. The experience is automatically `abuse', the child is always the `victim', the adult is always the `perpetrator'. And the authorities see no irony in the fact that they subsequently brainwash the child `back' into the accepted norm. What is truly disturbing is that those children who do ultimately buckle and conform, in order to capitulate expectations, find themselves faking symptoms they don't have, and feel genuinely guilty about not having felt guilty.
We encourage incest survivors to break the silence and to tell family secrets about violence and sexual abuse. But we change our tune instantly when the `victim' starts talking about being a sexually active child who was not traumatised by the experience.
JOURNALIST: But not all children are sexually active. And not all children know enough about sex to make a truly informed decision.
LEADER: But clearly some do.
JOURNALIST: Of course some do, there are always going to be some children who are more mature than others.
LEADER: And why is that? Why are some more mature?
JOURNALIST: No doubt it's got to do with the way they're being raised.
LEADER: Precisely. They're being raised in an environment where sex is not something that's trampled and furtive and entirely under control. Once a child becomes interested in sex - whenever that may be, how do you expect them to have a mature, responsible attitude towards it if they've been told practically nothing about it? That's the whole point of this - to empower young people with their sexuality... to teach them how to use it, when to express it, when not to express it, how to know what's good for them, and what's not good for them, where to go for guidance, who to avoid, and so on.
Otherwise, we raise a nation of ignorant fools, people who will always be victims because they have no control over who they are sexually.... a raft of sexual beings floating in a morass of conflicting ideas (most of them false and many of them wholly judgmental), adding more confusion to an already far too complex issue. The continuation of the species deserves more than that. Especially when that fundamental purpose adds so much depth and richness to the links we form with those around us. And especially when it can be - and should be - so much fun.
It might be a function, but it's not a bad way to pass the time. And that's the point. Nature isn't stupid. She made it fun for a reason. There has to be people. The species must survive. Even if we come to a point - which we have -where men and women are tearing at each other's throats over our fundamental differences, there needs to be something that brings us together. And that something is the mutual pleasure derived from having sex. You can do it for one, the other, or both. Children do it because it's fun.
And if you raise children in a society where they fully understand the implications of the sexual act - the pleasure and the pain it can bring - and where they feel free to experiment with it whenever and with whoever they choose, you will produce a generation that has a truly healthy attitude about their bodies and their sexuality. You will see a turn-around in sex crimes and domestic violence, and you'll see less of the unhealthy obsession - particularly amongst young women - with body image.
But most authorities won't let that happen, and nor will the cultures they represent, because for reasons better explained by someone more qualified than myself, we apparently like being controlled by furtive, guilty-minded neurotics with twisted ideas about what's `moral' or `proper'. These concepts - born of shame - have been instilled within us by the powers that be - governmental and religious - that want to control us.
We simply cannot afford to be making blanket generalisations about every child simply because all we see them playing with is dolls and computer games. Most of them don't. At least not all the time. More than a few of them want to play around sexually - to varying degrees - with other children, with their uncle, with the guy next door.
JOURNALIST: And so they leave themselves open to be exploited by the worst of all paedophiles - the guy who wants to rape and torture them. Or worse. After all, not all paedophiles are harmless, are they?
LEADER: Not all black people steal cars. Once again, are we going to make a blanket generalisation in our ignorance? Should we vilify a whole population because of a few high profile psychopaths? You're Jewish, should I assume you're a money-grubbing heathen? Should I assume that because my wife is Asian she's skilled at manual labour and playing the violin?
JOURNALIST: It's not the same thing though, is it?
LEADER: It's exactly the same thing. Vilification is couched in the assertion that `they're all alike', and vilification can just as easily be directed towards sexual orientation as well as to ethnic origin - just ask the gay lobby. Paedophiles are sexually attracted to children - but that doesn't mean they abuse them. Child molesters abuse children - but that doesn't mean they're sexually attracted to them. As hard as it may be for you to believe, the simple truth is that not all paedophiles are child molesters.
JOURNALIST: So we're talking the `gentle pervert', here? Is there such a thing?
LEADER: Your problem is, you've only ever seen the bad eggs. It's like the teenagers who commit suicide to heavy metal music. Do you ever hear about the ones that kill themselves to Beethoven's `Moonlight' Sonata - one of the most depressing and melancholy pieces of music ever written? Of course not. Doesn't make for a good headline. But long-haired rejects-from-society killing teenagers - now, there's a story! The news-media aren't interested in the truth. They're interested in ratings and selling newspapers. If something isn't horrific or sensational enough, no-one will watch it. So why balance the picture? It's easier to attack based on a few bad eggs than it is to be fair. Isn't it? Admit it. You've done it. You hate them, so why be fair? Why tell the truth and risk blowing the jig, right?
JOURNALIST: What about violent paedoph..... sorry, child molesters? The ones that rape and torture and murder?
LEADER: The high profile psychopaths, you mean? Marc Dutroux, et al.?
JOURNALIST: Yes.
