Musings of the Great Eric

Today’s top story - Department of Homeland Security official accused of soliciting teen online

The deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security was arrested last night on charges that he used the Internet to seduce an undercover Florida sheriff’s detective who he thought was a 14-year-old girl, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested at his Silver Spring home at 7:45 p.m. and charged with seven counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmitting harmful materials to a minor, according to a sheriff’s office statement.

This is just disturbing.

First of all, these guys are supposed to be tracking and hunting terrorists, but they can’t even keep a pedophile out of high ranking office?

Secondly, I’ve been browsing through the blogs on this, and this I think is what’s bugging me most of all. Of course, this is met with condemnation regardless of political ideology. The same adjectives keep getting used. Scum. Disgusting. Sick. And rightly so - he’s all those things and more. Child molestation is the most vile crime imaginable.

But here’s the thing. This is all language I’ve read before, just not with regards to pedophilia. One could find the same adjectives used by some in describing homosexuality. Consensual sex acts. Heck, even Clinton’s blow job was described with similar disdain.

When all forms of sexuality are held equally taboo, what does that say about the truly unacceptable and immoral stuff? When the Justice Department spends its energy going after consensual porn and ignores child porn, what does that say about the priorities of the Bush Administrations primary base? Does the religious right really hold consensual sex as equivalent to pedophilia?

Pedophilia happens, there are predators out there, this guy is just getting more attention because of his position. But the above is perhaps the more disturbing part, to me at least.

Technorati Tags: DHS, pedophilia, child porn, Brian Doyle