Why wouldn’t we compare them?
Really? What part of your sexuality, or mine, involves raping children? Nothing, right? One step back, what part of you being bisexual or my being trans involves harming anyone? That’s right, nothing.
I don’t have the answer of how to deal with those that are attracted to children. But to suggest psychiatric care for those who have serious pathology is akin to gay conversion camps is gross.
This is not some philosophical debate. Stop playing into the hands of bigots who are actively trying to paint LGBTQ+ folks, especially trans people at the moment, as “groomers” and “pedos”.
We are not associated or comparable with pedophiles in any way, shape or form—full stop.
Tf are you talking about, unless being gay involves raping men, being pedo also doesn’t involve raping children. Even as a cishet non-pedo you will often encounter situations where acting on some attraction you feel would be anywhere from morally questionable to straight up illegal, and most of us manage to deal with that just fine. Of course that’s going to be tougher for someone whose entire experience consists of that, rather than just part of it, but nothing about being pedo forces you to become a child-raping piece of shit.
Of course psychiatric care is important, but the point the other commenter was making is that it’s currently impossible to change anyone’s attraction, so it’s not a pathology that can be “cured” in this way. Any psychiatric care currently has to be aimed at helping people deal with being pedo without acting on it and also not developing any other psychological afflictions because of suppressing their attraction. Trying to “cure” the attraction itself would indeed be akin to gay conversion therapy: there’s no scientific evidence it works, and it’s going to do more harm than good.
