Are we watching the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s presidency? Maybe. One may certainly hope and pray, right? Thousands of emails have been released that clearly implicate Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse scandal. There’s no question that Trump was a close friend of the late Epstein and knew that he was trafficking in underage girls. It is also without question that both men are disgusting perverts.
That said, I do wish people would quit calling Trump a pedophile. He’s not, and neither was Epstein. Unfortunately, the word pedophile is used colloquially to label anyone who has sex with a minor. This colloquial use of the word is unfortunate. A pedophile is someone who has an attraction to and has sex with prepubescent children. Trump, Epstein, disgraced ex-prince Andrew, and other well known men had sex with pubescent teens, and not young children. Their crimes are just as disgusting, but we do need to be accurate when describing their perversions. The same goes when we define the sex crimes of Catholic priests. While some of them are pedophiles, others are pederasts — those with a sexual attraction to adolescent boys. An interest in late-pubescents in men is called ephebophilia, although there is significant academic debate as to the term.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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