Sex hysteria and inflating words

Three of the performers from Glee did a photo spread for GQ magazine that has the sex hysterics panting, breathing deeply, and ready to explode in a fit of verbal diarrhea.

The Gleeks who modeled in the spread were Corey Monteith, Dianna Agron and Lea Michele. Now, for the record let us notice that these three actors are all adults. To be precise Cory is going to be 29 on his next birthday while Dianna and Lea are both going on 25. Second, we should note that GQ photo shoot is not sexually explicit, does not include nudity and is merely suggestive at worst, if you consider such things bad—which I do not.

None of this has any impact on the hysterics at the Parents Television Council. Contrary to its name this is not a collection of parents per se. It is a Right-wing political organization founded by L. Brent Bozell, a far right activists and relative of William F. Buckley. Its whole purpose is to promote censorship, either voluntary or coercive if need be.

The slightly racy, but not sexual photos, however got PTC president Timothy Winters in a dither. He released a statement of monumental stupidity. He claimed that the photo shoot "borders on pedophilia." What the fuck?

How does a photo shoot of young adults in their mid to late 20s border on pedophilia?

Apparently the idiotic Winters assumes that since they play teenagers in a television show then this "borders on pedophilia." Apparently if one of them was in a movie where their character was killed then this would qualify as necrophilia as well.

Note that the way these loons use the word "pedophilia" that they are stripping it of any definition. We should be clear as to what this is.

Pedophilia is a persistent sexual attraction to prepubescent children. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV also says the adult partner must be at least 16 years of age and at least 5 years older than the child. Non-sexual photos of adults, even of adults who play teenagers on television, is not even on the borderline of pedophilia.

In fact, by definition, even if the photo shoot were of actual teenagers this would not be pedophilia. Notice what pedophilia is NOT. It is not the violation of age of consent laws. Age of consent is a legal definition for a status crime, it is not something that falls under the clinical definition of pedophilia.

Nor is pedophilia a sexual relationship with significant age differences, unless one of the individuals is a prepubescent child. A man of 50 who dates an 18 year old is not a pedophile since the 18 year old is not a prepubescent child.

Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to sexually immature children.

The PTC is trying to take advantage of a political trend that has been going on far too long. They know, like many lobby groups do, that a very large percentage of people are disturbed by sexual activity between adults and prepubescent children. The reality is that most people don't like pedophiles.

Since that is the case, political lobbying groups attempt to redefine pedophilia to include things which clearly are not included. The reason for doing so is to encourage the same sort of fear response from people that they display toward pedophiles. In other words, since people fear actual pedophiles, let's take non-pedophiles, redefine them as such, in order to get the same fear response people exhibit toward the real thing. And the reason to expand the fear is quite simply in order to achieve political goals that actually have nothing to do with pedophilia.

The PTC knows that this is not borderline pedophilia. But they don't care. What they want is to promote censorship. They are inherently anti-sexual and want to wipe out all such images.

The Glee stars didn't even do this modeling on television. And, I should note, that the outfits worn in the QC spread could be worn on almost any television show without fear of falling afoul of federal censorship laws.

Pedophilia is intentionally being inflated so as to mean what it does not mean, in order to accomplish other agendas by those doing the inflating.

What may be the PTC agenda here? Consider that Glee is one of the more pro-gay television shows on the air as one possibility. I also happen to think it one of the more moral shows, if we use morality in the real sense of the word. Morality, to me, is more how you treat others and less about whether you have orgasms and with whom. Right-wing moralists are obsessed with hating orgasms and sex, but have no problem with mistreating others or being intentionally cruel to others.

They would love to remove this show from television entirely, not because the show itself is portraying anything unacceptable in the realm of sexuality, but merely because it cuts against the anti-gay, moralistic campaigns of the Religious Right.

So they pretend that a magazine photo shoot is really about television. They also pretend that this is about pedophilia even though all the actors are sexually mature adults. They call it borderline pedophilia and a "near pornographic display" in order to justify their conclusion that it is "only masquerading as family show" (sic). The goal is to attack Glee, and since they couldn't do it on the the actual content of the show they looked for other reasons to attack.

They actually hate Glee quite a bit and warn that is totally unsuitable for anyone under the age of 16. They give it a "red light" warning because it is supposedly includes "gratuitous sex, explicit dialogue, violent content, or obscene language." That, quite simply, is bullshit, something that they would consider obscene language. But it is still bullshit.

All in all the show is rather sexually tame but PTC does mention one thing, which I suspect bother's them a lot: "One boy has recently come out of the closet..." That would be the character of Kurt Hummel, one of the characters who actually adds a great deal of pathos and damn good storey-telling to the series.

One of the worst trends in politics is how both Left and Right attempt to drag "the children" into every situation in order to panic parents into pushing for some other agenda, which in truth, is totally unrelated to children.

Photo: This is one of the "near" pornographic photos that the loons at PTC says is borderline pedophilia. They are not borderline assholes, they are clearly over the border.