Why Professors Have The Right To Question Laws Against Pedophilia - Forbes

A philosophy professor at The State University of New York at Fredonia, Stephen Kershnar has been suspended for allegedly defending pedophilia. In a pair of viral videos, he stated that it's "not obvious" that it is wrong if an adult male decides to have sex with a willing participant even if the minor is 12-years-old.

He went even further than this, asking if it is wrong to engage in a sexual act even with a one year old: “There are reported and some cultures of grandmothers fellating the baby boys to calm them down when they're colicky. I don't know if this is true but this is sort of widely reported as occurring in at least one culture and it working."

Not surprisingly, he’s received a slew of death threats—more that the university can count, according to its directly of human resources. And, as noted, he has been suspended. (The university doesn’t call it a suspension. It says “the professor is being assigned to duties that do not include his physical presence on campus and will not have contact with students while the investigation is ongoing.”)

Most people find the idea of pedophilia repulsive and the point of this post is certainly not to disagree with that. Pedophilia is rightly condemned. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to punish a university professor for his speech on a topic, no matter how controversial.

First of all, despite numerous reports otherwise, Professor Kershnar is not personally supporting pedophilia. As reported in Newsweek, he has publicly stated that pedophilia strikes "many people, including myself, as sick, disgusting, and wrong." He does tend to put things in a way that implies that he doesn’t see a moral problem with sexual acts with minors, but it is a standard teaching method to say something like “I don’t see the moral problem with X” and ask the student to explain what the moral objection to X is.

This is an extremely useful teaching tool. In fact, many of the things that people once saw as deeply morally wrong, such as same-sex marriage and interracial marriage, are now seen very differently. The fact that people consider something morally repulsive is no reason to punish people who question that revulsion. In some cases, the dissenter will eventually persuade the majority to change their minds. But even when they don’t, it is useful for society to be pushed to discuss why something is immoral. Clearer analysis may lead to better protection of the very values that society treasures.

For example, society could take a fresh look at incest laws. A strong argument could be made that society places too much emphasis on genetics and possible birth defects in condemning incestuous sex. This leaves stepsiblings and even stepchildren unprotected in many states as long as they are above the age of consent, which is as low as 16 in some states.

So, the benefit of allowing people to challenge even such taboos as pedophilia and incest laws is that encouraging society to think about why we have these laws can help society modify and improve these laws over time. There is nothing wrong with discussions of what the age of consent should be, whether the age difference between the victim and perpetrator should matter, and what sort of acts should count as sexual for purposes of the law. (A school once suspended a 6 year old boy for kissing a girl on the hand and a another suspended a couple of 14 year old’s for hugging in the hallway so common sense does not always prevail here.)

It is also worth asking what the harm is in tolerating Professor Kershnar’s freedom of speech. He is a college philosophy professor—his videos are not aimed at minors. The chances of a person deciding to commit incest in the real world because they heard professor questioning conventional morality on a video is vanishingly small. The odds of a state legislature getting rid of pedophilia laws (as opposed to perhaps helpfully tweaking them, as discussed earlier) is equally small.

And Professor Kershnar is a serious academic, whose work on sexual morality is published in serious academic journals. This isn’t a case of a professor using his title to promote his own personal sexual morality. Punishing a professor for expressing his philosophical views is a core violation of academic freedom. At a time when both the political right and political left are enthusiastic about censoring each other to forbid anti-woke speech or critical race theory, the last thing society needs is more censorship.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2022/02/26/why-professors-have-the-right-to-question-laws-against-pedophilia/

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