Most pedophiles identify as straight, not gay, and are more often than not married men. So, if anything, the Boy Scouts are exposing these kids to a higher likelihood of being molested than they would if they allowed openly gay scout leaders.
Read that again. Even though the act of pedophilia in this context is one of male-on-male sex, the pedophile would claim that they are straight. Whether or not that's their real sexual orientation is immaterial.
The point being, that men who have already come out of the closet about being gay are far, far less likely to be child molesters than, well, say, homophobes that troll internet message boards.
I apologize for my careless remark. I volunteer in a boys club, and from that viewpoint pedophilia (against boys) is by definition homosexuality.
But I agree completely, in the population at large its orthogonal. Again I apologize for a hasty remark.
And my comment was related to earl's 2nd sentence. The one right before my reply.
My point, which was possibly lost, is that engaging in sexual behavior with a minor does not preclude homosexuality. It is merely orthogonal to it.
I pick my words carefully. Not every reader does as much, and sometimes this happens.
And Earl's second sentence, read properly, also points out that paedophilia is orthogonal to homosexuality. He was proving that A is not a proper subset of B by pointing out the elements of A which are not in B. I assume he didn't bother to mention the elements of A which are in B because they're not relevant to the proof at hand.
I pick my words carefully. Not every reader does as much, and sometimes this happens
Perhaps you're carefully picking which words you read instead of carefully picking which words you write.
Regardless it was a joke but one based on factual events widely reported. I knew I risked a little karma loss for saying something potentially un-PC but sometimes I don't care. Good to widen minds sometimes. :P
If we define pedophilia as interest in sexually immature individuals, then there is a negative correlation between pedophilia and homosexuality. Pedophiles, no matter which gender of child they abuse, strongly tend to be either heterosexual, or else not interested in adults. And when asked to cite what was attractive about their victims, invariably they cite feminine characteristics such as lack of hair.
When homosexuals are accused of pedophilia, they are inevitably involved with boys who are young but sexually mature. While everyone agrees that this is a bad idea, the relative frequency of this interest is no higher than interest in teenage girls among heterosexuals.
What my original comment, at the head of this thread, was alluding to, in the real world, is the issue where it seems a rather large number of Catholic priests seem to be either (1) gay, or (2) pedophiles, or (3) both. Are all? Of course not. And of course every situation is different. If a middle-aged priest has sex with a 17-year old altar boy, or whatever, then yes by the official psychological definition he is not necessarily a pedophile. But from a legal standpoint, it's an adult involved with a minor, and the media coverage and community reaction around that will blur into it being an adult with a "child", and with the courts now labeling them, in many jurisdictions, as a sex offender. Which then means he is given the fuzzy and technically innacurate, laymen's label of "a pedophile". I'm confident in predicting that a significant percentage of Americans at least would consider a 40/17-year old sex encounter as pedophilia, regardless of whether that is the official definition or not.
Also, I ask all HN'ers to stay polite. We should all write here as if we were conversing with someone face-to-face in the same room. Thanks and this has been a public service announcement. :P