This one is a little more subtle :
A troubling statement I remember hearing when I’d attended a conference of purportedly “liberal-minded” speakers ( I think about 12 years ago) came from the mouth of the “headliner“ - a European speaker who also happened to be a member of the clergy. He repeated 3 or 4 times (in French) “Listen, contraception is not abortion”, each time he was questioned on what he’d said earler. Well, most level-headed Catholics are already aware that contraception isn’t abortion if we’re speaking of prophylactics , so what would be the point of repeating it if not to downplay contraception ? In the larger picture, we discover that in abortifacients the two become synonymous ; and we also have ways of manipulation today which are equivalent to rendering the womb in a perpetual state of abortion.
To return to a quote from the Professor of Christian ethics Germain Grisez’s article :
EXCERPT
. . . According to the Manual (527) the pedophile’s deviant focus “involves sexual activity with a prepubescent child (generally age 13 years or younger).”
With pedophiles, Rossetti contrasts ephebophiles: “There are others who are ephebophiles, i.e. sexually attracted to postpubescent children . . .
One will commonly hear a defense from the homosexual militants/lobby similar in structure to the idea mentioned at the beginning of this post – trying to downplay something by saying it isn’t something else. I’ve seen it posted in these forums more than once where someone will assert (and this quite vigorously) “homosexuality isn’t pedophilia” . Well, let’s look again at the wording in the quote: It says the basic difference between a pedophile and an ephebophile is that their victim – whether virtual (imagined) or actual, is either a
or
.
Have we got that now ?** When either is acted out ,
pedophilia or ephebophilia , in every case it remains a predatory act of child sexual abuse.**
Essentially what lowering the age of consent does, is to lower the age for legal child sexual abuse.
“Age of consent” tells us partially ;
“Age of consent with whom” , tells us much more.
If we continue to scrutinize , it becomes evident that the supposed great solid line separating
pedophilia from
ephebophilia is in fact something as fragile,(and in a real sense – as arbitrary) as whether the victim has experienced their first menstrual cycle or has developed pubic hair.
Lowering the age of consent will blur that line even more.
Whether or not the actual title is conferred on them, the consenting child will come to be considered as a consenting adult.
