Somehow I missed this story, but my colleague-by-extension Madeline Leesman at Townhall picked it up.

A Professor at SUNY-Fredonia has been arguing–for decades now–that pedophilia should be legalized and that it isn’t immoral at all. It’s like playing kickball or other sports, and if kids consent to the sex there is no clear moral reason that it is wrong or should be prohibited.

Yikes!

🚨🚨🚨 Professor says an adult wanting to have sex with a kid is accepted as being wrong but “it’s not obvious to me that it is in fact wrong” pic.twitter.com/ygC5nuHDNa

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2022

The video was posted by the invaluable Libs of TikTok, who somehow manages to find some of the most insane content that is posted on the internet.

The New York Post and Fox News picked up the story, but I am unaware of any other MSM media coverage of the story.

A State University of New York at Fredonia professor is under investigation by the school after videos emerged of him defending pedophilia and insisting it wasn’t “obvious” to him why it was wrong, according to a report.

Professor Stephen Kershnar, who teaches libertarian philosophy and applied ethics at SUNY Fredonia, was filmed questioning whether pedophilia was in fact unethical.

“Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s a willing participant,” Kershnar says in the viral clip shared on Twitter by Libs of TikTok.

“A very standard, very widely held view is that there’s something deeply wrong about this — and it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized,” Kershnar continues.

“It’s not obvious to me that it’s in fact wrong. I think this is a mistake. And I think exploring that why it’s a mistake will tell us not only things about adult/sex and statutory rape and also fundamental principles of morality,” the professor adds in his jaw-dropping comments.

He compares minors consenting to sex to them consenting to a kickball game or lessons pic.twitter.com/AG4rAF1koT

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2022

SUNY-Fredonia President responded to the video floating around–which dates back to a podcast discussion from 2020–with the following statement:

A message from SUNY Fredonia President Stephen H. Kolison pic.twitter.com/EDZCHCE7ch

— SUNY Fredonia (@FredoniaU) February 2, 2022

That’s all well and good, except it is entirely deceptive in intent. It turns out that Professor Stephen Kershnar has been making these arguments for years, even publishing academic papers about the subject and discussing his beliefs in his classes. It is simply impossible for the university to have been unaware of his philosophical position up until this moment.

In other words, they are just covering their asses by disassociating themselves from his ideas when the public became aware that he was spreading them.

This is truly horrifying pic.twitter.com/RrSeyb1oGf

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 2, 2022

According to the Post, Kershnar has penned one hundred articles and book chapters on topics like abortion, adult-child sex, hell, pornography, sexual fantasies, slavery, and torture. And, he allegedly wrote in an abstract that it is “morally permissible” and “should be legally permissible” for state and private schools to discriminate against women, claiming that women are “likely to produce less than male counterparts.”

Students at SUNY Fredonia told Buffalo-based outlet WKBW that Kershnar made them uncomfortable.

“When I was reading his essays on the age of consent and thinking that underaged sex and sex with girls who are twelve are okay and shouldn’t be thought of or questioned because you’re taking away the right from people who wanna do it. I think that was the breaking point for me,” Tralle Cotter, a junior, told the outlet.

“I hope they [the school] will remove him, maybe I’m optimistic or I want to trust this school,” Olivia Sylvester, a sophomore, told the outlet. “But I want to be able to love this college, and I want to do it, and I want to be proud that I came from here, so I want to trust they’re going to do the right thing.”

It is all appalling, and Kershnar should never have been hired or given tenure at the school.

But should he be fired for making his arguments? I would argue that no, he shouldn’t. He should be excoriated in public.

Why? Because ideas, even horrible ideas, should be discussed in universities. Critical Race Theory, Marxism, Satanism, and all manner of ideas are out in the wild, and intellectual interrogation and refutation should be done in public with rational arguments. For the average person in normal life, simple disgust is a powerful moral argument and likely to be a good guide for living a mostly moral life.

But many of the moral positions we take for granted were once considered disgusting, and many things which people took for granted in the past we now consider disgusting. That is part of the value of philosophy and a commitment to rational discussion. Simply yelling down people for proposing ideas we find repellent is not a defense against those ideas becoming accepted. It is important to understand them and be able to respond to punishment, because often enough the effectiveness of that response weakens over time.

Remember, the disgust for interacting with Black people in some parts of the US was so high that Whites didn’t share spaces or drinking fountains with them. We now know this is evil. Social norms are good guides for daily life, but an insufficient foundation for a moral society.

The age of consent is different in different cultures. It has changed over time here in the United States, and even each state sets the bar differently. Social norms are powerful, but rational arguments can buttress those norms or change them.

That doesn’t mean I agree with Kershnar. I just don’t think the standard for what is taught to college-age students should be in agreement with me or others.

Were I on the hiring committee at the time of his application, I likely would have voted against his hiring, although I would have heard out the arguments for doing so. I just don’t you can or should suppress ideas, but fight them on their turf.

So I give SUNY-Fredonia an “F” for how they have handled this situation. They lied about whether they knew Kershnar’s views, and then canceled his classes and put him under investigation simply to save themselves grief.

Hateful ideas are hateful, but also ideas. Ideas should be confronted, since they will never go away. We need to express our disgust and argue our point.

Yelling “shut up” is not an argument.