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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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This is very much like saying "the desire to genocide armenians is not evil, only acting on that desire is evil." Or "the desire to torture dogs is not evil, only actually torturing dogs is."

No. The desire to commit evil acts is evil. Pedophilia is evil, even if never acted upon. And everyone is right to be wary of anyone who claims to be, or appears to be a pedophile, because that is evil.

Taking for granted that the desire to commit an evil act is also in itself evil - a controversial opinion, certainly, but one we can just entertain for the moment - this doesn't imply that pedophilia is evil, since pedophilia is a preference, not a desire. It's very possible for someone to enjoy the idea of themselves raping children without having any actual desire to act on it by raping children. It'd be easy to claim that this is splitting hairs, but it'd also be wrong to claim as such, since preference doesn't imply anything about a willingness to act, whereas desire does, and this is a very meaningful, very consequential difference in terms of how that person behaves. You can, of course, just posit that this preference is something that's intrinsically evil, which is perfectly cromulent.