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.
One of the clips appeared to be from his appearance on a podcast, “Unregistered with Thaddeus Russell,” in December 2020.
the clips were also from a YouTube video posted Jan. 30 on “Brain in a Vat,” which publishes “thought experiments and discussions with philosophers.”
In the clips, Kershnar goes on to say: “One is even if you are looking for a threshold. Let’s say there’s a threshold. I’m making this number up, but let’s say it’s at age 8. Still, that tells you that some adult sex is permissible.
“Second, the notion that it’s wrong even with a 1-year-old is not quite obvious to me,” he says.
“There are reports in some cultures of grandmas fellating their baby boys to calm them down if they’re colicky,” the professor continues to say.
“I don’t know if this is true but this is sort of widely reported as occurring in at least a foreign culture and it working, that the grandmas believe that this actually works,” Kershnar continues.
“If this were to be true, and again, I don’t know it to be true, if this were to be true, it’s hard to see what would be wrong with it,” he adds.
Kershnar then makes the odd comparison of youngsters taking part in athletic activities and preparing for their bar and bat mitzvahs.
“They might think that children can’t be willing things in general. It’s an odd view in that they seem to will things all the time. They will participation in kickball. They will showing up and participating in bar mitzvah lessons, bat mitzvah lessons,” he says.
“You might think that, well, maybe there’s something distinct about sex that they can’t really understand it. It’s not clear to me that what they’re not getting at is consent,” Kershnar goes on.
“I suspect that what they want to say is that they’re willing participants, they’re voluntary participants. They have some understanding of what is going on. Not the understanding we do, but some understanding. But they haven’t consented. Perhaps that’s so, but that’s a different claim from them being unwilling,” he says.
“There’s a lot of activities that children engage in that they don’t understand all that well. For example, when you first show up to participate in a judo tournament or when you prepare for your bar mitzvah. You have a rough idea, but it’s not clear how much you fully understand it,” he adds.
According to Kershnar’s LinkedIn page, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School in 1991 and has been working for SUNY for more than 23 years.
His school page lists him as a “Distinguished Teaching Professor.”
“Kershnar has written one hundred articles and book chapters on such diverse topics as abortion, adult-child sex, hell, most valuable player, pornography, punishment, sexual fantasies, slavery, and torture,” his bio says.
The Libs of Tiktok also posted an abstract in which Kershnar allegedly wrote that “it is morally permissible and should be legally permissible for state and private professional schools to discriminate against women.”
He allegedly added: “More specifically, I argue that such schools may discount women’s applications to the degree that they are likely to produce less than male counterparts.”
On Tuesday night, SUNY Fredonia president Stephen Kolison posted a statement reacting to the professor’s comments about pedophilia.
“SUNY Fredonia is aware of a video posted online involving one of its professors,” he said. “The views expressed by the professor are reprehensible and do not represent the values of SUNY Fredonia in any way, shape or form. They are solely the professor’s views. The matter is being reviewed.”
We the People have found this guy Guilty and he will be Castrated and Hung !
It’s so terrible that so many people can be so brainwashed. I can’t fathom excusing pedophilia. I can see excusing the mental cases of pedophilia, but only if they never act on it. I find it harder to believe that anyone can accept the permission of a child to be an excuse.