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This is common right wing talking point for all of our living memory: "The libs want to mainstream pedophilia!"
While, in reality, "pedos" are people hated by everyone, the last people that are publicly acceptable to lynch, people that everyone loves to compare their political enemies to, and the definition of "pedo" gets wider and wider every year - from actual rape of pre pubescent children to any sex under 18 year line to relationship with "age gap".
No "expansion of rights and tolerance" to pedophiles is evident.
(if you want to reply: "wHY yOu dEFeNd pEdOS? dIe pEdO sCUm"!, thanks for proving my point)
If you are young it really seems that this talking point is baseless, but until 1994 Gay Advocacy parent organizations kept under their umbrella pro-pedophilia groups.
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I don't think this is a very charitable response. I said
I didn't say that leftists today secretly desire to legalize pedophilia. I imagine that many of them would be shocked and disgusted at the idea. But normie leftists in the 70s would have been shocked and disgusted by gay marriage and PDA, and leftists in the 90s would have been shocked and disgusted by puberty blockers and the trans movement today. You can't tell me the slope isn't slippery when we've been sliding down it my entire life.
This is where a lot of people would bring up consent, but it too has proven slippery and malleable. How can it be true that children are incapable of consent, but at the same time they're fully capable of deciding their gender identity and demanding drugs that cause irreversible physical and psychological changes? Sex between a minor and an adult also seems to often cause irreversible changes to the psychology of the minor. For the time being we still refer to those changes as "damage" but I don't see a solid reason why given the way things are heading.
Can we not do this on The Motte?
its better to not be shocked and disgusted by innocent activities than to be. it just goes to show how a lot of these aversions are instilled by society, and are not innately sourced.
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And I said that there is no "endless expansion" - tolerance was expanded in few limited areas, while everywhere else, the hammer will fall on your head harder than ever before if you cross (arbitrary and constantly changing) line.
No one even claims anymore, least of all "liberals", that tolerance is good thing - "zero tolerance" is the spirit of our age.
Yes, and it is slippery against everything that can be seen as "pedo" and it gets slipperier and slipperier. When was the first time you heard about "age gap"?
Except the things are definitely NOT heading this way. Things are heading into seeing relationship of 45 years old man and 25 years old woman as exploitative and pedophilic, equal to relationship of 25 years old man and 5 years old woman.
Conservatives may claim that only their brave fight prevents libs from mainstreaming pedophilia, but, somehow, they failed to stop mainstreaming of homosexuality, gay marriage and transgenderism despite trying their best.
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