Pedophilia Got Its Groove Back

So we get polygamy after gay marriage, then incest, then ephebophilia, then pedophilia. The late days of Rome indeed!

We should have a betting pool on when each of these is decriminalized or legalized.

HOW PEDOPHILIA LOST ITS COOL

Given the public record of those years, it seemed, if anything, overdue to talk of “pedophilia chic,” as I did in the Weekly Standard in two essays written several years apart (1996 and 2001). Those essays consisted mostly of quotations, sometimes long ones, from a variety of public sources. They demonstrated something that most people would have thought shocking then, as most people still do today—that the moral dumbing-down of both pedophilia (sexual attraction to children) and ephebophilia (sexual attraction to teenagers) was making slow but steady progress in sophisticated society. And while a few critics resisted having that record held to the light, their objections were beside the point. The facts themselves about who said what during those years to define down the phenomenon of sex with minors were beyond dispute. They still are.