1/22/2012 - by Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister

Am I sexually attracted to underage boys?  Sexually attracted?  You know, I enjoy young people.  I, I love to be around them.  I, I… But no, I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.

— Jerry Sandusky

He called a little child and had him stand among them.  And he said, “Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.  But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

— Matthew 18:2-3, 5-6

Allegations that Sandusky, the former Penn St. assistant football coach, repeatedly molested young boys during his years at the school, have triggered a sense of national outrage rarely seen.  But even as prosecutors are investigating this sickening saga, activists are working to eliminate the shame attached to pedophilia.  The December 17, 2011 issue of World reports,

A nonprofit in Westminster, Md., called B4U-ACT has been advocating since 2003 on behalf of those it calls “minor-attracted people” – adults or adolescents who feel sexual attraction toward children.  Relying on questionable psychiatric estimates, the group claims up to 8 million men in the United States experience such attractions, but feel stigmatized by society and are afraid to visit a mental health clinic.

“We see minor-attracted people as whole human beings, not as dangerous criminals or ‘deviants,’” says the organization’s website.  The group affirms that therapists should report confessed or planned illegal activity to police, yet “we recognize that laws… do not require the reporting of sexual feelings and desires.”  Further, “we are not advocating treatment to change sexual feelings.”

The point could not be clearer: there is nothing wrong or deviant about such feelings and attraction.

Except that there is.

Despite the insistence of some that nothing is wrong in terms of human sexuality, the witness of Scripture says otherwise.  The call to “Flee all sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:20) uses a word that applies to all sexual sin, including pedophilia.

World’s Daniel James Devine notes that representatives from the “minor-attracted people” community arranged a conference call last year with editors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to discuss changes to the pedophilia entry in the handbook.  (They were largely ignored).

It bears mention, though, that homosexuality shook off its status as a mental illness in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed its entry from the DSM.  Social acceptance wasn’t far behind, with gay marriage gaining support in droves.

What will happen if activists are successful in casing pedophilia as just another sexual orientation?  The Bible gives an unmistakable warning to our increasingly confused society:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

— Isaiah 5:20