Exactly my thoughts.

Persecution, not prosecution...they don't mean the same thing. I think most people would agree that castrating pedophiles would be considered persecution, in addition to the persecution that many others have discussed throughout the thread.

Additionally, the line I am talking about is the line between the rape of a child and the rape of an adult. Both are pretty severe crimes, and while they often have different legislation, they are both rape and it doesn't make sense to treat one group of potential rapists different than another group of potential rapists.

The sexual preference in itself might not be abusive but the moment a pedophile acts on those impulses, he or she is abusing a minor.

Because nothing good comes from that 'preference', only morally and legally wrong things do.
So yeah the hate is justified. The question is, is the defence justified?

Fair enough if you consider it an illness, but look at what happens to people with other illness like ebola, they also get their rights taken away whether they like it or not in order to keep others safe.

Who was arguing against that? Nobody is saying, "Let pedophiles have sex with pre-pubsescent children." Also I think it is important to distinguish a post-pubescent minor and a pre-pubescent one. 

Why should those who don't act on their impulses be hated?

Shielding children from every single preconception about anything that involves opinions basically is such a non-option it doesn't matter. And there's also the thing that little kids feel uncomfortable if someone around them act creepy and looks at them weirdly, or reven worse, touches them, even without any (or minimal at least) preconceptions about it. So even in this hypothetical world where it was possible to shield children from every preconception, I'd still think it woildn't work. Then there's the fact that we don't live in a worl like that. In this worl, we do know that children can get serious mental damage from a sexual relationship with an older person. Wether that mental damage arises from the preconceptions in society, or from the actual relationship is largely irrelevant, because there's no way this child would be shielded from preconceptions, and this child would also grow up and it would no longer get this hypothetical shielding, and thus be subjected to the preconceptions, and they may get pshycological issues first then. Pshycological issues can arise after several years.

Someone probably already responded to this. But in the UK at least, sex with anybody under the age of 16 is automatically non-consensual as they are deemed too young to be able to give consent.

Even a 16 year old sleeping with a 15 year old is classed as rape here as the 15 year old (even if a male) is not old enough to given consent.

This is why rape laws need looking at, because to me, this "crime" is nowhere near on the same level as a violent rape. However at the moment, they are one and the same.

At least I know who isn't invited to my baby showers

Ah, it's changed since I was in school then haha (I see the law was updated in 2003) however, I have still heard of concerns over such a thing even now so there have been cases involving this that have gone to court.