gay not being a choice and the slippery slope.

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A common argument made by people against gay people not choosing to be gay is the slippery slope, what's next? Are they going to say that rapists or bank robbers don't choose to be the way they are?

One small problem with your proposition:

Two consenting adults having sex does not harm anyone, theft and rape does.

One small problem with that also: paedophilia. A lot of paedophiles don't choose to be the way they are and not all paedophiles harm children, but many do.

If being a rapist is genetic or has a genetic component that is all the more reason they should be locked up.
I am cool with bank robbers as long as they don't hurt anyone.

So? The paedophiles who do not molest children are not sex offenders, they can still choose whether or not to offend.

There's a difference, it's huge, that's missed when discussing this.

What two consenting adults to is much different than what an adult does to a minor.

Surely you've realised by now that the slippery slope is a fallacy?

You need to show that there is good reason to believe that we will "slip down the slope".

I have two further points:
1) Science doesn't work like that. We don't reject scientific truths because we don't like the possible implications. "Accepting that gays are born that way may increase crime, therefore gay people aren't born gay"- massive jump in logic.
2) There's nothing wrong with being gay; we have stopped locking people up for homosexuality. Rapists and bank robbers do harm people, so must be prevented from committing those crimes.

Whether your orientation is gay or straight is not a choice. You are attracted to who you are attracted to. Acting on attraction toward anyone, gay or straight, is a choice. There are straight people who choose to be celibate. There are gay people who choose to be celibate. There are gay people who choose to have sex with people they are attracted to. There are straight people who choose to have sex with people they are attracted to. There are straight people that choose to have sex with the gender they are not attracted to. There are gay people who choose to have sex with people they are not attracted to.

You have no choice in the matter of whether you are gay, straight, bisexual, or aesexual. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with any of those orientations. You do have a choice in the matter of whether or not you engage in sexual activity and who you engage in it with, and as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, then in my opinion there is nothing wrong with who people choose to sleep with either.

So OP are you trying to equate homosexuality with rape or robbery? I'm not quite understanding your point.

I'm not entirely clear where you are trying to go with this one.

If you are suggesting that liberalization of legal and social attitudes towards homosexuality will lead to liberalization of legal attitudes towards paedophilia, I don't see the link.

We prohibit paedophilia because children cannot legally consent. Even when young people go into a situation with the specific intent of having sex, we still vitiate their consent on the basis of their age, and criminalize the action of the other party. Nothing in the liberalization of attitudes towards homosexuality appears to me to tend towards that liberalization. Legal prohibitions against homosexuality were always grounded in constaining homosexual behaviour. The consent of the parties was irrelevant.

The liberalization of social attitudes towards adultery and pre-marital sex have not led to a liberalization of attitudes towards sexual assault. Indeed, behaviour that thirty years ago behaviour would have been dismissed as, "men behaving badly," is now routinely criminalized. I would suggest that we have become far more intolerant of behaviour that exceeds the consent of one of the individuals involved. (Unless, of course, the accused is Julian Assange... :duck: )

Basically, that some sexual behaviours and preferences are illegal because they are considered to harm people, even if it's not completely the fault of the person who has the perversion.

We'll ignore the fact that being gay is legal and accepted in most civilised countries (and I know you're gay yourself) - how would you feel if you were attracted to men, but it was considered along the lines of how paedophilia is today? That you were hated purely for being gay, had all harmless outlets (like cartoon pornography) banned and were expected to live a life completely celibate, never even looking at a man the wrong way. Sleeping with women is abhorrent to you but you feel no way out. You might often have to be with men, so you may lapse at any time. You can't tell anybody about it (not even genuine doctors and therapists) because you run the risk of having your life completely ruined.

That's sort of what I mean.

My point is that child molestation (and, to be honest, paedophilia itself more or less, even if no children are actually harmed - see various thoughtcrime-esque laws) is illegal, but the people committing the crime often can't help the way they feel, and may do it genuinely thinking they 'love' the child.

I'm not trying to equate homosexuality with child abuse, not at all (though I'd dispute whether in some cases the younger party really was abused, especially if they're mature, well-developed teenagers - that's more a legal/AOC issue in many cases) - the two circumstances are enormously far apart.

My point is asking: can all rapists and armed robbers help the way they are? Many paedophiles can't; many go through life hating themselves.

You can't choose your sexual orientation, no matter what it is.

How can you suppress sexual drives? In a man that can completely take over everything. People are after all animals. I agree with Tequila on this. Locking people up is too simple of a solution. And, if you look closely at it, discriminating. It is a huge problem, though. Children and rapist victims.. the worst crimes of humanity. Awful.. Need to try to battle misantrophy every time something like this is mentioned..

Okay, I'm clearer on the point now, thank you.

First, I think it is important to distinguish between the behaviour and the orientation.

Criminalization of homosexuality never criminalized homosexuality--it criminalized homosexual acts. Similarly paedophilia, kloptomania, pyromania and psychopathy aren't criminal, but sexual interference, theft, arson and murder are.

There are certainly thieves who are driven to steal by a compulsive disorder. But that does not excuse their thefts, unless there disorder is so profound that they can no longer appreciate the nature of their actions (or whatever the legal standard for a defence of insanity is in the jurisdiction involved). Similarly, a sexual orientation towards young people may be disordered, but it does not excuse the criminal behaviour.

So I think the short answer is that even if rapists and armed robbers can't help the way that they are, this is not an impediment to the enactment and enforcement of criminal laws prohibiting their behaviours.

My point is: what do you do with someone who has a sexuality that is hardcoded into them that society finds completely abhorrent? I'm not trying to posit any equivalence, but people used to (and still do) treat gay people similarly.

How do you cure people of their homosexuality? Or their paedophilia? In many cases, you can't alter a strong desire of a person who has had it all their lives. So what you expect these people to do, if they're only attracted to children (or, historically and in some parts of the world, to men)? We hate them, we think of them as the lowest of the low, we make it illegal for them to try to relieve themselves without hurting anyone.

My point is that not all sexual crimes are about violence and fear (at least in the eyes of the offender) like rape usually is.

You could say the same about child pornography laws today, though. In practice, the idea is to make it illegal to be attracted to children or to find a way to relieve their desires without harming anyone.

Case in point: if the status of homosexuality and paedophilia were turned around, do you not think that men would now be in trouble for having photos of scantily-clad men or men engaging in sexual acts?

Obviously you'll find this comparison uncomfortable and I'm not suggesting the legalisation of child abuse. I think it would be much better for everyone if paedophiles actually weren't persecuted, TBH.

I had read something years ago about possibly having computer generated child porn with the idea that pedophiles would be satisfied with that and no more kids would be used for child porn (or not as many). But, there was the argument that looking at kid porn, even computer generated, could cause them to act on the urges so nothing ever came of that. It's kind of a creepy idea to me anyway.

It would be interesting to find out if the rate of real children actually being assaulted/raped went down in countries there were fake alternatives available.

I think that would be the best way of going about it. Otherwise, you're helping people to feel miserable and, in some countries, the penalties for possessing child porn are actually more severe than assaulting a child for real. Screwed-up or what?