Montreal is in the news again for being a pedophilia haven. First we had a website hosted here, now another site based on it is promoting an upcoming children’s festival at Maisonneuve Park.

The website, which nobody wants to link to (what are they afraid of exactly? Their readers suddenly turning into pedophiles? Or those who are already pedophiles getting access to like-minded websites?), and I won’t either just to avoid sending traffic their way (if you want to find it, you can do like I did and Google-search the direct quote from it used in the article), defends its stance saying that pedophilia is a “sexual orientation” and not a crime. It’s OK if you’re just looking at girls and fantasizing, as long as you don’t touch them, I guess.

The website has guides that sound a bit like what gay support websites might have looked like 50 years ago if the Internet existed back then. There’s talk about the law, about living with a pedophile, about how pedophilia doesn’t necessarily lead to child molestation, and how to “come out” as a pedophile to your family. Some parts suggest the website is trying to ride the line between legal and illegal, while others make it seem like pedophilia is entirely platonic – and can be satisfied by donating money to UNICEF.

According to the SQ (or “Sret du Qubec” according to the accent-phobic Gazette), the websites aren’t illegal but are pretty close to the line.

Let’s hope that line is bulletproof.