Only pedophiles defend pedophiles.
And I fucking HATE pedophiles.
Woody Allen is still a pedophile who raped one of his own young step-daughters and married another.
People who defend that shit are SICK.
I’m kind of relieved because there are those on Lemmy as well who post that shit for real. So don’t throw away that /s just yet, you’re gonna need it here too. I was wondering about it, couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not, and then decided to roast it anyway because it was too good to resist. You throw a good troll 🤣
I was amazed myself that I’d never heard of it before now. But yeah, it will pass in time, if we have that time: the only ones who don’t like it are the ones pouring the dark cash into elections. Did you see the map on their website? 25 of 50 states have already passed it or are in the actual process of advancing it. They only need 38.
If you get a chance, listen to Richardson’s interview (or read the transcript) because one of the surprising effects moving this amendment through state legislatures is that representatives who do not have major corporate donors see it as a win for a more equivalent playing field: if they can get it passed, they don’t have to spend all that time and money in races fighting grey money pouring in from undisclosed sources at their opponents.
There is also a constitutional amendment underway to do the same, called American Promise: The For Our Freedom Amendment. It does NOT require a Constitutional Convention to be ratified (a proposed amendment becomes an operative part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States, currently 38 of the 50 states. No additional action by Congress or anyone else after ratification is required).
This is the text of the proposed amendment:
Section 1. We the People have compelling sovereign interests in the freedom of speech, representative self-government, federalism, the integrity of the electoral process, and the political equality of natural persons.
Section 2. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to forbid Congress or the States, within their respective jurisdictions, from reasonably regulating and limiting contributions and spending in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.
Section 3. Congress and the States shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation and may distinguish between natural persons and artificial entities, including by prohibiting artificial entities from raising and spending money in campaigns, elections, or ballot measures.
If passed, it takes the power over campaign spending away from the corrupt SCOTUS and gives it back to the states as intended all along, and nullifies corrupt rulings like Citizens United. It’s already about halfway to ratification.
Everybody should be aware of it, but mainstream media DOES NOT talk about it, probably because it has the power to undo all those hard years of right-wing graft in eroding our rights and protections in election funding. I personally heard about it from a Heather Cox Richardson interview, linked below:
The For Our Freedom Amendment website:
https://americanpromise.net/
The Heather Cox Richardson episode where I learned about it and its author answers questions, including how and why it needs no Constitutional Convention to get passed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWhSVDCKIfc
the Supreme Court is just as corrupted
I would say far MORE corrupted, because they have knowingly and openly been rolling back our rights, or protections, and explicitly any and all laws related to money in elections since the 70s, relying on obscurity and the general disinterest of the average layman in arcane legal matters to do it in open daylight, and throwing out the same kind of legalese bullshit to cover it even if it was noticed at the time.
And once John Roberts, who went from mere attorney to Chief Justice of SCOTUS in just five years courtesy of his work on Bush v. Gore in 2000 (tell me how that’s even possible in any kind of meritocracy) was in place, and Mitch McConnell did his part to deny Obama his presidential right to fill his own vacant seat, and then the handmaiden of Leonard Leo was rolled in on a similarly manipulative expedited appointment (you know the rest) the selling of the US went on speedrun.
MORE corrupt, not as corrupt. The only difference is that now they’re not even trying to hide it.
He’s setting up his next row of Polymarket bets.
The coolest FBI Director by FAR! 😎 People hate seeing a king with a beautiful first girlfriend living it up!
first girlfriend
I don’t know what this means, but I can’t stop laughing. First girlfriend as in first legal girlfriend? First ever girlfriend? First non-paid girlfriend? First girlfriend that wasn’t shouting get away from me you freak I don’t know you and dialing 911? First girlfriend that he actually remembered the name of the next day? First girlfriend whose next date with him isn’t in front of a criminal court judge?
There are more, but I have my standards. Some things I just won’t admit to knowing. (I might have that in common with women who have been called girlfriends by Krash.)
I’m not sure what you were getting at, but at best it seems none too complimentary for your, uh, king.
Hey OP, I appreciate you adding the source link but you might want to add a non-X source to your post as well, like XCancel, so people don’t have to give Musk clicks:
Good luck with that.
Even in the 70s, if you went to Catholic school in a very Catholic city, or had a number of friends that did, whether male or female, you knew. The only ones keeping quiet about it were the press and the church itself.
No, I did not know that. It sounds relaxing, which is what I watch powerwashing for. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll check it out.
Overall, is that a fair statement of positions?
Not for me, no. But before I start, because the word offender seems to have unfairly implied non-doers to you, I have now substituted the word predator or molester going forward, because it is those who actually perpetrate the physical crime that I am personally concerned with.
