In what appeared to be a moment of misspeaking, anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) said in a recent congressional speech, “How about we all come together and say ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles’?”
During a congressional hearing on the current president’s actions addressing crime in cities — which seems mostly to be insulting large city mayors, ignoring higher-crime areas in red states, and then sending in armed federal officers against the mayors’ wishes — Sen. Cruz referred to Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) plea for Democrats and Republicans to “come together and have bipartisan agreement.”
“I think that’s a great idea. We should have bipartisan agreement,” Cruz said. “How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop murder’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop rape’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles’?”
Well, it’s technically true. Pedophilia, attraction to children (prepubescent youths), is generally best addressed with acknowledgement, treatment, and management.
Sexual assault, and rape, and predator practices are the crimes identified pedophiles are typically found participating in if their attraction to kids isn’t addressed appropriately beforehand.
Ya’ll don’t really think being attracted to kids is a crime itself do you? Or that there aren’t thousands, or tens of thousands, of people out there that are attracted to kids and just don’t act on it, or haven’t been identified?
Pedophilia, though specific in nature, is a similar subject to mental health in general, in how it’s treated by society. As it becomes more acceptable to admit to having mental health conditions, the instances of those conditions leading to dire circumstances dimishes.
Be more proactive, and less reactive.
Note: though it should be clear enough, I do want to specifically state that this message in no way promotes or supports criminal actions taken towards children or knowingly disregarding such actions if the assailants are rich, or any other such nonsense.
Like being tall, or black, or gay, being a pedophile is a state of being, not an action, and people should not be attacked for their state of being, full stop. Crimes they commit are another matter entirely.
So, we do understand “context” though, right? No one is hearing about a guy who never hurt anyone but who is managing their problem and thinking “I’m gunna go beat them up.” However, there do happen to be a whole lot of people on Cruz’s side of the aisle, including the president, who seem to be the absolute worse possible version of a pedophile.
You haven’t said anything that nullifies, or even weakens, the arguments made or sentiments show in this post.
We don’t call people pedophiles unless there’s evidence that they’ve abused children. I shouldn’t have to explain that. Playing these semantic word games makes it seem like you’re running defense for Ted Cruz, and I assure you he does not deserve that from you.
I saw a documentary about three or four decades ago with a guy who was a paedophile. After watching it I felt bad for him, he basically said “I was never abused. To me it seems natural to think of children as sexual beings. I realise why it is wrong and I will never act on it.
Think of it this way. You may find blondes beautiful, but you don’t know why. Now I imagine if everyone else was wanting you dead because you like blondes. That’s me. And no one will help me.”
He looked for help in many different ways and places, the doctors, therapists, mental health clinics etc etc but they all just kept on reporting him to the police. I think in the end he tried to commit suicide, or he tried to chop his own balls off to stop the urges. It was something extreme. After that he got the help he needed anyways.
I’ve looked for it a few times but never could find it again. I may be misremembering certain things, but the basics are her knew it was a mental disorder and wanted help. But only got it when things got extreme.
These are the people who should get help.
The ones like that obese orange child rapist should get the noose.
I’m so glad documentaries like that exist. It was documentaries like the one you mentioned that I stumbled across and that made me realize that “locking up all the pedophile monsters” was a narrative that would harm my children, not protect them. I can barely imagine how lonely and cruel such a fate must be and the bare minimum we can do as a society is to offer the help, support, and compassion to these people.
I don’t think that’s what Cruz was talking about
It’s not, which is why OP put “technically” in the first sentence. And I think they did a great job differentiating the matter. It’s clearly not what Ted Cruz meant, yet his sentence in itself - taken out of his context - is correct. Pedophiles, as in people who have this attraction, are human beings. They deserve proactive help and support. People who abuse children are criminal( human being)s. They deserve to be treated as the human garbage that they are and be prosecuted. There is a venn diagram style overlap between child rapists and pedophiles. But it is not a necessity to have pedophilia in order to molest children (a lot of criminals assault children not out of sexual attraction but because of power dynamics), nor is every pedophile a molester or plans to eventually assault children. We need to focus on prosecuting child abusers no matter their sexual orientation, while helping people with pedophilic attractions without stigmatizing them in the meantime. Their lives suck as it is already.
The Epstein case has drawn a lot of attention to pedophilia but we need to be really careful to not get lost here.