I think this idea rests on the false premise that people both need and have a right to pornography.
Many adults go about their lives without accessing it/getting off on it. It’s not a human need like food or shelter. So government isn’t going to become a supplier. Parallels could be made, I suppose, with safe injecting rooms and methadone clinics etc - but that’s a medical/health service that protects both the individual and the community. I don’t think the same argument could be made for a government sponsored porn bank.
You don’t think there’s an argument to be made that motivating people sexually attracted to children to self-report that attraction to the state in order to be monitored and kept away from children would have a social good?
I guess I just don’t really see eye to eye with you on that then.
This is such a touchy subject I find it difficult to articulate what society actually needs. We need a system where PEDOPHILES are able to receive the mental health they need before they become MOLESTERS.
But any time you say something about helping someone who is attracted to children the knee jerk reaction is always like “kill them. What you don’t want them dead? Are YOU a pedophile?” And I end up unable to convince them that helping them to not molest children by treating their mental health condition will actually help children not be molested. I really feel like this reactionary public opinion is causing people to go underground and is actually causing more children to be harmed.
Agreed.
There’s a world of difference between socially inappropriate desires that someone might be born with and can’t help and inappropriate behaviors that they chose to do.
By all means demonize the latter. But demonizing the former along with it does mean a likely increase in the latter by forcing a social climate where being open and transparent about the former to avoid the latter is far less common.
People suck even dealing with people being alcoholics or drug addicts and giving them the space and situational consideration to avoid temptation.
All that said, IIRC the numbers are something like 50% of people with a sexual attraction to children will have acted on it by college, so it’s understandable that the animosity for the former is often not far distanced from the latter.
But I’m all for any social programs that provide support for helping the other 50% avoid going down that path.