In terms of position, to be blunt, it is unfortunate from a research point of view that all the subsets of predatory child molesters are collectively known as pedophiles to the general public, but again, to the victims of such behavior, having to navigate for the rest of their lives all the harm and burden and spiritual and emotional transfers that go with unwanted adult sexuality, that distinction makes no difference.
Instead, one thing always catches my attention, and I’ve seen it here as well. It is something that all predatory child molesters have in common, and is the shared attribute that I personally believes overrides all of the variations in the research language, especially in regard to perpetrators seeking treatment, which seems to be your area of concern. It is simple human entitlement. To me, this is the distinction in common that overrides all linguistic nuance any researcher could possibly come up with.
Whether predatory child molestation is committed by an incestuous parent, by a batterer whose physical violence then extends to the rape of his wife and children, or by an actual attraction-feeling pedophile, they ALL believe they have a right to the bodies of children.
They ALL see children as objects, to one degree or another, to the extent that many of them have gone out of their way to develop a strong personal defense against their own empathy for the fear, confusion, and pain they cause their underage victims, so that the very real distress of their victims never gets through to whatever humanity they have left.
It is entitlement – literally that set of beliefs and self-reinforcements that say “I have a right to this child’s body, and to engage in whatever damaging, illegal or immoral ancillary behaviors toward that child, his parents, the law, or anyone else that give me my rightful repeated access to that child’s body to which I am entitled” – and NOT any other word, or definition, or set of terms that keeps a predatory child molester of any kind, in my opinion, from seeking treatment for his (or her) paraphilia.
Why would they want treatment, much less participate in the very difficult, soul-baring nature of it, when in the profound sickness of their own belief system it is their right to take that child’s body and use it as they wish, and those who would stop them are the real bad guys who just don’t understand?
We’ve seen this especially in the revelations of the Epstein class, but it is there across classes, across races, across cultures, across decades of studies: when predatory child molesters take the bodies of children, it is because predators overwhelmingly believe it is their right to take them.
And to be blunt, there has been a great deal of entitlement shown toward predatory child molesters in this thread, to the point of openly writing off the suffering of the underage victims (now saddled with far too adult burdens to ever be children again) as nothing more than cliché, and doing all possible to completely avoid the subject of this predatory behavior’s real lifelong harm to children wherever it is mentioned.
Yet, as I said above, the harm to children is ALL I care about: decades after their perpetrator is sated and has moved on, their own suffering does not end. That is what I am faced with daily, and addressing that specific harm is all that motivates me.
Seeing the entitlement among predators online just pisses me off, because part of it is that they literally believe the rest of us are too stupid to recognize them discussing their appetites openly, and for good reason: people don’t know it or see it even in front of their faces because people don’t want to know it. But for me, that’s secondary: as someone else kindly affirmed here in spite of himself, my interest really is just about the kids, and I came about my knowledge of the entire subject in a hard way. I’m not likely to overlook it.
Now to be clear, you personally didn’t reduce their suffering to the single word cliché, someone else did that, though I didn’t see any concern in their direction in all you wrote. Maybe that was an accidental oversight, and I’m willing to see it that way in terms of your obvious compassion toward people who are actively trying NOT to perpetrate crimes against children.
And to be honest I appreciate that you are trying to tell the truth as you know it: that much is clear to me.
Your strong distinction between thought and crime is also praiseworthy: just because someone thinks these thoughts or has these desires absolutely does not mean they will do it. And indeed, if you can stop a thought you can stop an action: that’s part of the solid truth underneath every success story of overcoming any unwanted compulsive behavior.
But from where I sit, that world of distinction between those would-be predators who only think it, and those who actually act on it, especially repeatedly as many predatory child molesters do, it is not nearly as much a matter of having the thought, but of simply NOT having the humility or empathy or conscience to recognize that their own entitlement to the physical bodies of others literally does not exist in children in reality, much less legally or morally.
And having run into this exact arrogance and entitlement in pretty much every perpetrator, and “defender” of perpetrators, and “explainer” of perpetrators I’ve ever encountered, I freely admit to having ZERO patience left when it comes to coddling the linguistic nuances of sexual offenses against children.
So I will say this: if you or anyone else is genuinely struggling with refraining from committing offenses against children, you have my heart, and I mean that. Those are not just words. If you are literally white-knuckling your way through unwanted desires trying to find a way out of that inner forest without hurting kids, you and your struggle genuinely have my utmost respect and compassion. It is ironic that the very social structures that prevent people from getting sane research and intervention when they actually want it are the ones that predatory child molesters use to prey upon the unsuspecting and then cover their legal tracks. People that genuinely want help deserve so much better than anything we’re giving them now.
No, it’s the ones who freely give in to their sickness and conscienceless desires because “it’s their right,” and “it can’t possibly be harmful if they love the child,” and “they’re treating that kid better than someone else will anyway,” and “who cares, it’s just a kid, lots of fish in that sea” that should be painfully excised from all contact with society. Just so we’re clear.
