re: #353 The Nightmare of the five Orders of Beggars

Cop-out in what sense?

It was an attempt to use an uncommon word that, while it may be more technically correct, also, and conveniently does not have the emotional impact of ‘pedophile’. That’s why church spokesmen loved it.

And frankly, unless you’re an FBI profiler or a researcher or something, ‘ephebophile’ or ‘hebephile’ doesn’t mean a great deal. The late end of ephebophilia is ‘legal’, and hebephilia starts to become the technical term in regards to children at an age when I think most people would just say ‘pedophile’ because people know what it means.

Anyway, what Nugent did was sleep with a slightly underage woman, in an exceedingly creepy and sleazy manner. People can call him whatever. It’s just that, for me, the word ‘ephebophile’ has been pretty much ruined for use by the clergy sex scandals.