> Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:48:42 +0000
> From: Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org>
>
> How about: load-el-when-newer (defaults to nil) ?

From etc/NEWS:

  ** New option `load-prefer-newer' affects how the `load' function chooses
  the file to load.  If this is non-nil, then when both .el and .elc
  versions of a file exist, and the caller did not explicitly specify
  which one to load, then the newer file is loaded.  The default, nil,
  means to always load the .elc file.