. . . in Moscow, Idaho there are 38 registered sex offenders. The chances are good that the only one you have heard about is Steven Sitler. This is because he provides an easy way for enemies of our ministry to attack us. If he abandoned the faith, or joined another church, or joined in on the attack on us, he would still certainly have the legal consequences of his crimes to deal with, but would probably be allowed to retreat into relative anonymity. Douglas Wilson

Pastor Douglas Wilson and the elders of Christ Church, Moscow, delivered their open letter after the Moscow-Pullman Daily News published two pieces about serial pedophile Steven Sitler. The article reported the facts: “(Sitler) has had contact with his child that resulted in actual sexual stimulation.” The editorial noted the obvious: “Disturbing isn’t nearly an adequate word to describe what unfolded Tuesday in Latah County 2nd District Court.”

But the Daily News didn’t report why all of this happened in the first place: Christ Church elder and former New Saint Andrews College Librarian, Ed Iverson, specifically introduced Steven Sitler to the young Katie Travis with the hope of cultivating romance, and he encouraged the courtship that followed at their second meeting. Doug Wilson officiated at the wedding ceremony of the serial pedophile to the graduate of New Saint Andrews College. However, no marriage, no baby.

This marriage deeply shocked the community for apparent reasons. Steven Sitler is a serial pedophile. He has demonstrated a sustained sexual preference for children seven years and younger — boys and girls — for at least fifteen years (court records indicate much longer). Recent reports of him feeling sexual stimulation by his infant son indicate he is unlikely to change his sexual preference or “be cured” despite ongoing treatment by two psychotherapists for the past ten years. Probation & Parole opposed the marriage. The Department of Correction disapproved of it. And the prosecutor objected to it. But Mr. Wilson gave little or no thought to these opinions or the consequences of his action — a baby boy cursed with a pedophilic father and a hopelessly conflicted mother who does not understand that having a husband, however flawed, is not better than no husband at all.

Enter Ezekiel Bulver
Pastor Doug Wilson and the elders of Christ Church, Moscow, responded to community concern about Steven Sitler by offering us a textbook example of the logical fallacy called Bulverism. At a happier time Wilson defined this fallacy for his readers and reminded them that C.S. Lewis coined it¹:

I must perhaps begin by explaining that I do understand that an (abusive) ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy. There is no reason to think we have refuted someone’s arguments simply because we have vigorously attacked their person. There is also another fallacy, closely related to the ad hominem, dubbed “Bulverism” by C.S. Lewis. He pointed out the modern tendency to dismiss an argument on no stronger grounds than the fact that you had explained how your opponent came to believe it. (“Apologetics and the Heart”)

The Open Letter’s Bulverism:

. . . in Moscow, Idaho there are 38 registered sex offenders. The chances are good that the only one you have heard about is Steven Sitler. This is because he provides an easy way for enemies of our ministry to attack us.

Mr. Wilson contends that we’ve heard about Sitler because of his “enemies,” but that doesn’t explain why he thinks normal people are wrong to condemn him for his role in forming this union. To use his definition, he dismisses this legitimate concern “on no stronger grounds than the fact that [he] had explained how [his] opponent came to believe it.” And while appealing to invisible enemies may satisfy his followers, it does nothing to comfort the local community or anyone who has endorsed Mr. Wilson’s teachings in the past.

More importantly, it does nothing for Katie Sitler, who now must guard her son from his father every waking moment, for the next ten years of her life, if the state does not take him first.

¹ “In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third — ‘Oh, you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.” C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 301–2.