Left-wing Academics are Working Behind the Scenes to Normalize Pedophilia

Conservatives have been warning for years that the left will eventually begin to accept even more extreme forms of sexual deviancy, such as pedophilia. These concerns have for the most part been labelled 'paranoid,' and it's widely considered to be 'intolerant' even to suggest such a thing.

However, many of the things that were once thought unthinkable are now considered normal. The gay rights movement started in opposition to 'gay bashing' and led to cutting off the breasts of 15-year-old girls, gay couples renting women's wombs to have a child, and charging Christians with 'hate speech' for not condoning homosexual lifestyles. Many of these social revolutions started in the dark corners of academia before they quickly made their way to mainstream acceptance. Could pedophilia be the next one to do so?

Unfortunately, the fact that more than a handful of left-wing academics want to de-stigmatize pedophilia is not an unhinged conspiracy, it's a reality. 'B4U-ACT' is a non-profit group that in its own words, "helps mental health professionals and researchers learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma, and fear."

The tax-exempt organization "holds workshops for mental health professionals and students, gives presentations at professional conferences, provides speakers for university classes, collaborates with researchers, communicates with professional organizations and journalists about the needs and rights of people who are attracted to children or adolescents, and runs support groups for both them and their friends and family members."

At first glance, it's perfectly reasonable that mental health professionals would want to work with pedophiles to study the origins of their sexual proclivities to discover how to prevent future cases. But that's not what B4U-ACT does– because they claim that pedophiles, who they refer to as 'Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs)'– are just ‘born that way.’

The group was founded in 2003, by two social workers named Russell Dick and Michael Melsheimer. The latter was previously convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy while he worked as a YMCA director, for which he served four years in prison before passing away in July 2010. Dick still serves as the chairman of the organization in 2025.

Below is a video from this year, where psychotherapist Alexandra Roth from Fairfax County, Virginia, explains that pedophiles 'deserve a respectful name to call themselves.' Roth explains that this year, she joined the B4U-Act's board of directors, and primarily works with 'Minor Attracted People' as a psychotherapist. According to Roth's LinkedIn, before opening her own practice she worked as a social worker at the Jewish Family Service of Metrowest, as well as a family daycare provider during which she cared for children in a home setting.

At 11:28 in the video, Roth answers why she doesn't mind working with pedophiles, and says that she's 'really tolerant' and that she doesn't feel disturbed by the 'things people say,' (meaning, there's nothing a pedophile can say about what they would like to do to a child that would bother her.)

In its collaborations with researchers, B4U-ACT has a list of requirements for the research conducted:

1. The researchers’ priority is to develop an understanding of MAPs and/or to promote their mental health primarily for its own sake, not mainly for the presumed protection of other people from them.
2. The researchers treat MAPs with respect and abide by standard ethical research principles.
3. The researchers demonstrate a willingness to talk with and develop collaborative relationships with MAPs by working together with B4U-ACT throughout their research process and often by attending our workshops.
4. The researchers will not ask participants about unadjudicated illegal activities.

In a 2024 B4U-ACT document, they compiled cases of 'Anti-MAP Stigma, Discrimination, and Oppression.' One example of these supposed 'injustices' is as follows:

"I was fired from a High School teaching position because the school admin
found out I was posting on BoyChat [an online pedophile forum]. I was put on a watch-list. I took my credentials to other districts and went right on with my teaching career. But there was only ONE good position teaching Greek/Latin in the county, and I got aced out of that. Since I came out publicly as a BL in 2010, with the publication of Defense of Uranian Love, I haven't been able to book gigs performing poetry, even tho I'd had no problem booking gigs of Homer before, and toured extensively in 2005-8, and even though I'm careful to set the paederastic/boy-love moment in a larger context of male identity formation. So there's clearly an uphill atmosphere of prejudice, even now in 2024."

Another testimony of 'injustice' describes a pedophile whose therapist told him that if he wanted to be around kids, he would have to inform the children's parents that he was attracted to children:

"When I said that wasn't fair and asked why I should have to, he simply said "because they're kids". When I told him that wasn't a valid reason he tried to diffuse the situation by changing the subject but that just made me even angrier and I blew up at him. He told me he was done seeing me as a client and threatened to call the cops if I wouldn't leave. I stormed out of his office in a fury and to this day I have a deep distrust and disdain for therapists and the mental health industry as a whole."

The architects of the document also complain that "MAPs often find themselves excluded from broader social justice movements, including those advocating for compassion, LGBT rights, and other marginalized communities." This is a common theme found throughout their literature, as they try to define 'MAP' as a 'sexual identity' that deserves to be included in the LGBT movement. It says that "one’s attraction to minors is often an important part of an MAP’s identity, in some cases being the most important aspect of their sexual identity."

Deliberately subversive language throughout B4U-ACT's literature includes phrases such as 'age orientation,' and describes pedophiles as people who desire friendship with children, develop romantic feelings for them, and want to 'care for them and make them happy.' Overall, the aim of the organization is not to combat pedophilia, but to normalize it by de-stigmatizing attraction to children, incorporating the voices of pedophiles, affirming pedophilia as a 'sexual identity,' and pedophiles as a marginalized group.

