[UA] Re: TABOO

[Tim Toner]

I've got this book called, "YOU ARE BEING LIED TO," which is chock-full of
essays on a variety of hot-button topics.  One of them, "The Man in the
Bushes," is the transcript of an interview with Philip Jenkins, who has
written Moral Panics:  Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern
America.  Jenkins basically states that interest in preventing the abuse of
children ebbs and flows.  It's been going strong for the past 10 years or
so, and it's time for the pendulum to swing back  He also points out that
the definitions have changed:  Lewis Carroll was most assuredly a pedophile
by the standards of his day, which meant a sexual interest in children that
had not yet reached puberty, but not necessarily a drive to act on those
emotions.  Tarting up Jon Benet Ramsey is a clear example of how we feed
this invisible undercurrent in our society.  Just as it is considered
deviant to think of someone of that age in a sexual manner, it's also
deviant to dress a child up as an adult.

Jenkins further addresses that the age of consent in the US and England
prior to the 1880s was _ten_, and molestation was a much less harmful act
than rape, though now molester and rapist seem to pack equal punch.  I'm no
fan of NAMBLA, but the irony of a society that deems a minor incapable of
entering into a contract or of realizing romantic love until he/she is 18,
but stands behind that same child's ability to discern right from wrong in a
murder, thus garnering the death penalty, is a little rich.



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