A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Episcopal Organization? If I were you, I’d get to work on the “theology” right now:

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

Something this conference would like to achieve.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists. According to the conference brochure, the event will examine “ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles] can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process” and how the popular perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

If I remember correctly, one of the justifications for declaring that homosexuality was not an illness was that homosexuals were quite capable of leading happy and productive lives while having sexual relations with people of the same sex. This seems to be precisely the line these people intend to pursue.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA’s definition of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its description of “minor-attracted persons” as “inaccurate” and “misleading” because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

“It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore the existence of those who are law-abiding,” said Howard Kline, science director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. “The proposed new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific basis whatsoever.”

And you know how “civilized” people NEVER drop F-bombs in polite company anymore? Get ready for the P-bomb.

“What purpose does calling someone a ‘pervert’ or ‘predator’ serve anyway, other than to express contempt and hatred?” Kramer wrote in a March 14, 2009 blog entry on the website ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. “How is this productive? It certainly doesn’t protect children. I would urge all SO [sex offender] activists to listen to their own message: Stop buying into and promoting false stereotypes. Stop demonizing a whole class of people, and start learning the facts.”

People like me have moved on from the pseudo-religious fraud that is the Episcopal Organization so being labeled as “bigots” or “homophobes” holds no terrors for us anymore. I just hope that people like Jim Naughton, Susan Russell, Elizabeth Kaeton and Gene Robinson can handle it when the same artillery they’ve been insouciantly firing all these years suddenly starts getting fired back at them.

When they become TEO’s “conservatives.”

UPDATE: Confessor alerts us to a speaker at this conference.

Dr. Fred Berlin, a chief consultant for decades to the American Catholic Bishops and Religious Order Provincials on sex offender priests, will address tomorrow in Baltimore a controversial symposium sponsored by an organization that calls itself “B4U-ACT”. B4U-ACT advocates the decriminalization and tolerance of persons who have a lifelong attraction and desire for sexual contact with youngsters. B4U-ACT, when describing its core values states: “Individuals who are attracted to children are the focus of everything that we do.”

Not surprisingly, Archbishop Emeritus Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, in a deposition taken in 2008, cites Berlin as the chief expert on pedophilia that the U.S. bishops consulted when faced with the growing sexual abuse crisis. (Locally, Berlin was also hired by at least one major religious order, the Capuchin Franciscans.)

Weakland explains that Berlin addressed the U.S. bishops in 1985 and urged them against removing pedophiles from the priesthood. Of course, no one, or virtually no one, especially the Vatican and John Paul II, was making such a recommendation, and Berlin as the company doctor was simply telling the CEO’s what they already wanted to hear. And, not surprisingly, as the bishop’s psychiatrist, Berlin still remains actively opposed to reporting sex offenders to the civil authorities, although all major psychiatric and mental health organizations and professional associations have strongly supported mandatory reporting for decades.