Letters to the Editor
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@ AKA Smith
Sorry for keeping you up half the night. I appreciate the response.
To clarify something: I didn't ask if a pedophile could be "cured"--and I think it's both a mistake and an injustice to assert that whatever is different about them is something to be "cured." All kinds of people's personal characteristics (good, bad, and indifferent) are, at root, NOT diseases to be cured.
How can you "cure" how someone feels about things? You might be able to change their _behavior_, but if you're going to use the ATTRACTION to children as the defining characteristic of a "pedophile," you've created your own logical Gordian knot.
You appear to hold the firmly convicted belief that "persons who are sexually attracted to children" are diseased, incurable, and prone to molest children.
Given all that, why not just cut to the point and assert that they should all be either a) put to death on conviction, or b) imprisoned for life without parole? That really is the only reasonable way to handle criminals who we already know are beyond rehabilitation AND likely to repeat their crimes.
Am I wrong in concluding that that's something you'd like to see?
One of the big hangups is whether the person's "attraction" or "behavior" are why we need to worry about them. I'm firmly convinced that people are entitled to do whatever the hell they want in the privacy of their own MINDS.
I don't blame you for your perspective. It's a subject that must be very near to the heart with the sexy daughter and all.