Yeah but

You're thinking of Mussolini, not Hitler. Also, it didn't happen, he claimed this was true, and he did improve the Italian rail system, but he did not make all the trains run on time.
Also, it isn't actually like that at all. You can be an awful person, but make excellent art which is not impacted by your awfulness. Hitler IS actually a good example of this. He was an incredibly talented painter. If Hitler was a famous painter who notably supported a dictator, instead of being the dictator himself, history would remember him differently.
Drugs don't necessarily make you s different artist. Pedophilia doesn't really affect who you are outside your sex life. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold artists to the same standards as other people. And I agree that we should reevaluate this as a culture, but I think comparing it to political leaders is unrealistic and normalizes political leaders doing terrible things by putting them in the same context as artists.

@thekaylapup I get the overall point you're trying to make but I think it's kind of insane trying to justify pedophiliac behavior as anything but a defining character trait and a monstrously evil one at that. I would strongly advise you review a lot of the public records on the national sex offender registry and then try and make the same argument--that pedophilia doesn't effect anything outside of that individuals personal sex life? Tell that to the literal thousands of 8-month-olds to 4-year-olds who have been molested.

Technically speaking those children ARE the offenders personal sex life

And to the children who are forever effected by the abuse? It's not just about the pedophile who abused them having their own experience and I'm not really happy having to explain the distinction here.

It’s all very subjective isn’t it? While there’s merit to the idea that a person and their art can be separate- what we are debating here is more about priorities. Say “John” raped your mother, father, sister- murdered your best friend in cold blood or something. “John” somehow managed to avoid a conviction even though you SAW him do it. “John” is the worlds best carpenter. Would you hire him to do your wood work? It can change our perspective when the terrible thing they did happened to us, but if you lived somewhere and your #1 priority was getting to work on time, many might care less about atrocities happening to other people they don’t know somewhere they can’t see. Argue the point if you like, but it doesn’t seem to stop most of us from enjoying goods and prosperity based on the suffering of people in tucked away corners of the world. The device you’re using to read this is a grab bag of horrors and yet- it runs fine so those far away horrors aren’t stopping you from using it no?

Yeah you can slice and dice the conversation to craft whatever response you like folks, pedophilia and rape are terrible, evil things and I respect you're right to freedom of speech to disagree with me but I'm not budging my position on this.

To be clear- I’m not saying the ends justify the means- I’m saying it’s easy to take a moral high ground from comfort and safety, but harder to actually follow the morals we tout. In principal, many of these people belong in jail or some other punishment. But the truth is that after WW2 most countries that now lead the world pardoned war criminal scientists who had done some of the most terrible things recorded in human history- because they could advance science and technology. It’s a glass house. It is a failing of society and humanity- the concept of “might makes right,” but those with power make the rules, and often keeping power means going farther, doing worse than the other guy- and having power means the power to get away with things others can’t.

Most people dont realize that the Neuremburg Trials were overwhelmingly for show and that the majority of the Nazi leadership, the MAJORITY, escaped to South America and many of those scientists did in fact provide medical research on many processes that are used to this very day... but most of that research came from the killing, torture, and mutilation of millions in a variety of human experiments. The fact that people in general would rather explain it away so the ends justify the means is a terrible thing in and of itself.

The problem I see here is prevalent in your example. You asked "would you hire him." That's already contrary to the point being debated. There is a fairly large difference between hiving someone money to make something and appreciating the skill and artistic value of something a person has created. You don't learn anything from a commission. The point of separating the person's morals in life from their art is that their art holds value. It's style. It's form. The things you can learn from studying and appreciating it. Art (and information in your second point) is neither evil nor righteous. It is not but what it is no matter the source (nor how it is implemented in case of information.) Learning from it and applying it is the only logical action to take.

The "seperate art from artist" thing isn't absolute. There are certain things I cannot condone and still enjoy somebodies work, such as them being a sex offender. And I know different time periods had different social mores, but I can still apply my own ethics and morals to peoples actions.

