Some issues are so awful, so outside the boundaries of human decency, that the only appropriate response is outrage. A society that intellectualizes and legitimizes patently evil behaviors in a misguided quest to “understand” and “accept” everyone and everything can only spiral downward.
Pedophilia is one of those issues. It’s not just heinous; it’s a crime. That hasn’t stopped some people, however, from attempting to legitimizing it.
In a video made in May — it has since been removed from YouTube, but parts can be seen in the video below — German medical student Mirjam Heine (pictured above) told a TEDx Talk audience that pedophilia is an “unchangeable sexual orientation, just like … heterosexuality.” Her talk was titled “Why Our Perception of Pedophilia Has to Change,” as LifeSiteNews reported.
The audience should have gotten up and walked out — perhaps they were too stunned to do so.
The creeping normalization of pedophilia should concern all Americans. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders said pedophilia is a “sexual orientation,” and even indicated that a pedophile should not feel guilt or shame.
After a public outcry, the APA changed its classification of pedophilia as a “sexual interest” — which still normalizes criminal behavior.
In the 2017 Oscar-nominated movie “Call Me By Your Name,” actor Armie Hammer played a 25-year-old man who begins a romance with a 17-year-old boy. Critics raved about the movie — with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 95 percent positive rating.
Medical student Heine gave her TEDx Talk in defense of pedophiles at Germany’s University of Würtzberg. Introducing her theme with the example of “Jonas,” a 19-year-old pedophile who plays soccer and is a law student, she asked the audience to put aside their revulsion for pedophiles, as LifeSiteNews noted.
“Anyone could be born a pedophile,” this individual said.
Heine asserted that pedophiles are not to blame for their feelings or thoughts but only their actions (with no mention of the willful use of pornography). Heine said pedophiles cannot change their “feelings,” so she encouraged her audience to change their own feelings of repugnance.
“Just like pedophiles, we are not responsible for our feelings,” she said. “We do not choose them … but it is our responsibility to … overcome our negative feelings about pedophiles and to treat them with the same respect” that we give others, she added.
Think about that: A medical student is advocating that people treat pedophiles with “respect.”
For Heine, pedophilia is a sexual preference that pedophiles would “live out freely,” if only it weren’t contrary to leading “an upright life.”
“The difference between pedophilia and other sexual orientations is that living out this sexual orientation will end in a disaster,” she said.
Heine apparently feels that understanding and accepting pedophiles is key, saying that the social isolation of pedophiles is an important factor in how likely they are to assault children sexually. Openness about one’s sexual feelings, no matter how perverse, is crucial, said Heine; in her world, a pedophile should have his “orientation” acknowledged, tolerated, and accepted to prevent child sexual assault.
“We shouldn’t increase the sufferings of pedophiles by excluding them, by blaming and mocking them,” Heine said. “By doing that, we increase their isolation and we increase the chance of child sexual abuse.”
Pedophilia, said Heine, is just another “unchangeable sexual orientation just like, for example, heterosexuality.” In that statement, she echoed the AMA’s original classification and encouraged her audience to differentiate between sexual attraction to children, which she believes should be accepted as involuntary “feelings,” and child sexual abuse, which she said is always wrong.
Meanwhile, Heine said scientific studies show that only 20 to 30 percent of all child molesters are pedophiles, according to the LifeSiteNews piece.
“The vast majority of perpetrators are not pedophiles but are sexually interested in adults,” she stated. Her example was a man who sexually abuses his stepdaughter because he’s angry at her mother.
Heine then contradicted herself by saying that pedophilia can be “heterosexual,” “homosexual,” and “bi-sexual.” And although she seems to think pedophiles are born that way, she also said pedophilia has biological, social, and psychological factors.
Once Heine’s lecture was posted to YouTube there came a huge online backlash, Breitbart reported, causing the organizers of the independent TEDx event to remove the video from YouTube — with the founding TED Talks media organization also trying to scrub what they term “illegal copies” from the internet.
Representatives for TED Talks defended the removal, saying in a statement, “After reviewing the talk, we believe it cites research in ways that are open to serious misinterpretation. This led some viewers to interpret the talk as an argument in favor of an illegal and harmful practice.”
Related: Shocking: Kindergarten Poster Hints at Pedophilia
“Furthermore,” the statement said, “after contacting the organizer to understand why it had been taken down, we learned that the speaker herself requested it be removed from the internet because she had serious concerns about her own safety in its wake.”
TED Talks later added to its statement that it neither supports nor advocates pedophilia.
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