Pederasty’s Easy Facilitation

Evil is Never Static

The Sydney Morning Herald has carried a piece about pederasty facilitated by misuse of the Internet.  The core of the piece reveals not just the extent of the crime, but the sophistication of its perpetrators. 

A special police taskforce has discovered the number of sex offenders who target children in in Australia has been wildly underestimated and local paedophiles have set up secure online sites to share intelligence on how to trap victims.  Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton says police are shocked at the number of active offenders operating in Victoria. “There are hundreds and hundreds. We have found some terrible stuff that would keep you awake at night,” he told Fairfax Media.

He said Taskforce Astraea is conducting 120 separate investigations and has rescued 40 children in Australia and offshore who had been targeted by paedophiles.   The taskforce began by using computer software to identify encrypted child pornography images but soon discovered many offenders move quickly from “passive” observers to aggressive molesters.
Astraea has found:

• Pay-for-view sites where children are abused and in some cases tortured.
• Teenage girls in Melbourne are being blackmailed for sex by adult offenders.
• Secure chat rooms where offenders discuss methods to groom children and tips to avoid detection.
• Elaborate internet stings designed to trap vulnerable teenagers.

Astraea investigations reveal offenders trawl sites until they find someone they feel can be exploited and make contact pretending to be a person around the same age.  They then introduce a second fake character who bullies the victim on line. The offender then steps in to “protect” the target to win affection. “They then share some images and the hooks are in,” Mr Ashton said.  “He says he will tell friends and parents unless we meet. We have had kids climbing out the window at 2am to meet a paedophile.”

He said most adults are unaware of the internet threat to their children. “Parents can be downstairs watching Family Feud while their teenage daughter is chatting to a notorious paedophile online in the bedroom upstairs.  They are sharing intelligence online and educating each other by saying, ‘This works, this doesn’t, don’t do this or you will be caught’.”

Depravity, whilst common to all, is never static in the human soul.  It is either growing or diminishing, waxing or waning.  When lust takes over, its servants will be found working industrially to satiate their slaked thirst.  More and more extreme perversions will be required to satisfy their spiritual, mental, and bodily cravings.

Some takeouts:

1. The dominant materialistic world-view and its hand-maiden evolutionism has no firm ground upon which to fight such evils–which is to say that modern Western society does not really believe in the existence of evil.  Evil is nothing more than an irritant to the machine  All if requires is the application of fragrant grease–other people’s money–and the evil will wane. The machine will run smoothly again.  Whenever modern society arises to combat an extreme form of wickedness, such as pederasty, it is compromised and dilatory from the outset.  Materialism and evolutionism do not believe in the existence of absolute evil.  It does not believe in the existence of Satan.  Worse, it ridicules the idea as primitive and superstitious.

2. Parents who allow their children unsupervised and unregulated access to the Internet and mobile phones are beyond irresponsible.  They are themselves complicit in immorality.  Might as well be completely permissive and allow their children liberty and license to wander the streets of red-light districts unaccompanied into the early morning hours. 

3.  Modern technology-besotted Western culture has worshipped at the feet of the great IT idol.  Parents have been repeatedly told that their children will not succeed in the coming generation unless they are utterly conversant with IT devices of every kind and their deployment and application.  Never has a generation of parents been so enervated and enfeebled; never has a generation of parents agreed that they are inadequate to prepare their children for effective adult like; never has a generation of parents been so emasculated in their own minds.

4.  Complicit in this mass stupidity is the statist educational establishment, which, having failed to teach children how to read and write in its academies of “learning”, has sought to deflect criticism by category revision: education no longer is about reading, writing, and maths and their derivatives.  All that is passée.  IT is the new real.  Children go to school to learn how to text and develop Facebook capabilities.  Any parent who subjects children to antediluvian pre-occupations with the 3-R’s is coming close to child abuse.  No classroom, unless it is replete with laptops, tablets, i-phones, and intranets, is worthy of the name.

5.  If we, as a culture, do not swallow our craven pride, turn from our evil ways, and repent of our sins, seeking the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness, it will get worse.  If it had been argued in the 1960’s that within fifty years, children would be being groomed and manipulated by adults into sexual perversion on an industrial scale, they would have been dismissed as an idiot.  If we do not humble ourselves, the next fifty years will see far, far worse.  Evil is never static.  It is either being itself eviscerated, or it will be growing in strength to where it will disembowel a society.  “We have had kids climbing out the window at 2am to meet a paedophile,” while their “parents are downstairs watching Family Feud,”  just about says it all.

Touchstones

Italian Perversions Condemn Us All

First, the story (courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald):

Italy’s highest court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their “amorous relationship”.  Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. 

The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court.  But Italy’s supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider “the ‘consensus’, the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl’s feelings of love”.   The court’s October 15 decision to order a retrial was made public in December by Il Quotidiano della Calabria and slowly spread to social media networks, where it sparked heated reactions against the Italian justice system.  According to Il Quotidiano, the girl came from a poor family who had known and trusted the social worker.

