As a result of my Larry Craig post receiving links from Balloon Juice and from Salon, I’m receiving flak for allegedly equating homosexuals with child predators. :::shrug::: I took special care to specify that the two groups aren’t the same and even mentioned (in the comments) that it seems to me that more little girls are being violated by men than are little boys. None of those who are up in arms about my “equation” seem aware of a recent post of mine about James P. Finn--a former Air Force colleague and a deserter—who was recently arrested for downloading child pornography, who is an online “pedophile advocate” and who has a preference for young boys. In the post, I stated that, in the eighties, we pretty much knew that Finn was a homosexual, but that some of us were beating ourselves up for not knowing that he was a pedophile.
However, when some people see the words ‘homosexual/gay’ and the phrase ‘child predator’ in the same sentence, knees will automatically jerk, apparently. I guess I’m not really surprised, since La Shawn Barber received the same reaction last year when discussing the demeanor of John Mark Karr.
Jeff Goldstein has written several posts about the concept of intentionalism: the way in which we all assign meaning to the words of a given speaker/writer and to the concepts which the speaker/writer attempts to convey. My critics choose to ignore the objective definitions of words and concepts used and choose to assign their own definitions, naturally to my detriment. Therefore, I can be accused of saying that all homosexuals are child predators even after having composed this paragraph
Perhaps men so inclined [to prey on little boys] wouldn't take the chance on grabbing a boy in such an enclosed space--one from which such a predator would not have an easy avenue of escape--but is that a chance which you would take with your son? And even if there are no child predators present, seeing/hearing two men boinking in the restroom is not something which I would want my [hypothetical] son to have to experience.Two hypothetical men are having relations in a restroom but no child predators are present. Gee, how could I formulate such a situation if I thought that all homosexuals were child predators? Could it be that some of my critics cannot find legitimate reasons to complain about my Craig post and are, therefore, inclined to make sh*t up?
(One critic assigns meaning that may be accurate: overprotective parent. Though I’m not a parent, I can imagine that I would be a bit overprotective toward my children of either gender, considering the prevalence of predators of all stripes these days. There’s a reason that, in the seventies, I and my little girl friends were able to stay gone all day, but my sister wouldn’t dream of allowing her oldest daughter—a nine-year-old—to have the same freedom.)
In fairness, I realize that there are quite a few stereotypes which homosexuals have to oppose (and, by the way, I do know a few things about combating a couple of other sets of stereotypes). I would advise my critics, however, to reconnoiter the target a bit more closely and, before lashing out, to make sure that said target is really an enemy.