One of the key goals of B4U-ACT has been to change the definition of pedophilia in the DSM-5 to be less 'stigmatizing', which is the official manual used by mental health professionals across America to diagnose mental illnesses. In 2011, they held a scientific symposium on how to achieve this goal. Academics from many top-level schools such as John Hopkins University, Harvard University, and Albert Einstein College of Medicine joined forces to 'promote a more comprehensive and accurate DSM.'

One professor, Dr. John Sadler from the University of Texas, proposed that "diagnostic criteria for mental disorders should not be based on concepts of vice since such concepts are subject to shifting social attitudes and doing so diverts mental-health professionals from their role as healers." His argument was essentially that pedophilia should not be categorized based on whether it is right or wrong, as the concept of 'right and wrong' is outdated and morality is subjective. Sadler is currently serving as the Director of the Program in Ethics at John Hopkins.

While is is unclear how much of a role B4U-ACT had in the change, two years later, the DSM-5 made a few changes that would be in line with the organization's philosophy. 'Pedophilia' was changed to 'pedophilic disorder,' and a distinction was made where in order for pedophilia to be considered a disorder and not merely a paraphilia, it had to cause distress/impairment to the pedophile, or harm to others. This means that now, according to the American Psychiatric Association, even if someone has persistent sexual attraction toward children, it is not considered a disorder unless their feelings cause them significant distress, or if they act on it by abusing children.

B4U-ACT is currently still hosting annual conferences, and is supporting research studies all across North America and Europe that they feel are in line with their ethos.

A Master’s Student in Experimental Psychology, at University of New Brunswick named Jessica Gaudette was featured on this year's B4U-ACT's quarterly review as a "student who demonstrats an authentic concern for the respect, dignity, mental health, and well-being of MAPs." Gaudette's master's thesis focuses on sex differences in 'stigma reduction' of pedophiles. The conclusion the research came to was that women were more likely to see pedophilia as pathological than men, but these perceptions were significantly reduced by introducing them to 'narrative humanization,' which in one case meant showing them an Austrian documentary about a pedophile who opens up about his 'forbidden desires.' Men's perceptions of pedophilia were not changed significantly after trials.

Could this be the new strategy for those who want to normalize pedophilia: targeting women with heart-wrenching stories about 'non-offending' pedophiles who are just lonely and misunderstood?

Another recent study supported by the University of Bonn and University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany aims to "gain more insight into the legal strategies currently used by affected individuals [pedophiles]." It cites a recent law that banned child sex dolls in Germany, claiming that it has "made it more difficult for affected individuals to live out their sexuality in accordance with the law, without harming real children or adolescents."

This study comes with a wider push to normalize 'legal sexual outlets' for pedophiles such as AI-generated child pornography. Just earlier this year, a U.S. district court ruled that private possession of AI-generated CSAM (Child sexual abuse material) is protected by the Constitution. You'd think this decision would be widely unpopular, but some left-wing pundits such as Richard Hanania and Steven 'Destiny' Bonnell view AI-generated child pornography and other sexual outlets for pedophiles as 'not immoral' victimless crimes.

Just last week, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the one-year mandatory minimum jail sentences for accessing or possessing child pornography are unconstitutional and violated the Charter guarantee against 'cruel and unusual punishment.' The two offenders at the center of the Supreme Court ruling both were in possession of hundreds of images and videos of CSAM, with most of them depicting young girls as young as three years old being subjected to sexual abuse by other children and adults. Both offenders were only given 90 days imprisonment to be served intermittently to be served intermittently at their convenience, followed by nine months imprisonment.

This follows Germany lowering the mandatory minimum sentences for possession of child pornography from one year to six months just last year.

It's rare to see activists openly advocate for normalizing pedophilia, or that 'MAPS' are a marginalized group. However, it's not non-existent– below is a member of an online forum called 'virtuous pedophiles' that is known for holding a pedophile-pride flag next to busy freeways.

But most of the pro-pedophilia activism isn't done by lunatics out in the open, it's done by subversive psychiatrists, social workers, and the like in the shadowy corners of academia. Over time, they have successfully pushed their ethos into mainstream academic journals, even going so far as to change the definition of pedophilia in the DSM-5. This slow, calculated shift must be stopped—there are certain evils that we 'stigmatize' for a reason.

At the end of the day, the normalization of pedophilia from the left shouldn't come as a surprise to any of us. When your whole conception of morality revolves around 'consent,' you lose any moral ground to call on to dictate sexual attraction to children as inherently evil. The political goals of the sexual revolution have always centered around what 'feels good' for adults momentarily, instead of what protects children. Abortion, rampant divorce, fatherless homes and same-sex adoptions all have had negative consequences on children, but they allow adults to live out their sexual hedonism without constraints.

This philosophy of placing the wants of adults over the needs of children taken to its logical end inevitably results in the normalization of child sexual abuse. This may start with calling pedophiles 'MAPS' and wanting to legalize child sex dolls, but it won't end there. Conservatives may have been too slow to recognize and prevent the normalization of transgender ideology before it came for our children, but there's too much at stake now to make that same mistake twice.