Study by Mary de Young

In 1989, sociologist Mary de Young reviewed the literature published by pedophile organizations for public dissemination, in an article called "The world according to NAMBLA: Accounting for deviance." She found that the pedophile organizations she studied used four main strategies to promote public acceptance of pedophilia or the legalization of adult-child sex:

• Denial of injury, the use of anecdotal accounts of children who appear to enjoy sex with adults to demonstrate the benefits and advantages of such relationships to children. Culpability for any harm that occurs to an abused child is displaced onto the reactions of others, such as the child's parents, and the criminal justice and mental health systems.
• Condemnation of the condemners, those who condemn sex between adults and child are portrayed as engaging in even more victimizing or exploitative acts than those for which pedophiles are accused.
• Appeal to higher loyalties, the assertion that they serve the interests of a higher principle: the liberation of children from the repressive bonds of society. Also, the attempt to align with other, less stigmatized, organizations such as the woman's movement or the gay rights movement.
• Denial of the victim, the conceptual transformation of children from victims of adult sexual behaviour into willing partners.

Other strategies include:

Adoption of value-neutral terminology. According to Herdt, an anthropologist who has studied sex between adults and children in other cultures, pedophile advocates should replace "dull and reductionistic" terms like pedophilia and abuse when discussing sex between "a person who has not achieved adulthood and one who has". Moreover, words like "child" or "childhood", which have psychologically developmental meaning, should be "resisted at all costs".[55] See also Promoting "objective" research.

Redefining the term child sexual abuse. Another recurring theme among those seeking to gain social acceptance for pedophilia is the need to redefine or restrict the usage of the term "child sexual abuse", recommending a child's "willing encounter with positive reactions" be called "adult-child sex" instead of "abuse" (Rind et al. 1998). For example, Gerald Jones, an Affiliated Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California, suggested that "intergenerational intimacy" should not be considered synonymous with child sexual abuse. According to Jones, the "crucial difference has to do with mutuality and control." Jones suggested, "Intergenerational attraction on the part of some adults could constitute a lifestyle 'orientation', rather than a pathological maladjustment".

Promoting the idea that children can consent to sexual activity with adults. The reconceptualization of children as willing sexual participants along with the decriminalization of consensual sexual relations is perhaps the key change sought by pedophile advocates. In his book Paedophilia: The Radical Case, activist Tom O'Carroll claims "What there most definitely needs to be [in determining consent] is the child's willingness to take part in the activity in question; whatever social or legal rules are operated, they must not be such as to allow unwilling children to be subjected to sexual acts. But there is no need whatever for a child to know 'the consequences' of engaging in harmless sex play, simply because it is exactly that: harmless." Many other pedophile activists, amongst them David Riegel, Frans Gieles and Lindsay Ashford, argue that children are actually able to knowingly consent to sex.

Questioning the assumption of harm. Numerous pro-pedophile advocacy organizations have quoted the Rind study in support of their efforts to "lower or rescind age of consent laws", and defense attorneys have used the study to argue for minimizing harm in child sexual abuse cases. [9] Some support their arguments by citing various studies that they argue have shown that the negative outcomes attributed to adult-child sexual relations can usually be better explained by other factors, such as a poor family environment or incest.[citation needed]
Riegel (2000) asserted: "The acts themselves harm no one, the emotional and psychological harm comes from the 'after the fact' interference, counseling, therapy, etc., that attempt to artificially create a 'victim' and a 'perpetrator' where neither exists." Similar arguments are made by SafeHaven Foundation, an organization for "responsible boylovers". On their website, they wrote, "The child abuse industry ... takes a boy who has enjoyed pleasurable and completely consensual sexual experiences with another boy or man, and traumatizes him in an attempt to convince him that what he did was 'wrong'". In addition, SafeHaven argues that, "many of the supposed traumas elicited by psychotherapy turn out to be nothing more than the result of the False Memory Syndrome" (SafeHaven Foundation, 2001).

Promoting "objective" research. Pedophile advocate Edward Brongersma has argued that investigators of child sexual abuse have biased views. He has cited Theo Sandfort's (1987) research on boys' relationships with pedophiles, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Sex Research, as an example of what he considers consider "objective" research. However, critics suggest that the study was "politically motivated to 'reform' legislation," and that the sample of 25 boys used by Brongersma was unrepresentative.

Declassification of pedophilia as mental illness. Activists sometimes refer positively to academics who argue that pedophilia should be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), for example, Frans Gieles mentions Richard Green.

Clearly, the Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the safety of its subjects. Citizens are even beginning to wonder whether the authorities are not just unable but actually unwilling to do so. As I pointed out here a year ago, in relation to another Belgian sex scandal, with Moroccan victims, “morality has gone berserk all over Europe, but nowhere to the same degree as in Belgium.” The country has been sliding into Gomorrah since the 1970s. This process is described in detail in my book A Throne in Brussels, which argues that it is the logical result of Belgium’s nature as an artificial construct, where the state deliberately undermines public morality.

In the final paragraph I warn that the “Belgian disease” might soon become the “European disease”, if

“Europe, like Belgium become[s] a federal state which fails in the basic duty of a state: to guarantee law and order, provide a fair judicial system, and protect its citizens and their children. In a few decades from now, will Europeans, like Belgians today, be obliged to say of their pan-European – supra-national, or rather post-national and post-democratic – state: Thou feedest us with the bread of tears (Psalm 80:5)?”

Belgium’s capital, Brussels, has a murder rate about five times higher than Paris and two times higher than London. The murder of the two children in Liège is the latest in a series that started last February in Brussels with the assassination of a 16-year old black boy, whose throat was cut by five “youths” who have not yet been found. This atrocity was followed by the murder last April of 17-year old Joe Van Holsbeeck, stabbed by two underaged Polish gypsies during rush hour in Brussels’ Central Station. Barely a month later, last May, there were the murders of a two-year old toddler and her black nanny and the shooting of a Turkish woman in broad daylight in downtown Antwerp by an 18-year old Flemish boy playing out a violent computer game in real life. In a crowded public transport bus in Antwerp last Saturday a passenger was kicked to death by six youths, described by some as “five Belgians and one Spaniard,” referring to their nationalities, and by others as “six Moroccans,” also referring to their (dual and original) nationalities.