It’s never about actually protecting the public, it’s about punishing so-called “degenerates”. Our very existence is wrong. We are abominations born of evil. They genuinely do not see us a human beings with thoughts and feelings. We are nothing, less than nothing. And we deserve to suffer for the crime of daring to exist.
“If I were a pedophile, I’d do my duty and throw myself off a bridge to spare a child the pain of being molested.”
“If my child told me s/he were a pedophile, I’d take them into the wilderness and shoot them in the head and bury the body.”
“There should be a facility where we involuntarily send all pedophiles to have all their needs met. If they try to escape, shoot them.”
Actual statements I’ve seen on the Internet. It’s never about what’s actually moral or just, it’s about “revenge”. It’s about sending a message. It’s so easy to write others off as mere statistics when you aren’t being personally affected. If it were possible, I’d make every human being on this planet (all 8 billion of us!) into pedophiles (even just for a day) so we all get to see what it’s like. See how you like it when your violent and dehumanizing rhetoric suddenly gets turned on you. Like turning a white supremacist black or a misogynist into a woman. Or a homophobe gay. Enforced empathy.