Paedophilia

This is something that's been brewing in my head for a long-ol' time, actually. I don't know what made me think of this the other day, but I did nontheless.

Months and months ago I watched an episode of Celebrity Wife-Swap (for the uninitiated, this is a show whereby couples swap partners for a week - not sexually, just to experience each others home lifes. Typically, they put together chalk and cheese - the rural country bumpkins with the crack-addicted city council house mafia, that kind of thing) and the episode in question involved comedienne Rhona Cameron (lesbian) was matched with old-school stand-up Stan Boardman (homophobe) and his downtrodden, tough-as-boots wife.

The episode took on a predicable route, whereby both couples learnt something. Actually, that's not true. Usually there is a designated "bad" couple, and they learn something. This couple usually involves some combination of sexism, homophobia, loutishness, drunkenness, misogyny or all of the above. This episode proving no different, a disappointingly liberal Stan Boardman took to Rhona quite well, his main point of contention being nothing to do with her lesbianism (but, rather,  the fact she wouldn't pick him up from the pub).

The same was true of Stan's wife, who went to live with Rhona's partner. She went on more of a journey, beginning the week with, actually, significantly greater levels of homophobia than her husband, but ending it understanding homosexuality much better. So why have I written this dull synopsis to a dull programme? Because one element stuck out to me.

Stan's wife went to play football with Rhona's girlfriend at a five-a-side evening. They then all wandered off for a meal and a bottle of wine or two. All very cosy. Some were lesbians, some not. Some mothers, some not. Some single, some not. Stan's wife (now known as Vivienne, as I've now bothered to look up her name) mentioned that she enjoyed the female company and girly night, used as she was to courting to her husbands whim. She was eulogising on her new understanding on homosexuality to the girls, and said something along the lines of "It's sort of like paedophilia", to which the girls around the table all erupted in chaotic protestation.

Why? They are no different. Nor, in fact, are they any different to hetereosexuality. Vivienne's point was that no one chooses to be a homosexual, and so they shouldn't be judged for it, in the same way no one chooses to be black, or ginger, or short, or disabled, or... a paedophile. And she's correct. No one would choose to be a paedophile. What some paedophiles do choose is to rape a child, and that's obviously pretty despicable and terrible. But actually being a paedophile? Being sexually attracted to children? No one chooses that, in the same way Rhona didn't choose to be attracted to woman, and Vivienne didn't choose to be attracted to men.

It seems slightly odd that a homosexual would exhibit these kinds of views. Perhaps it's a good thing, though; An example that homosexuality has come a long enough way that, having never lived through the "hey day" of homophobia (she was in her late 20s), she actually sees them as different things. It does, however, to me seem a bit like a female in a law firm refusing a black person a job on the basis that they're black - that would have been you being refused 50 years ago for something equally beyond your control.

It seems to succumb to the say dismissal of others' beliefs that fuels homophobia. a bunch of people around a table exclaiming about how disgusted they are with someone elses sexual-orientation? That sounds familiar...