Thank you again for writing your thoughtful post. It gave me a lot to think about.
What funny to watch (I mean, gallows humor funny) is that as Trump gets weaker, the various temptations for Crown Prince Couchfucker to coup him just grow exponentially.
I like to imagine Trump and Vance sitting across from each other, silently weighing each other up, Trump telling himself shit like “JD owes me everything, he wouldn’t,” and Vance just looking back across at Trump like Trump’s a couch.
A trailer park Avignon, lol.
(nothing against trailer parks . . . that aren’t hosting their own dollar store pope)
Wow, a three-day-old account. Welcome to Lemmy, Fred Garvin! I see you’ve quickly found your sea legs, lol.
I love pressure washing myself, but don’t have the situation right now where it’s necessary or even feasible, so I go watch others who do it. I’m a big fan of Sid Partridge’s YT channel, and he started with a small Karcher just like that. It’s a younger man’s game in a lot of ways, but god it is satisfying. Well done you!
So you cannot actually point out where I yelled and called you personally a pedophile?
Funny, because if I had, you easily could. Instead, you make up a non-verifiable identity that is supposed to tug at my heartstrings and make me go away shamed. Dude, you are so not the first one to try this.
Everything that comes out of you is distortion, redirection, and extreme hyperbole. And again with the accusation, not so veiled this time:
Yet somehow you seem to have made much of your persona attacking and calling other it.
Only when people defend that horrific, vomitous, repellent, life-destroying shit. I was enjoying my morning coffee when you decided you needed to defend the nuance of pro-pedophilic “understanding” and even now are coming back at me with nothing but demonstrable lies and accusations made of air.
it’s hangers on who shout about stuff like this that set off far more bells in my mind.
Dude. You are the bell, lol. If you want me to stop calling it out, maybe stop ringing it so hard for the pedos.
I am not continuing a discussion with someone who clearly wants to just yell and call me a pedophile. Continue protesting on behalf of others.
If you could point out, for me and others, exactly where in my writing I specifically did this: “yell and call [you] a pedophile.”
Very obviously, I didn’t. If I had, you wouldn’t have had to lie about it, which begs the question of why you are so threatened by what I said about pedophiles and pedophilia that you took it as a personal attack, against you specifically, which you then countered with an obvious, demonstrable lie?
Which brings me back to my original point, that I think you have gone out of your way to prove for the rest of us:
There is NEVER any time in which defending the linguistic pedantry of pedophilic nuance is a valid stance: it is ALWAYS about something else.
If I had “yelled” (lol) or called you a pedophile – which is not a term I throw around as a pejorative if only because the thought of what they do is vomitous – if I had literally done this in reality, you would not have had to lie, distort, or employ such over-the-top amounts of hyperbole.
Instead, you’ve gone out of your way to make my point. Like this:
I might add you words can be taken out of context, if you try hard enough.
It’s no cliché for me. I live with a survivor. When it comes to sexual offenses against children, the kids are the ONLY ones I think about.
Nice try. It’s not the first time a pedo defender has tried to tar me with their own brush. You can’t even do it in a straightforward way.
But let me clear it up for you: I genuinely believe, from a very viscerally deep place in my soul, there is nothing as inhuman, as indefensible, as revolting, as UNNATURAL, as sickeningly self-indulgent, as the sexual use of children for ANY purpose, understandable or not. And I have a post history that proves it.
Speaking of which, my profile bio hasn’t changed in three years. You should check it out.
And thank you again for going out of your way to prove what I have known all along: the overwhelming defense of tiny differences in language used to describe pedos is never innocent, and never just about nuance.
This is a colloquial discussion of sexual crimes against children, and your hypothesized edge case is so far off the beaten path it might as well be in Narnia.
It’s not just pedantry, it’s Lemmy. You really cannot get more colloquial than here.
No one is stopping anyone from getting help for anything, and it is ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.
Getting help for anything is about hitting bottom, some limit against which you can no longer bear the cost of challenging. So if your real and genuine concern is truly that some offender be not offended by the colloquial use of the word pedophile, they should not be in this thread chock full of those very obviously mocking them, and neither should you.
I don’t know how valid this is or what their source is, but I found this saying that in the US alone forty-six states have Catholic-owned hospitals, with 14% of the hospital beds under Catholic ownership, exceeding 40% of the beds in some states. The same source says “15.8 percent of all short-term acute care hospitals in the United States are Catholic-owned or are affiliated with a Catholic system.”
Take that estimate for what it’s worth, they didn’t name their sources, but those figures actually seem a bit conservative, and not at all out of the realm of possibility. Whether it’s outright ownership or just the maintenance and operation of hospitals and other healthcare organizations, the Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world.