Verified answer

It has to do with what defines a mental illness (a paraphilia being a kind of mental illness).

A mental illness is a psychological pattern, potentially reflected in behavior, that causes the person with it to have one or more of the following:

1. Distress (The person is upset at the way they are or what they must deal with as a result of it)

2. Disability (the person is impaired in their ability to function)

3. Harmful Impulses (the person feels a drive to do actions that will harm themselves or another person)

Pedophilia fulfills the third criteria, in that have sex with children under 12 of course harms them, and the disorder drives them to do just that. Yes, a pedophile can resist this impulse and just use child porn, but child porn requires children to be abused for it to be created, and they are still fantasizing in their minds about abusing children. For most pedophiles, if they don't get psychiatric treatment, it is only a matter of time before they move on to real children.

When ever you are pondering any sort of "alternative sexualities," compare them to the list above and you will have your answer as to why it is or is not a mental illness.

Because it is. It is demonstrably a mental illness in that it endangers human lives. Go read the DSM and some Abnormal Psych textbooks so you can learn the difference between a paraphilia and a sexuality.

By that logic, people who date those older than them (for example: young men to cougars) would be considered to have a different sexuality too.

I will continue to argue that emotion and attraction are not a choice. But acting upon them IS a choice. And I have yet to hear of a child touched by a pedophile not being scarred by it.

Because its a paraphilia.

A sexual orientation is about being attracted to your peers.

eg, an adult man can be attracted to adult women (meaning he's straight) or adult men (meaning he's gay), or to both adult males and adult females (meaning hes bisexual) or to no one at all (asexual) or outside the boundaries of male and female (pan sexual)

A pedophile usually identifies as one of these (most commonly straight), their paraphilia is separate from their sexual orientation.

It is a choice.