Men are animals with no little to no desire to evolve. Even among men who despise and want to kill pedophiles, the discussion often degrades into quibbling over the age cutoff. Over half of them will argue that having sex with younger teens is fine, and in the past, perfectly normal and natural. They believe that once a girl starts developing breasts she is no longer really a child and it isn’t perverse to be sexually attracted to her. Despite all of the still childish traits, physical and mental. Despite how due to those immaturities, she would still be damaged by adult sexual attention.

They will throw up distractions, like "What about an 18 year old and a 16 year old???" to seem reasonable. When I was in college, there was an 18-year-old guy from a small farming community who readily admitted to having a 13-year-old fiancée whom he would marry after graduation. He didn’t realize the general population would find that strange, and other than being seen as a bit weird it did not impact his ability to make friends. Then of course there are tons of cases of 20-something guys preying upon younger teens while local men do nothing.

It seems for a lot of men, their hatred of pedophiles is the same as their hatred of homos: they don’t want to consciously admit something about themselves.

EDIT: formatting, added examples