From the perspective of the Christian Gospel both the original crime and the reasoning of the Italian supreme court are evil.  But our challenge to all who are not Christians is to declare where they stand on matters such as this.
  And not only where they stand, but why.  No doubt there are many, even a majority at the present time, who would condemn as evil and morally wrong a man having sex with an eleven year old girl.  But here is the rub: does this common judgement reflect the echoes of God’s image still within the soul, or does the Unbeliever’s condemnation reflect some principled position?  If the latter, by what standard? 

There will be those who would rush to assert that an eleven year old is still a child and is too immature to make reasonable decisions about whom she loves so that her consent to sex cannot be informed in any reasonable way.  Our rejoinder: by what standard do you presume to make such a judgment?  Who are you, after all, to dictate morality or anything to another human being?  Who gave you the authority?  The right? 

Recall that our society solemnly tells us that children are their own best teachers.  They must control their own curricula, discover at their own pace, experiment and learn to do by doing.  Teachers must beware of hegemonic overlordship which can do great harm to a child; they must act as facilitators and guides, not rulers of ethics, morals, or conscience.  So, if valid in the classroom, why not in the bedroom? 

Recall also that the predominant cosmology is evolutionism which makes life and existence subject to chance.  In a world subject to, and existing by means of,  brute chance upon what ground or standard can one make judgements about an eleven year old girl? 

At best such judgements can be nothing more than preferences, likes, dislikes–or conditioned prejudices.  Amorality cannot identify, let alone condemn, immorality.  It has no standards by which to do so. 

Jean-Paul Sartre pointed out that unless a data point or truth has an infinite reference point, it has no meaning at the end of the day.  To deny this is cowardice and self-deceit.  Thus, in his famous thought experiment, should the driver of the car avoid the old lady crossing the road, or run her down?  It matters not which he chooses–only that he chooses to do something. 

It is true that many Unbelievers recoil at such notions.  They insist upon meaning, truth, significance, and principles by which they are entitled to judge right and wrong, morality and immorality.  But they are utterly lost, even though their pride and vanity cannot allow them to admit it.  They buttress their moral judgements and their ethical decisions by high sounding principles which hang from nothing and are built upon ether. 

In the case of the eleven year old girl and the Italian supreme court our challenge to all who deny their God and Creator is this: either repent and return to Him, or stop fooling yourself that you have any foundation or ground whatsoever to condemn the 60 year old social worker, the Italian supreme court, or the eleven year old girl.  The fact that you do recoil from such sinfulness serves as a witness against you.  It condemns you first and foremost, for you cosset your rebellion against your Creator and Sustainer by appealing to morals and truths for which you have no foundation at all–yet you know are right. 

And if you do, indeed, recoil in horror at the aforementioned crime and the perverted decision of the Italian supreme court, then you can have but one course of integrity, truth, and honesty left open to you–repent of your rebellion and return to your God and Father, and believe upon His Son, Jesus Christ, picking up your cross and following Him.  If not, the only alternative is to embrace the degradation and the sin.

Depravity of Another Kind

Gnawing Doubts 

Here is a truly horrific crime, as reported in Stuff:

A “depraved” paedophile has been sent to prison for sexual offending against his infant son. A 27-year-old South Canterbury man was sentenced in the Oamaru District Court this afternoon to eight years 10 months imprisonment by Judge Joanna Maze for offending which will have a profound effect on his child.

The man sat motionless in the dock as he was sentenced on a raft of child exploitation charges, including two of sexual violation and indecent assault, and selling the use of his then 13-month-old son for sexual gratification for $500. . . .

Judge Maze said the offender had offered pictures and videos of him exploiting his child in trade for photos of sexual offending against young girls. Between May and July last year he took images of him abusing his then 13-month-old son. Police found 815 objectionable images on his computer and 84 videos. The offender admitted straight away to police his offending when questioned in July last year and later went back to Police and thanked them for saving his life. The offender also tried to take his own life before the charges were laid. He said he could not identify any triggers that had led to the offending against his child. 

It is not often that the adjective “depraved” is applied to a person in these libertine days.  After all, once homosexuality was considered to be depraved, as was bestiality.  No longer.  These are now regarded as human rights. 

Yet the adjective is appropriately and justly applied to the man who perpetrated this unspeakable crime against his own flesh and blood.  Just as the adjective is appropriate and accurate when applied to homosexuality and bestiality.  The law of God is not bendable to conform to the fancies and proclivities and lusts of man, such as those now able to influence public opinion or write laws.

Law and crime is not primarily a social construct.  To have any abiding validity it must reflect absolute standards and absolute law.  Because our culture denies God, its construct of law and justice is inherently relativistic.  In our day, the law has indeed become nothing more than a social construct or cultural custom, a wax nose to be reshaped by each succeeding generation.  Because society currently finds the sexual molestation of children objectionable, it is considered criminal behaviour.  But that is not to say what society in a hundred years might fund.  What society currently finds depraved (a shrinking list) our descendants in one hundred years might regard as quite all right, normal even. 