LEADER: Well first of all, Marc Dutroux is not a paedophile... he is a murderer and a psychopath, and was clinically diagnosed as such. But for the sake of the argument, let's assume that he is a paedophile. And if that is the case, the one thing we must never do, is lose sight of the fact that there are always two sides to every story. I look at it this way: In a society where the desires one did not ask for are regarded with utter contempt to the point of fascism, what alternative does the poor bastard have other than to move entirely outside of every law and become a completely contemptible human being?
JOURNALIST: So society forces them into a corner?
LEADER: Of course it does. Everybody hates a paedophile. Even in the prison system - among the serial rapists and mass murderers - child sex offenders are the scum of the earth. So why not go down fighting? "If no-one's going to like me anyway", they think to themselves, "Why not make them detest me? The paedophile has no choice. They don't ask for these desires. They don't ask to be hated. They just are. We're a politically correct society now... by definition we can't blame the witches or the faggots or the kikes or the commies or the niggers or the chinks anymore, so why not blame the peds? Nothing brings out the pent-up violence... the angry, vengeful time-bombs of the psyche than a filthy, perverted child molester. The paedophile is just the newest target of a repressed society just looking for an excuse to justify their most violent excesses, born, I might add, of their innate fear that they might be exactly the same underneath.
JOURNALIST: So if society were just a little more tolerant, we wouldn't see as much sexual violence towards children?
LEADER: Precisely. And that is exactly why we've changed our laws so drastically. We are making common sense decisions with age of consent laws -defining what is actually harmful and what is merely perceived as such by the ill-informed, and then allowing the altruists to prove to those with very real concerns that intergenerational sex is not as destructive as they had once thought.
JOURNALIST: You just said that human beings are an angry, vengeful, violent species. Wouldn't that include people in your country?
LEADER: Possibly. There was violence in the hippie movement. There was violence at Woodstock. But violence is born of guilt and repression. And guilt and repression are products of a control-based patriarchy that dictates rather than negotiates. The vote that passed these changes sent a clear message to my government - and my political opponents - that our nation holds to its heart the virtues of equality and understanding, and that it wishes to create a culture that celebrates love, honesty, generosity, and sensuality - ideals that are fundamentally opposite to those of the one you defend. Your culture is one of guilt, shame, suppression, violence, antagonism, complacency, intolerance. Ours is based on a realistic and pragmatic examination of the human condition in all its glorious diversity.
JOURNALIST: Wouldn't that `glorious diversity' - by definition - have to include violence?
LEADER: Absolutely not! It is my firm opinion that violence is something entirely unnatural to the human being. If you have been taught to be violent, then you will be violent. But if you've been taught nothing but love and fairness, understanding and honesty.... didn't Rodgers and Hammerstein say something about that? "You have to be taught to hate". No, violence is a choice. And like anything in life, it can be accepted or rejected at will, if the will is strong enough.
JOURNALIST: Well, I've got to tell you, it all sounds kind of... ambitious.
LEADER: Ambition is part of the journey to evolution. And evolution ensures that as a species - and as a culture - we don't stagnate. What point is there in life if you can't challenge yourself every once in a while?
JOURNALIST: Let's be honest. Aren't you just providing a boost to a failing economy by opening up your country as a sexual party-land for perverts? A new Mecca for the depraved? A place for them to fulfil their wildest sexual fantasies without fear of prosecution?
LEADER: Your cynicism is astonishing.
JOURNALIST: As eloquent as what you're saying is, and (although I admit this reluctantly) as much sense as all this sensual-child-sexual-development-bit makes... I can't help but feel that you are simply trying to justify - after the fact - a very bestial sexual desire... paedophilia.
LEADER: Okay, that's fair enough. Devil's advocate, I'll go along with that. Alright, picture this: you are a paedophile. You inexplicably and for no reason that you can think of feel a sexual desire for pre-pubescent boys and/or girls. You know that the world hates you for it. You think to yourself "What did I do to deserve being hated like this? I didn't ask for this desire. I am this way through no fault of my own." You think to yourself "If only the world were a little more understanding. If only they knew. If only they would listen to me. Understand me. If only they could be fair."
And in your quest to be treated fairly, you become attuned to others who are seeking a fair hearing. And after a while - yes, I'll admit it, while also trying to justify your sexuality and find a safe haven for you to indulge it -you ultimately develop a broader sense of fairness and of equality. It grows into something bigger. Something that ultimately is no longer about your sexuality and your desire to justify it. Your quest for personal fairness has led you to a greater understanding of persecution and those who suffer under it. This is one of the reasons paedophiles get along so well with children... both groups are marginalised and divorced from the mainstream of adult life.
Obviously all of this is not a necessary consequence of paedophilia, of course, anymore than virtue is of poverty. Nonetheless, the passion for helping children is so strong in paedophile relationships that authorities around the world acknowledge it.
JOURNALIST: So you allow them unprecedented freedom. You effectively legalise paedophilia.
LEADER: Paedophilia is a legitimate sexual variation that has been around since time immemorial. It's just another desire. We're not legalising murder or rape. We're allowing into the mainstream people who are persecuted and isolated for desires they didn't ask for... desires that can actually be of enormous benefit to society.