@johnnyjohnny- I was writing those two before the other replies popped up, and they were in reference to the first post you replied to and not to what cake after. To be clear I am not justifying anything- least of all rape and pedophillia which I consider to be two of the lowest crimes one can commit. I’m merely saying (in a different way,) that we can split hairs all day and debate details, but the fact is that it’s a repugnant human behavior that most everyone is guilty of- selectively forgiving or contextualizing wrong based on the benefit or harm it does to us versus what is “out of sight and mind” and the relationship we feel for the offender.

@guest_ No worries, that's the tough part of having an active conversation on a post--replies may be out of order.

@johnnyjohnny And I was in no way condoning these actions.
I know how awful it is when you love & trust someone but you can't do this right now because they innovertedly did something innocent that just happened to remind you of your rapist because they used to do that. Even though all they did was brush you hair out of your face. And normally that's fine except you got a haircut recently so it brushed past your ear in the same way it used to. Rape is traumatic, and never okay.
What I am saying isn't "artists should get away with being terrible people". What I am saying is works of art can be judged independently of their creators character. And political policies cannot be so easily removed from the people making them. Not because bad people will always make bad policies, but because we cannot afford to elect people who might make a good policy for a bad reason.

One can be a pedo without touching a kid. One cannot be a rapist without raping someone. Usually caused by problems in different parts of the brain. Distinctions are important especially when making condemnations. The purpose behind a statement matters never little compared to the literal mean and the obvious understanding of the statement. If it became law like how exactly you stated it not a single pedophile would ever get help exacerbating the problem extremely.
The cause of pedophilia is a mental disorder. Just like every other mental disorder the person who has it has a choice. Get help with it or struggle to fight it their entire life. If it causes them to hurt someone or do something illegal usually it is consider their fault. Those that choose to get help prove themselves normal people with a functional moral compass for the most part. Such people deserve not hate nor disdain nor condemnation.

In a legal and even an ethical sense, I'm not saying your wrong Beth, I'm very candidly and honestly telling you that I have a tough time rationalizing the distinction because emotionally it's tough to get there.

In a legal sense you aren't a criminal until you do something. You aren't a criminal for merely having the urge to do something. You wouldn't cut the hand off of someone for having the urge to steal something. A better, closer example is that you wouldn't condemn a man with an anxiety disorder for slapping you out of stress and anxiety if he went to a therapist for his anxiety and got the help he needed to not have the anxiety there to cause him to slap you ultimately preventing the slap. The same goes for a pedophile. You shouldn't condemn someone based off of how you feel. If someone gets help with a problem that could potentially hurt someone and prevents it from ever happening (another analog to this is suicide) you should not condemn them but treat them like you'd treat anyone else as at that point they are not but a normal person who has worked through their problem.

Granular or not, you can't punish someone because they have thoughts they can't control, but who control their actions.

Actually, your cancer analogy was a good one. Many tumors are benign and can cause more damage to remove than to leave alone. But obviously you can't afford to leave a malignant growth.
And clearly what you want is to eliminate rapists. It's just you hear pedophile like most of us hear tumor. It is easy to believe it will be a problem, even if it never will be.
I definitely think that it would be better if we as a society work to be more accepting, open, and honest about mental health. I think that some people deny pedophilia the way some people deny depression. "I don't have pedophilia, I just like hentai" "I don't have depression, I'm just tired." And maybe you know it's more than that but getting help means admitting there is something wrong.
On the other hand it's hard to look at people who hurt you as a a fellow human struggling with a mental illness. Especially when it's so easy to view them as a monster.

Either way, no one wants for pedophilia to lead to rape. And the best way to prevent that is for pedophiles to get help.
And while it is 100% on said person to get help, I think it would be easier to do so if we as a culture could be more accepting of mental illness.

I really depends on the age gap when you get that close to the line for most people. If the older one is 30 then most call them a pedo

Using your influence as a celebrity to have sex with ANYONE is wrong. Doing it to have sex with a kid is a million times worse. I don’t care if there is grass on the field, that field is not open for adult league yet.
If you can’t understand how that type of manipulation messes someone up then you need to look into it. Even when a teenage boy scores with an older woman it can cause life long mental issues. I’ll give up all art and music to keep kids from being fucked up for life if I need to.

That insinuates that ignoring and disregarding preexisting art or even the art that some make in prison/asylum will do anything other than prevent artistic learning. It won't. They did a thing. That thing isn't gonna be undone by throwing out the artistic value of their creations.