Orland Evangelical Free Church | Pedophilia and New York Times Readers

The Times performs superb public service in its ongoing investigation of pedophiles on the internet. Kurt Eichenwald probes the online porn culture with an eye for the hair-raising – but not graphic – detail.

His piece, “On the Web, Pedophiles Extend Their Reach”, was published Monday as part of a new series, “Dark Corners”. It came after a weekend of huge coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John M. Karr, a teacher with child pornography charges on his record. In this context, Eichenwald’s piece spent Monday and Tuesday on the Times most e-mailed list.

The piece uses several categories for its analysis.

For the Times, the article covers technology, not U.S. national or cultural news. Technology coverage today is less a forum for arcane tips than for social commentary. The interactions between new technologies and culture are considered decisive in producing social change – and in forecasting it.

So Eichenwald says, “In recent months, new concerns have emerged about whether the ubiquitous nature of broadband technology, instant message communications and digital imagery is presenting new and poorly understood risks to children.”

He describes “the technological acumen” pedophiles show in online conversations, and notes how they shared information and images early in the internet’s history. The pedophiles’ response to technological tactics by law enforcement is swift.

Protecting children in this article is portrayed as a complex technological challenge.

The piece also analyzes pedophiles through the category of law. A major reason pedophilia is wrong seems to be circular: it’s criminal. This proves to be a clumsy tool for exegeting evil.

For instance, are online pornographic conversations about children wrong? Eichenwald says, “The conversations themselves are not illegal.” He probes the difficulties of linking the conversations to actual abuse: it’s hard “to prove the truth of personal statements” made online, and “to demonstrate direct connections between online commentary and real world actions.” Without these legal, evidentiary links, the conversations elude categorization.

The only way to categorize pedophiles’ online chatter seems to be a legal reach: “[T]he existence of this community is significant and troubling, experts said, because it reinforces beliefs that, when acted upon, are criminal.” Much space is devoted to illustrating this argument.

So there is a legal challenge in protecting children, the war of what “is” is.

The piece does offer another category for showing pedophilia’s evil – a category that works hand-in-glove with law. Pedophilia does harm. Eichenwald refers to the Ramsey murder. He cites law enforcement experts who assert pedophilia’s damaging consequences. He also cites pedophiles themselves who condemn forcible rape. Eichenwald is most powerful when he describes pedophiles’ many deceptions.

But pedophilia itself: does the article offer evidence that sex between children and adults does tangible harm – physical, psychological, or social? No. Harm is what the article assumes. Eichenwald doesn’t have to prove what he believes his readers already accept.

With technology and law forming ethical boundaries, the precise nature of pedophilia’s harm is cloudy.

The most disturbing element in Eichenwald’s well-written piece is the one that casts a shadow over the future. There is a pedophilia subculture. It has a clear world view and a clear goal of children’s sexual “liberation”. It has elaborate information-sharing networks. It regards those charged in court as spokesmen for a cause. In the Netherlands, it even boasts a nascent, court-sanctioned political party. This subculture asserts that sex between children and adults is harmless.

What will happen as this challenge to the mainstream view of harm intensifies? What will the mainstream say if it fails to contain pedophilia legally and technologically in the next ten years? Fifteen years? How will the mainstream articulate its definition of harm and strengthen its will to fight this subculture?

The readers of the Times clearly monitor this issue. But from the article the rationale for opposing pedophiles is weak. We cannot refuse to extend the sexual revolution to new beneficiaries – pedophiles’ goal – having seen the harm it has already done to women and rationalized it.

Further, readers may not be monitoring this issue for the same reasons. Some of the professions often claimed by pedophiles (e.g. teachers and pediatricians) fall right within the demographics of this audience. On this point the article is silent.

Maybe most Times readers will doggedly oppose pedophilia without a solid rationale. Human reflexes can veto progressive niceties. But what we have here is a recipe for ethical helplessness.