Those in the international community who wish for paedophilia to remain a crime, and who attack us for our foresight, simply cannot trust that this one area of sexual activity will, almost uniquely, be exempt from the liberalising tendencies of our modern culture. It has not escaped us proponents of paedophilia that the arguments about outcomes and consent that are deployed against us are not strong.
In 20 years or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it will be much easier to show that paedophiles have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch-hunt. A lot of people will be embarrassed by their collaboration with such persecution, but it will be too late for those men who have spent their lives in prison, and worse, for those children whose natural sexual instincts have been invalidated and impugned by the very authorities who should be nurturing every aspect of their growth into adulthood.
Changing people's attitudes won't come quickly or easily. But it won't come at all unless we're willing to address the question seriously and openly. Using the police as sexual storm-troopers, applying violence and intimidation to censor debate, treating every adult interested in the sexuality of children as a molester and murderer, reveals just how much we ourselves are victims, as well as perpetuators, of our own sexual immaturity.
The choice is not a simplistic leap from child-rape to chastity-into-late-adolescence, nor is it between perversion and orthodox heterosexuality. We do have the further option of accepting our own sexuality and therefore that of our children as a complex blessing which we and they must learn neither to exploit nor deny but to enjoy with sensitivity and intelligence.
JOURNALIST: Once again, very poetic, but what about the molesters and rapists?
LEADER: Of course there are going to people out there who want to exploit and traumatise and kill children. It makes no more sense to regard them as the norm than it would be to regard rapists as the norm for adult relationships. To say that any sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that, overall, relationships between adults and children are unequal. Why you feel more concerned about your children's sexual dependence than over their physical, emotional, and intellectual dependence says more about you, and your culture, as sexual incompetents than as responsible adults.
I don't defend rapists and child-killers. That kind of violent, homicidal child molester does not belong in, nor does it represent, the paedophile mainstream. Other law-makers and general populations might, for convenience, want to lump the two together, but it won't make it an accurate description.
JOURNALIST: Several billion people might disagree with you there.
LEADER: Several billion people might not be any the wiser.
JOURNALIST: So you're right and the whole rest of the world is wrong?
LEADER: My friend, look around you. No-one from country to country can agree on which god is the real god. No-one can agree on an age of consent. No-one can agree on which parts of the body are offensive and which aren't. No-one can agree on one uniform language to speak. Everywhere you go, people are disagreeing on what's what and why. One person has one opinion and someone else has another. Suddenly, into the room comes another person with another opinion and so on and so forth. Some people think Lee Oswald shot Kennedy and others don't. Some people think Wendy's ice-cream is better than Baskin-Robbins'. Some people prefer Coke over Pepsi, McDonald's over KFC. Some think the Holocaust never happened despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And some people simply won't listen to anybody but themselves.
You are no longer concerned with truth or fairness, but with winning the argument for yourselves. A fair and honest treatment of any new, radical idea is nigh on impossible. Your sad, pathetic culture is, for the most part, so rigidly and irretrievably stuck in its ways that anything truly revolutionary is quickly met with a bizarre and infuriating kind of complacent opposition based on preserving the status quo. Your culture is overwhelmingly stubborn and destructive and, what's worse, armed with a million excuses as to why it should stay that way.
Who's to say that we are not, indeed, entirely correct? And that the rest of the world is entirely wrong? You? With your prejudiced mind-set and sensationalist professional ethic? I think not. Your audience? They're part of that same society you so vehemently defend.
Under the right circumstances, anything is admissible. And it's quite simple, really. Look at the facts, ignore the paranoid, self-serving sensationalism of those who want to dominate people rather than deal openly with them, and just get on with it.
Medically supervised voluntary euthanasia is legal here. What you would call `illicit' drugs, are freely available, which has completely removed them from the hands of organised crime. Marijuana is sold alongside cigarettes in supermarkets and general stores, heroin and cocaine are distributed via state-controlled, medically supervised distribution outlets to a registered list of existing addicts, and with a full network of treatment and support available. As a culture generally, we have a desire and a willingness to compromise on complex and controversial issues. As a culture and as a government we are prepared to acknowledge any and all conceivable benefits - to society or to the individual - that may exist. And where those benefits do exist, there is reason to begin a process. Nothing should be excluded from a balanced, equitable society.
In spite of your best efforts to bog this conversation down in your prurient and sexually judgmental headline grabbing, I am determined to show you the positive side of that which you so willingly would destroy in a rage. You're frustrated and angered by your lack of control over our generosity towards paedophiles, and, as a result, you would rather blindly attack and try to shoot us down. But it won't work. Because ultimately, we are better people than you. Vilifying a paedophile is no better than vilifying an Asian or a Jew or an Aboriginal or a Native-American or an African-American or a Kurd. It's all based on ignorance. And the fully rounded human being does not. (The Leader looks at his watch) Time's up.
JOURNALIST: Thank you for your time.
LEADER: My pleasure.
Both exit through separate doors.