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I think pedophilia is bad because kids are not adults and adults should shield children from sin by showing them what is right and what is wrong and by keeping them away from situations in which they would not be able to make good decisions.
Adults are to gradually give more responsibility to children to teach them how to behave as good Christians.
Even if a progressive leader (teacher or other) was persuasive enough to convince one of my children that they want to use their body with an adult, I would try and get them away from that situation as that is not what God intends for us to teach our children. Depending on how quick the progressive gets to them, they may not even have been taught about the importance of chastity yet.
I would not necessarily put a hard limit at 18 years old, perhaps 16 years old if my daughter is mature enough and the prospective marriage partner is an amazing deal... I doubt my son could get married at 16 unless he already has his own business running or some other proof of being able to support a family that would secure a wife that I would approve of.
I will not approve of fornication even after 18, because I don't think sex is tennis.
If God said that sex isn't actually sinful, that was a misunderstanding, or was obviated by the new covenant: Would you no longer have any objections to pedophilia, or would you still think it was bad for other reasons?
My guess is you would still have objections, those remaining objections are your real reason for being against it, and you share those reasons with the people you're interrogating.
But maybe I'm wrong, let me know.
(note, this goes back to Penn Jillette's line about atheism and morality - religious people ask him why, if he doesn't believe in God, he doesn't go around raping and murdering anyone he wants. His response is 'I've already raped and murdered as much as I want to, which is zero, and if the only thing holding you back from that is your belief in God then please stay away from my family.'
I don't think that is the only thing stopping religious people from doing horrible things, I think their rhetorical reason is God but their actual proximal reasons are more about preventing harm and respecting autonomy and being a good person and so forth, same as everyone else)
God doesn't say sex is sinful, as long as it's in the right context.
I think that there are people who argue that God says things like that, and I do not listen to these people. The scriptures and tradition I choose to believe in are the ones that are congruent with my vision of what is true and right.
Does he count abortion as murder? Does murder by proxy count? Would voting for abortion (or say, bombing Gaza) count?
Would any woman be able to #MeToo him (does he follow the Pence rule?) or is he the only judge of what counts as rape or what doesn't?
What about sterilizing people? Is that something wrong in the eyes of Jillette? Progressives get a lot of people sterilized these days, and they claim that it's all consensual and good, but it seems debatable to some.
Well there are wild disagreements on whether killing an unborn baby is murder or not, or whether sterilizing teenagers or MAID are a good idea, etc. One could also argue that Christians also believe that spiritual life is more important than the world, so avoiding offending God is more important than avoiding physical harm (ie hypothetically dying of hunger is better than taking the only available job at the abortion clinic, or more commonly, refusing to engage in sinful urges is better than enthusiastically embracing your 'LGBT identity').
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