Larry B. wrote:Adurentibus Spina wrote: no one in their right mind would do them.
That hit a spot...
Would you consider an attraction to 13 year olds a symptom of a mental condition or a mental condition by itself?
And if it's a mental condition... why are these men facing prison and not just mental treatment at some institution?
Some guys tried to blame "this terrible addiction", kind of like playing the "sex addiction" card played by so many men who've had affairs. I say shove that excuse up your ass. You're a full grown man, if you approach a kid for sex you face punishment, end of story.
I don't think it follows from what I said that everything immoral must be a 'condition' that can be labeled and treated rather than criminally prosecuted.
I am an absolute determinist, though, and as such, I don't think there is such a thing as 'free choice' or 'free will'. Given that, it follows that it's not like any guy can see a child and say "Well, I could either fuck or not fuck this minor. I choose not fuck. But next time I could choose fuck." That's not how human behaviour works. Most people do understand, to some degree or other, why most serious things we think are wrong are wrong -- things that involve obvious harm to someone else (not, of course, religious and 'gross' based attitudes toward things, but rather, actually knowing why things are wrong). Most people don't do these things, not because they choose not to, but because they understand why they shouldn't do it, and thus, literally can't. This doesn't rule out cases of ignorance about age (cf. Roman Polanski), or intoxicated violation of ordinarily understood moral beliefs. But those who genuinely desire children are not choosing to do so. This doesn't mean they are caused genetically, or environmentally, but probably some mix of the two. No one chooses their "first order" (that is, immediate, basic) desires. Ordinarily we have the illusion of choice at a higher level, that of identifying with and/or acting on our desires. When this fails, some philosophers claim, a person is acting 'akratically', or with weakness of the will. I deny that this is possible. Rather, some other region of the brain that ordinarily processes meta-desire volitions is failing to operate in ways that would allow these individuals to act according to what they should know follows from certain basic facts they know. Some of the research on pedophiles who have been chemically castrated seems to support this (they still have desire-related thoughts about children that they can no longer act on, because they are unable to, hormonally).