Thus when a newspaper condemns a man’s crimes and calls him depraved, we are entitled to ask, “By whose lights and by what standard?”  What right has society to condemn another human being?  Are not both equally human?  The Darwinians amongst us (the vast majority of the Commentariat after all) tell us that in Nature homosexuality frequently occurs: therefore it is natural, in the sense of ordinary.  Certainly not depraved.  Therefore, non-acceptance of homosexuality is itself an “evil”; to regard homosexuality as wicked is itself “depraved”, unnatural, inhuman.  But, of course, in Nature animals often eat their offspring.  So, honest Darwinians should be advocating that human infanticide and child anthropophagy should equally be regarded as normal and natural and ordinary.  Certainly the condemnation of such a practice is unjustified: rather it should be something a free and enlightened society would welcome.

For the modern Unbeliever all ethical principles or axioms amount to nothing more than blatant prejudices hung in mid-air, representing the imposition of the powerful upon the less powerful.  Concepts like “depravity” are without content or true meaning.

For Christians,  “depravity” is both true and personal.  We find the characterisation of  the particular paedophile referred to above to be just and necessarily accurate.  For what God condemns, man must loathe.  But here is the rub: Christians believe in universal depravity–a depravity that ubiquitously belongs to all men, not just the criminal profiled above (Romans 3:23  “. . . for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”)   Moreover , we believe in radical depravity–a depravity that has poisoned every part of our being (Genesis 6:5  “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”.)

So when we condemn the paedophile as depraved, the principles of righteousness and justice require that we also condemn ourselves, for the same blood flows in our veins.  Consequently, Christian condemnation of such crimes is qualitatively and conceptually different from the world’s condemnation.  Firstly, we loathe it absolutely because God hates such things, not merely because they are currently out of fashion (which is the strongest condemnation Unbelief can muster).  Secondly, we recognise the same sinful depravity to be present in our own hearts and minds.  We recognise that we all, each one of us, are capable of these kinds of evils. 

We conclude by considering the plight of the Unbeliever.  Try as he might, he cannot erase the image of God in which he is made.  His whole being cries out to condemn evil and unrighteousness: hence the current horror and contempt for the sins of paedophilia.  But, at the same time, his conscience is being progressively deadened and neutered under the relentless relativism of our age.  The conscience of the Unbeliever wants to reject and condemn, but Unbelief is at the same time becoming more and more welcoming of evil.  As a result, the conscience of  the Unbeliever more and more gnaws in the dark 

The absolute, divine light of God’s law has been deliberately shut out.  The conscience of the Unbeliever wants to condemn wrong, but has no sure foundation or basis or standards by which it can.  And when society does alight upon an evil to condemn it, the antipathy and condemnation is ever hollow.  The Unbeliever knows the next generation will have a different view.  What society condemns today has the inevitable corrupting tinge of uncertainty, and doubt and, therefore, attendant hypocrisy.

The deep desire to condemn dashing upon the rocks of doubt and uncertainty.  Behold the storm-tossed plight of  the modern Unbeliever.  Depravity of another kind, but depravity nonetheless.

Kinsey’s Dark Secret

A Man For Our Times

The following paragraph introduces Wikipedia’s article on Alfred Kinsey:

Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” (1948) and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey’s research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States, as well as internationally.

So far, so good.  Kinsey has been lionised, celebrated and glorified.  But it appears he was an acutely depraved man.

His goal was “to create his own sexual utopia,” says biographer James Jones, and Kinsey built up a select circle of friends and colleagues who committed themselves to his philosophy of total sexual freedom.  Since the results were often captured on film, we know that Kinsey and his wife both had sexual relations with a host of male and female staff members and other people.  Kinsey was also a masochist, sometimes engaging in bizarre and painful practices.

But Kinsey had an even darker secret.  In Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, researcher Judith Reisman argued convincingly that Kinsey’s research on child sexual responses could have been obtained only if he or his colleagues were actually engaged in the sexual molestation of children.  How else could “actual observations” be made of sexual responses in children age (sic) two month to fifteen years old?  And this is the man whose ideas have been so influential in shaping American sex education.  [Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), p. 242f.]

Kinsey was a libertine, who told us what we all wanted to hear.  And the next generation, profoundly influenced by Kinsey, has become like the idols it has worshipped.  It has always been the way.  

Mohammed and His Vile, Yet Consistent Disciples

Islam Preys Upon the Vulnerable and the Weak 

A Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa defending the right for men to have sexual intercourse with young girls, provided they can “bear the weight” of the man.  The fatwa argues justification for this evil in part from the teaching and example of Mohammed.

This, from Raymond Ibrahim: