Preview: “Law & Order: SVU” Asks How Pedophile Rights Are Different From Gay Rights

***SPOILER ALERT*** This article reveals important plot points from tonight's Law & Order: SVU.

Is pedophilia, the sexual attraction some adults feel for children, an unchosen sexual orientation? If so, is it discrimination to criminalize consensual sexual relationships between adults and children?

These are some of the questions asked by “Hardwired,” a particularly provocative episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit running night on NBC.

The show begins like a typical episode, with a child’s sexual experimentation with another child leading to an investigation of both his wrestling coach and his step-father, who first befriended his mother (played Rosie Perez) while she and the boy were both in a homeless shelter.

Rosie Perez (center) guest stars on tonight's Law & Order SVU

When it becomes clear that one man is guilty, it eventually leads to an investigation of the leader of a “pedophile rights” activist group, Our Special Love. When irrefutable evidence is obtained against the man, he and his lawyer (played by Jeri “Seven of Nine” Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager) decide to fight back not by denying the charges, but by arguing that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, like homosexuality, and that, like GLBT people, he’s the victim of unfair prejudice and discrimination. The lawyer makes many of the same arguments that GLBT rights groups have used, even going so far as to invoke those struggles.

Pedophilia “is part of the normal continuum of human behavior,” she says.

“They shame children into feeling guilty about what was a healthy relationship with an adult,” the pedophile himself says while testifying. “They make normal children into victims.”

This all prompts the show’s regularly occurring character Dr. George Huang, played by out actor B.D. Wong, to finally come out to the show’s viewers, saying the pedophile’s argument “insults my intelligence as a psychiatrist and my humanity as a gay man."

Meanwhile, the prosecutor points out that children, unlike adults, are incapable of giving any kind of actual "consent" for sex — an argument that one of the show's storylines spells out quite dramatically.

The show also goes out of its way to portray one pedophile as being interested in boys while the other is very definitely only interested in little girls.

“In the popular media, pedophilia and homosexuality are often merged into the same thing,” says Neal Baer, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s showrunner and executive producer. “So we wanted to be really clear and take a stand that says, no, they’re very different. That’s why we had a gay man take offense at their defense.

Next Page! Is pedophilia really hardwired? And is there a real "pedophiles' rights' group?