On Wednesday, August 17, child advocates Matt Barber, Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action, and Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting law professor at Liberty University School of Law, attended a Baltimore, MD conference hosted by the pedophile group B4U-ACT. Around 50 individuals were in attendance including a number of admitted pedophiles – or “Minor-Attracted Persons” as they prefer to be identified (MAP “sexual orientation”) – as well as several supportive mental health professionals. World renowned “sexologist,” Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University gave the keynote address, saying: “I want to completely support the goal of B4U-ACT.”

Highlights of the conference:

• Pedophiles are “unfairly stigmatized and demonized” by society.

• There was concern about “vice-laden diagnostic criteria” and “cultural baggage of wrongfulness.”

• “We are not required to interfere with or inhibit our child’s sexuality.”

• “Children are not inherently unable to consent” to sex with an adult.

• “In Western culture sex is taken too seriously.”

• “Anglo-American standard on age of consent is new [and ‘Puritanical’]. In Europe it was always set at 10 or 12. Ages of consent beyond that are relatively new and very strange, especially for boys. They’ve always been able to have sex at any age.”

• An adult’s desire to have sex with children is “normative.”

• Our society should “maximize individual liberty. … We have a highly moralistic society that is not consistent with liberty.”

• “Assuming children are unable to consent lends itself to criminalization and stigmatization.”

• “These things are not black and white; there are various shades of gray.”

• A consensus belief by both speakers and pedophiles in attendance was that, because it vilifies MAPs, pedophilia should be removed as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in the same manner homosexuality was removed in 1973.

• Dr. Fred Berlin acknowledged that it was political activism, similar to that witnessed at the conference, rather than scientific considerations that successfully led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder: The reason “homosexuality was taken out of DSM is that people didn’t want the government in the bedroom,” he said.

• Dr. Berlin appeared to endorse the politically maligned clinical practice of “reparative therapy” for homosexuals and pedophiles alike, saying, “If someone, for their own reasons, doesn’t want to live a homosexual lifestyle, I tell them that it’s hard but I’ll try to help them.”

• The DSM ignores that pedophiles “have feelings of love and romance for children” in the same way adult heterosexuals and homosexuals have romantic feelings for one another.

• “The majority of pedophiles are gentle and rational.”

• The DSM should “focus on the needs” of the pedophile, and should have “a minimal focus on social control,” rather than obsessing about the “need to protect children.”

• Self-descried “gay activist” and speaker Jacob Breslow said that children can properly be “the object of our attraction.” He further objectified children, suggesting that pedophiles needn’t gain consent from a child to have sex with “it” any more than we need consent from a shoe to wear it. He then used graphic, slang language to favorably describe the act of climaxing (ejaculating) “on or with” a child. No one in attendance objected to this explicit depiction of child sexual assault.

To schedule an interview with Matt Barber or Dr. Judith Reisman, send an email request to jmattbarber@comcast.net