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Common Questions: What are your thoughts about child sex dolls? Designed to look and feel just like young girls, these are completely legal, sold online to customers across the globe. Child sex doll-makers claim that they ‘stop pedophiles committing crimes’.

Jay Bazzinotti:
I am against them.

Sex is not like drugs. Some people believe that marijuana, for example, is not a gateway to harder drugs. They may or may not be right. But it’s wrong to compare sexual desire to drugs or other things.

Let’s be clear about this – someone can be a pedophile and not be a sex offender. It’s hard to remove the heat from the light with this situation. Pedophiles have a recognized mental condition. Perhaps they can keep it in check. Perhaps not. I think it’s an extremely difficult situation for society. Feelings and desires cannot be judged as right or wrong – they exist because they can. Pedophiles are not like rapists. Rape is a behavior. Pedophilia is a condition of sexually desiring prepubescent children. But pedophiles can no more control their feelings than heterosexuals or homosexuals.

But it’s not the feelings we judge – it’s the behavior. If someone is a pedophile, are they not compelled, to sooner or later, act on their desires? Are their desires as strong as that of homosexuals, who risk ridicule, beating and death to meet in dark alleys or restrooms or other secretive places to get what they must have? Are not heterosexuals ardent in their desire to copulate with members of the opposite sex and go to ridiculous lengths to achieve that goal? Isn’t the desire for sexual congress one of the most powerful forces in us?

But pedophiles have no outlet at all. There is no way they can satisfy their desires legally, morally or ethically. If you look at lobbying groups like NAMBLA who seek to decriminalize “consensual” sex with underage boys you will see the lengths they will go to in order to justify, rationalize, realize their desires. It’s sickening to look at their literature let alone think about what they are trying to accomplish. But they cannot help their feelings. They can only control their behaviors. And in my mind, that’s a losing battle. Sooner or later pedophiles MUST seek relief, real satisfaction for their desires, just as heterosexuals must, sooner or later, or at least do.

Pedophiles themselves are not bad people or guilty of anything. But their acting out their desires in real life, if left unchecked, is revolting and abhorrent. One could or would never trust their child to the most well-behaved, well-intentioned, moral pedophile. It might be ok this time, even next time, even 100 times – but how could you knowingly take that risk? It reminds me of the shark in the movie “Finding Nemo” that is trying to wean himself off fish as food. How long do you think he will be successful eating seaweed? It’s the same thing with pedophiles with sex dolls. How could you risk it?

That being said, I think child sex dolls are NOT a mechanism of relief for pedophiles. I think they are nothing more than an appetizer, a whet for their desires. Do I know this? No, I don’t. But I look over my own life of “normal” sexual desire and the lengths I would go to in order to meet a woman and I realize that sex is not like drugs. You can smoke pot and not become a heroin addict. But you can’t just look at porn and not want more with a real woman. I don’t think you can use sex toys and not want to go out and find the real thing. I think that the more these substitutes are used the more a pedophile must desire the real thing. I think these sex dolls are just starting the motor and the owner must someday go for that “drive” once it’s started.

I don’t know this. It’s an opinion. As a society we need to consider how to treat both chaste and offending pedophiles. We have seen over and over that sex offenders who get out of prison become recidivists. Even knowing what prison holds in store for them they are compelled to satisfy their desires. They have poor behavior and impulse control. What do we do with these people? Do we imprison offenders for life, knowing they will probably return to their ways if we let them out? We place all kinds of restrictions on them when they get out of jail – and it seems to fail to stop them. A 2004 study by Hanson and Morton-Bourgon indicated there is a 37 percent chance that sex offenders will repeat their actions withing 5 years of release from prison.

Are pedophiles a bomb waiting to go off? It is a case of “when” not “if” with them? I don’t think it’s fair to condemn them for their condition. But I could and never would condone their being around children, and I simply cannot believe that providing artificial stimulus through sex dolls is anything but tempting them and goading them to seek satisfaction in real children. For that reason, I think the dolls are wrong.

But I have no idea what society should do to correct, monitor or advise these people – or to placate them.