“PAEDOPHILE advocacy groups are organisations that advocate for the abolition or lowering of the age of consent and the normalisation of adult sexual relations with children.”

The above is Google’s definition of that category of advocacy group. So it’s a fact! I now have seen everything. A group, no groups, actually exist that openly admit they are promoting adults having sex with children.

There are few things that all good and decent Jamaicans agree on. One is protecting our children from adult sexual predators. I honestly believe this. Recently there has been a debate about decriminalising sex between minors. This may sound innocent enough, kids will play doctor after all. Well, you may think differently after we have this chat.

Every year 40,000 parents send their 12- or 13-year-old kids to high school. Some are male, others are female. If they are bullied we hope the school administrators will deal with the bullies. If the adult sixth former has sex with them the police will investigate and he will be prosecuted.

Well, that certainty is now in question if Jamaicans for Justice is successful in achieving its new objective: to decriminalise sex between minors and to establish a four-year defence in law for having sex with a minor. It may be shrouded in words, but this is the essence of what will be allowed if they are successful.

Within that trunk load of words you will hear words to the effect, “only if the child consents”. I challenge you to look at your 13-year-old, and you tell me if she has the ability to consent to anybody even touching her, let alone having sex.

Okay. Let’s play the devil’s advocate and pretend the 13-year-old female can functionally consent, is the contest really even? Can a 13-year-old child match wits with a 17-year-old just shy of adulthood? The decision to have sex is one that results in the need to consider the possibility of exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. This includes those that remain incurable such as HIV/AIDS, and other such as syphilis that, although curable, can cause damage that is in effect irreversible, as can occur in the advanced stage of the illness.

A decision to have sex involves the consideration of pregnancy with lifelong implications. So you’re telling me your 13-year-old has the maturity for those considerations? The supporters of this new change in the legislation will tell you that kids are dragged before courts in cases of consensual sex and exposed to the trauma of the judicial system. More rubbish!

We have a formalised system of removing juvenile consensual sex cases from the courtrooms to private offices called “diversion”. It’s far less traumatising and is, in many cases, not traumatising enough in cases where you are the parent of the female child. So the argument justifying the change in the legislation is “non-existent”.

There are other questions as to this new effort to justify paedophilia. What is the real motive? If diversion has already redirected the case to an office and the 17-year-old predator is no longer spending his weekdays in a prisoner’s box, then what is the real motive? Who is behind this new thrust?

I have had many issues with Jamaicans for Justice and I accept we disagree on the subject of killers’ rights vs police rights, but I know we both agree on the importance of protecting our children. So what’s this really about? This can only open the door to rampant paedophilia.

Now let’s talk about our male children. How will this new Act impact them? This new legislation, if passed, will allow for sexual contact between your 13-year-old son and another male. Stunned? I can imagine.

The beastiality law only criminalised anal sex. The law at this points prohibits sexual contact between minors as part of the Sexual Offences Act. This change will allow for sexual contact, except anal sex, between juvenile males, so how long will it be before that law goes too?

The bestiality law will not stand forever because of international pressure and the advocacy of local groups. So this change will provide a legal defence for a 17-year-old male to sodomise your 13-year-old son or a 19-year-old “man” to sodomise your 15-year-old son once the bestiality law is repealed. I accept that the sexual orientation of any adult is their own business, but I draw a line with children.

I have previously written on the issue of the rampant abuse of 13- to 15-year-old females that will take place in the garrisons once this new change in the law takes place. The only hedge between the raping of these children is the law — the law that allows for the prosecution of males who have sexual contact with children, the same law that the aforementioned advocacy group is trying to have repealed.

They will tell you that non-consensual sex is still going to be prosecutable. Well, if you really think that you can become a wilful complainant living in a garrison and remain there then you are either a simpleton or a member of Jamaicans for Justice.

I don’t think that we have the security infrastructure to accommodate the decriminalisation of sex between minors. I don’t think that minors four years apart are of equal ability; I don’t think that any adult should have sexual contact with children under 16 years; and I see nothing positive about adult males having open, visible, relationships with 15- or 14-year-old children.

I know a superintendent who, at 19 years, was a police officer with two years’ service. So would it have been a good look for him to come to work or a police event with a 15-year-old girlfriend on his arm if he had one? Although I am positive he did not.

I know the embracing of this cause by Jamaicans for Justice is a blunder that it will regret. It is not the group’s first blunder. It is not its first regret. Back off of it before it becomes the light pole that breaks the camel’s back.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com