by Reid Fitzsimons

There’s a well known adage that says a frog placed in a pan with cool water will remain in the pan as the water is gradually heated until it dies. I doubt that it’s true, but the point is valid: if something pernicious is initially portrayed as benign but slowly changes until it’s harmful, it has a chance of eventually being accepted. The chronically battered wife probably didn’t fall in love with her husband because he beat her from the start, it just kind of escalated until it becomes the norm.

Presently, the water is still tepid in regards to normalizing pedophilia, i.e. adults having sex with children. Soon enough, however, it will be boiling, and one of the most disgraceful accusations- of being a pedophile- will give way to something like, “if you don’t accept and embrace sex between adults and children you are a pedophobe!

As usual, this type of societal transformation begins with nuancing the language. Hence, the current innocuous term being floated, which sounds so much less pejorative than “child molester” or “pedophile,” is Minor Attracted People, or MAP. The main advocate for this term seems to be a “transgender” (of course; “they and them” pronouns) post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins named Allyn Walker who wrote a book entitled A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity.