I do not at all share your idea of the state and parents having a vested interest in controlling children and not giving up their power. Arguing about that world view would obviously be far-reaching and lengthy.

If there was good evidence for the above claim, then parents and the state would not be struggling so hard to maintain control of younger people... just as their equivalents (e.g., men, slave plantation owners) struggled in the past to retain control over other minority groups.

Parents and the state care deeply for children and are generally motivated by a desire to do what's best for them -- as they understand it.

The genuine love and caring that most parents inarguably have for their children can have its dark side. This includes a desire to protect by way of control, along with the belief that they should have the power to mold their kids as they see fit. Sadly, the presence of love does not negate the desire for power and control; the possession of power corrupts human nature. This varies from parent to parent, of course, but it's noticeably present in most to some degree.

The state is more interested in maintaining its control over everyone and retaining the current status quo over and above anything else. If their concern was truly genuine, they would expend far less disproportionate resources towards regulating underagers' sexual lives and expression compared to eliminating poverty, neglect, and altering neighborhood design & improving public transportation that would prevent the thousands of them per year who die in automobile related mishaps.

There are things that could be improved in relations between adults and children and the state, but I don't see any fundamental overhaul as a good idea.

In other words, maintain the status quo more or less as is. Yes, we know that, Ethan. Which dooms children and teens to continued harm by the many phenomena in society that harms them considerably more than sexual expression. We know where the priorities you defend lie.

curiosity for sexual play clearly denotes a type of sexual interest, even if admittedly of a lesser intensity than adolescent and adult sexuality

This seems to be in dispute by many of your fellow GC denizens. Glad you acknowledge significant attitudinal shifts due to puberty (on average).

I haven't seen any of my fellow GChatters routinely arguing that prepubescents seek out sexual intercourse or have a sex drive commensurate with adolescents and adults in my 14 years of posting here, I should say.

There is a huge difference between choosing to wait a few years, or however long, for sexual activity than being legally mandated to wait.

Indeed. Surely you know that I and other liberals do not favor that restriction because we're prudish or want to punish kids. We believe it protects a great many kids from unwanted sexual activity, at the cost of inconveniencing a few who would really like to engage in sexual activity with adults (and I would punish only the man, not the girl, and then only if the girl freely decides she wants him to be punished...). The law is necessarily full of trade-offs of that kind.

I sincerely think you're making an excuse here, because in no way does that make logical sense. You don't protect anyone from unwanted sexual activity by not allowing them to choose to have sexual activity that they do want. Telling them they don't want it when they actually do is the condescending flip side of the abusive "you may say no, but I think you really mean yes" attitude.

Saying that only a few young people would have that interest is wishful thinking, as it's been readily acknowledged in the recent DSM that the gerontophiliac preference exists, and it didn't say it was rare; you have no idea how many young people may have that interest in a world where they are not allowed to publicly express their sexual interests, least of all with adults. This is nothing less than dirty pool. That makes as much sense as rationalizing laws against homosexuality because a comparatively small amount of people actually have a desire to form sexual liaisons with members of the same sex.

Dragging them into court for willfully sexting with other people, and forcing them into behavior modification disguised as "therapy" if they refuse to admit they were victims, are forms of punishment, sorry.

Frequently telling young girls that they're "too young" to wear certain clothing or use certain kinds of make-up is a sign of prudery, I'm sorry.

Forcing people not to make a certain decision to "protect" them when they do not want to be protected is not a trade-off, but a draconian measure of control. It's the classic difference of "freedom to..." vs. "freedom from..."

Liberals are obviously brown-nosing the status quo by attacking youth liberation, especially when they have such a poor track record of fighting for civil rights against the conservatives during the past 30 years. And also considering they were very anti-homosexual during the 1950s and '60s, before it became politically "acceptable" for mainstream liberals to embrace gay rights. Liberals who make excuses to rationalize any type of "trade-off" for civil rights are not worthy of the term, and are merely pseudo-liberals who are pandering to public prejudices rather than opposing them.

by definition a rapist cares nothing for the law

Many rapists may care a great deal about the chances are that they will get caught and punished.

If such was the case, then they wouldn't be rapists in the first place. You have to commit a crime in order to be a criminal. Criminals are not by definition deterred by the law. Laws that prohibit freedom of choice only prevent decent people from engaging in a certain choice; not those who are bad people.

The world is in fact full of men (pedophile or not) with much sleazier intentions leading to more sordid realities.
Believing that such individuals hide behind every street corner, or reside in at least one house on any given neighborhood block, is the foundation of the current moral panic, and produces much hysteria that justifies a huge array of draconian laws.

Hysteria is a problem, so I will say my words were ill-chosen and I will modify them: Compared to the number of pedophiles with girls who mutually desire sexual activity, the number of men who would involve children in activities they do not want or will regret later is much greater.

And again, Ethan, you make these statements while providing no evidence that such is the case. And again, they are born out of pronounced distrust for fellow human beings.

And again, there is this constant focus on preventing girls (and boys) from making choices based on the belief they will later regret it. The main reason so many girls regret any type of consensual sexual liaison they have is because they are shamed by society, or punished severely by adults who have control over them, once the activity is found out. They are denounced as "sluts" for their behavior, or girls and boys alike are attacked for being "too young" to engage in it. If this type of sociogenic factor wasn't so implicit in our culture and legal system, these regrets would be far less pervasive, and far less severe when they did happen.

Also, denying someone freedom of choice because they might later regret an action is a draconian excuse for stifling a certain type of behavior that society dislikes. Protecting someone from their own bad choices in pre-emptive fashion sounds a lot like American foreign policy, and you see the results of that.

No, they are not hiding behind every bush, and parents are far too worried about them, especially as regards strangers. But in the relevant trade-off/comparison, they are much more common.

Again, note what I said regarding the inherent draconian nature of "trade-off" laws in a system that purports to be democratic.

We believe legally empowered and well educated youths are fully capable of identifying and avoiding--as well as even effectively opposing--such individuals in their midst.

This seems hopelessly idealistic on the one hand, and irrelevant on the other.

Idealism is often the word given to common sense that people do not want to embrace because it inconveniences those in power or those who are too apathetic to fight for change. Notice how young people are often dismissed as "idealistic" when they are willing to embrace change?

Secondly, I don't believe that education is irrelevant when it comes to building knowledge and support about any type of societal phenomena. Rather, I think the current policy of enforced ignorance is the problem.

Educating kids better is a great idea, as is increasing their confidence. But "legal empowerment" has virtually nothing to do with it.

Legal empowerment--which is an actual concept liberals are supposed to respect, your quotation marks notwithstanding--entitles a group of people to acquire education and knowledge on any subject they may want or need. It's thus very important towards building their awareness of any given facet of life.

The law can't tell them apart, so it has a strong motivation to prohibit all.
And again, willfully using legal force against innocent people to make certain that the guilty get indicted.

You misunderstand me on one key point. Adult-child sexual activity is a crime and ought to be, even if the girl consented. So I am not suggesting the legal travesty of punishing innocent people.

If you are punishing people for activity that caused no demonstrable harm, and where all connected harm is not inherent to the activity but is caused by the later intervention of the system and/or biased cultural reaction, then yes, you are punishing innocent people. The law should deal only with cases of demonstrable harm, not because a pair of people made a choice that you think one of them is likely to regret.

I suggest forgiveness for most people who transgress with truly willing and informed partners. Yes, the forgiveness can fail if you commit your crime with a vindictive girl. But that is a necessary cost for preventing a great many genuine, indisputable rapes.

Again, you give the very undemocratic stance of agreeing to put innocent people in jail in order to be certain that the guilty end up behind bars. That's a trade-off that goes against the very spirit of American jurisprudence.

You also suggest giving a despotic power to younger people, saying that vindictive and outright unscrupulous younger people should be allowed to have a tremendous amount of latitude to ruin lives, because an investigation might entail a guilty adult to go free if the standard of proof is too high. But it's perfectly okay for a younger person guilty of a certain form of harmful abuse to go free because... why, exactly?

This is another problem with a certain school of thought within the liberal sphere: Giving exceptional power and privilege to certain minorities as an alleged means of "making up" for past injustice against them, and claiming those who willfully abuse that power are not a problem; only members of a perceived majority group should be held accountable for abusive actions. That, of course, just encourages members of the minority to engage in more unscrupulous and vindictive behavior, because they are made aware that they can get away with it with impunity. That doesn't serve the cause of justice. Instead, it creates a major type of inequality that this type of bleeding heart liberal often tries to claim will "balance out" a previous power imbalance.

Since turning the power imbalance upside down doesn't eliminate inequality or power disparity but simply changes which group is on the unfortunate end of the stick, this shows that achieving justice is not part of the agenda at all. It shows that the real agenda is punishing members of a certain group whom the proponents of such lop-sided measures do not like, or consider to be inherently less worthy of sympathetic concern than members of a perceived minority group.

I see this in the form of the shameless misandry promoted by people who claim to be liberals when they blatantly defend unscrupulous women no matter what they may do to a male, or automatically defend the woman in any type of dispute that may involve a woman and a man. This is the attitude which directly promoted the flourishing of the "victimology" paradigm over the past three decades.

I see this type of attitude in those who defend any type of activity committed by the Israeli government against anyone who is Arab because the former are considered to have greater moral capital based on what they went through in the past... which only encourages many in that government to act as badly towards non-Jewish people as the German government of the past ever did towards them. Many innocent people in the Gaza strip are currently suffering terribly because of this attitude. But hey, that's the price the Palestinians have to pay in order to allow Jewish people (read: the right-wing handful who control the Israeli government) to obtain redress for past injustices against them.

Any form of willful discrimination of any group of people, on the basis that Group Y deserves more "protection" than Group X does, thus rationalizing despotic power being given to Group Y, is the very antitheses of true justice. True justice necessitates the objective evaluation of any grievance on a case-by-case basis and equity given to everyone based on individual merit.

The misuse of sympathy and what may start as genuine concern for one group, to the detriment of another who garners far less affection to the proponent of this type of discrimination, is in no way conducive to justice or equality. In the specific case concerning us, it simultaneously displays both a condescending desire to control younger people, and a willful desire to coddle them in certain instances even if that means looking the other way when they commit a flagrant act of harm towards a member of another group who do not hold your favor. I think this is a policy that would ensure as many adults as possible would be subjected to vindictive harm for daring to offend society's sensibilities by engaging in consensual liaisons with younger people.

After all, what better way than to place them at the mercy of the more vindictive and unscrupulous examples of younger people? And what better way to ensure there were as many of these vindictive and unscrupulous members of their group as possible than by giving them carte blanche to lie and deceive as much as they may please?

And so what if numerous adults who had no sexual contact at all with younger people end up being falsely accused of sexual abuse, because no investigation or standard of evidence was required? I'm sure you would agree that was a "necessary trade-off" to make sure genuinely guilty adults--and only adults, I should mention--get punished. That is, unless or until you, or another adult you respect and care about, ends up getting blackmailed and extorted by one of these unscrupulous youngsters. Again, you need to read Lancaster's Sex Abuse and the Punitive State to see why Lancaster, a member of the gay community, mental health care profession, and liberal/progressive establishment turned against the type of lop-sided policy you propose, as well as this dark tendency within the liberal sphere.

In fact, the destructive effects that this type of "trade-off" can result in was actually lampooned to very insightful effect on last week's episode of Gotham: The 13-year-old Selina Kyle was insisting that the cop who was ordered to watch out for her and keep her out of trouble allow her to see Detective Jim Gordon, which was against the rules. When he politely but firmly explained this to her, she said, "Let me see the detective, or I'll say you tried to touch me." Understandably, the cop began shaking in his boots, to which Miss Kyle smiled and said, "You have three seconds before I start screaming." Needless to say, the officer immediately acceded to her demand against the rules. He knew the mere accusation, despite his having done nothing remotely inappropriate to Miss Kyle, could destroy him. Very humorous... and very insightful.

Hence, this is why I will always defend freedom of choice and equality for everyone, rather than taking the side of one group over another, or deciding that any one group deserves it more than another. This is especially true when self-styled liberals do the same thing to liberalism that many of the politically organized misandrists of both genders did to feminism.