Todd Nickerson is a self-confessed pedophile. He says he does not act on his desires, but he wants you to understand that he’s a human being. Excerpts from his essay in, where else, Salon.com:

I’ve been stuck with the most unfortunate of sexual orientations, a preference for a group of people who are legally, morally and psychologically unable to reciprocate my feelings and desires. It’s a curse of the first order, a completely unworkable sexuality, and it’s mine. Who am I? Nice to meet you. My name is Todd Nickerson, and I’m a pedophile. Does that surprise you? Yeah, not many of us are willing to share our story, for good reason. To confess a sexual attraction to children is to lay claim to the most reviled status on the planet, one that effectively ends any chance you have of living a normal life. Yet, I’m not the monster you think me to be. I’ve never touched a child sexually in my life and never will, nor do I use child pornography.

But isn’t that the definition of a pedophile, you may ask, someone who molests kids? Not really. Although “pedophile” and “child molester” have often been used interchangeably in the media, and there is some overlap, at base, a pedophile is someone who’s sexually attracted to children. That’s it. There’s no inherent reason he must act on those desires with real children. Some pedophiles certainly do, but many of us don’t. Because the powerful taboo keeps us in hiding, it’s impossible to know how many non-offending pedophiles are out there, but signs indicate there are a lot of us, and too often we suffer in silence. That’s why I decided to speak up.

It turns out he was born with a deformity, which made him feel inadequate and set apart, and he was also molested as a small child by a visitor to his grandmother’s house.

He says he found hope in a group called Virtuous Pedophiles, who support each other and encourage each other not to act on their desires. More:

For better or worse—mostly worse—we have this sexuality, and unlike with most sexualities, there is no ethical way we can fully actualize our sexual longings. Our desires and feelings, if we are to remain upright, are doomed from the outset. Indeed, whereas the majority of crimes can be bounced back from, society doesn’t extend a mulligan to molesters. I understand why, but that doesn’t make the burden any lighter to bear, particularly for those of us who have minimal or no attraction to adults. And for the pedos who are lucky enough to be able to form working relationships with adults, there are a new set of concerns: What if we have children? Will I be a threat to them? Can I ever share this fact with my spouse? Can I ever love and want her as much as I do a child?

So, please, be understanding and supportive. It’s really all we ask of you. Treat us like people with a massive handicap we must overcome, not as a monster. If we are going to make it in the world without offending, we need your help. Listening to me was a start.

Read the whole thing.

This is fascinating stuff. Repulsive, at first, but I think about what it must be like to live with this tormenting desire, but not be able to act on it, and I pity the man. We are more than our desires. This man needs people to help him bear his cross.

That said, it is worth considering how the way we think and talk about sexuality, desire, and identity in our culture blurs the lines for this man. He says he cannot help desiring who he does, and I believe him. He recognizes that his desire is disordered, and he needs help refraining from indulging it. This VirPed (his word) group is all about helping him live a moral life despite this hated disorder.

If Todd Nickerson’s desire was for people of the same sex, this piece would never have been published, obviously. There is a Catholic group called Courage, for gay men and women who want to live celibately, in obedience to Catholic teaching — and they are often criticized, even within the Church. In our contemporary culture, most people do not believe sexual desire towards someone of one’s own sex is disordered. Almost everybody believes sexual desire towards a child is disordered. Similarly, almost everyone believes sexual desire towards an animal is disordered.

How do we determine which sexual desires are disordered, and which aren’t? Consent? Isn’t that a very thin line? Todd Nickerson describes being fondled by the older man when he was seven, and it was not traumatic for him, in his memory.

Nickerson describes pedophilia as an “orientation.” No, I’m not saying that homosexuality is the same thing as pedophilia. It is not. What concerns me, though, is that the language and concepts we have accepted to sweep away the old Christian objections to homosexuality — in particular, the sacrosanct way we see sexual desire as at the core of identity and personhood — can easily be manipulated to legitimize pedophiles. The only reason Nickerson sees his sexual desire for children as illegitimate is because society tells him he cannot act ethically on it. Nickerson writes:

With sexuality … there’s a physiological component, a drive every bit as powerful as belief. In essence, your brain knows what it likes and isn’t going to take no for an answer. For that reason, the nature or nurture question with respect to sexual preference is ultimately irrelevant—it becomes all but hardwired soon enough, until it’s all you know. And it’s self-reinforcing, no matter how much you wish to dig it out. Eventually it all tangles together with the rest of who you are.

… with the rest of who you are.

Are there any grounds — other than consent — on which we can take a firm stand against Todd Nickerson’s sexual desires, and tell him to deny what he desires in the deepest recesses of his brain, and that he considers to be an inextricable part of himself? We have made liberating the sexual self a virtue in the LGBT movement, and before that, in the Sexual Revolution. So where does that leave Todd Nickerson in terms of finding resources with which to deny his sexual desire? If we simply say by fiat “children cannot consent to sex, therefore pedophilia is wrong, does that really take care of the problem?