[dsc]

"Unfortunately most people here are equating "removal of classificaton as mental illness" with "declaring it to be a great and wonderful thing", when there is no evidence that this is the case."

"This is exactly why the de-listing is such a non-story. Some Freepers are proclaiming this the validation of the slippery slope argument"

Ummm, folks, we're pretty well along the road to declaring "the gay sexual orientation" to be a great and wonderful thing, and removal of homosexuality from the DSM was an important step in that process. It has had inestimable propaganda value.

Do you remember when that happened? I was in college at the time. Do you remember society before that, to compare with what we have now?

This is not a "non-story." It is a milestone in the movement to lower the age of consent. Say, to four.

[Qwerty]

"Ummm, folks, we're pretty well along the road to declaring "the gay sexual orientation" to be a great and wonderful thing"

Well, I might be biased about "the gay sexual orientation".

"Do you remember society before that, to compare with what we have now?"

What, are we comparing the 70's to now?

"This is not a "non-story." It is a milestone in the movement to lower the age of consent. Say, to four."

It is a non-story, it isn't going to help lower the age of consent, and the age of consent will never be four.

[Dimensio]

Yeah, I hear that. Thing is, people's attitudes toward homosexuality were changing before it was removed from the DSM. In fact, that attitude change was very likely one of the factors behind its removal. On the other hand, I'm not seeing widespread or even growing approval of sex with children. I see a few fringe groups that have become a bit louder and a bit more organized thanks to the methods of communication currently available, but I've not met a lot of people ready to consider that sex with a six year-old may not be that bad after all. I don't think that people will be changing their minds just because the inclination to have sex with a six year-old is no longer considered a "mental illness".

I personally lack the credentials to really make a call on whether or not pedophilia should be considered a mental illness, but my belief that sex with children is a "bad thing" is not based upon pedophilia being a mental illness. To me, it does not matter whether or not pedophilia is a sickness, I believe that there are other and more valid criteria for outlawing it -- laws aren't based upon actions driven by mental disorders; if they were then hand-washing would be illegal because of obsessive compulsives.

As I said, I don't think that anything will come of this. The article itself looks to be blowing things out of proportion and I think that there's quite a bit of political pressure aside from that to keep such a decision from being made for precicely the reason that I stated: idiots can't tell the difference between saying that pedophilia is not a mental illness and saying that child sexual abuse is not a bad thing.