People seem powerfully confused on this topic

Good post. I've seen girls as young as 14-15 that I thought were at least somewhat physically attractive. That is biology. But personally I wouldn't even date a perfectly "legal" 20 year old because we're just too far apart in age (and I'd be VERY uncomfortable meeting her parents). That is morality. There is a DIFFERENCE--plain and simple.

The irony is people who bash this doc say they don't want to make pedophilia socially acceptable. Well, neither do I. But why then define "pedophilia" so BROADLY that it pretty much includes every straight man there is? Unless you're just some man-hating "feminist" *beep* that seems pretty counterproductive.

And two things can still be morally wrong without them being EQUALLY morally wrong. There are misdemeanors and felonies. There are venal sins and deadly sins. I believe it IS morally wrong for an adult male to take advantage of a sexually active 16-year-old girl (and it's an uncomfortable fact that a large percentage of girls that age are ALREADY sexually active). But this simply is not AS wrong as raping a prepubescent child. (Nor is it necessarily always more harmful than the same girl having sex with a 17-year-old boy who's too inexperienced to know how use a condom). The point is if you try to make everything equally evil, you distract yourself from the things that are the MOST evil. "Feminists" do this all time. I'm not saying the guy who doesn't stop when the girl says "stop" in the middle of sex is morally justified, but he simply isn't AS BAD as the violent rapist who drags a women into a back alley at knife point, rapes her, sodomizes her, and nearly beats her nearly to death. "Feminists" will waste all their energy though on the guy that didn't stop just to make some stupid point.

And simply being ATTRACTED to women isn't even immoral at all. Males certainly shouldn't be made to feel that if, say, they found actress Chloe Moretz attractive a couple months ago (before she famously turned 18) that they're one step away from grabbing young children off a playground. Whose interest does that serve? If you don't want men to cross a certain moral line, you don't draw the line five feet BEHIND them.

Good post! I especially like this bit "You can build moral frameworks without lying to yourself about reality. Admitting to biological realities is not a slippery slope towards sexual exploitation of minors."

Look at the news websites posting the teacher sex scandal du jour - the subject of teen sexuality scares people to the point of not even wanting to talk about it. The rampant misuse of the word 'pedophile' coupled with the legal definitions of terms like 'rape' 'victim' and 'consent' tend to confuse the issue. We don't fight a war on drugs by pretending that kids aren't *trying* to obtain drugs.

Without trying to simply parrot what you said:

Sexual attraction is a biological fact: This part is as old as the species, and just about every species jumps on the opportunity to reproduce as soon as possible. As far as I know, no other species seems to be bothered by an age gap - the alpha male mates with whomever he likes until he is replaced.

Humans have been pairing older men with younger females for a long time: This doesn't justify it in the modern sense of morality (see below), but if there were a truly unnatural component to it, there wouldn't be such a long history of it (and across as many cultures). Before I get skewered in the responses - this is the part where I point out two things: 1) Life spans have been relatively short until the modern day, and even early teen girls were usually already 1/3 of the way through their life expectancy when they were paired off and 2) Women in most cultures were seen as property - concern for their well-being was a distant second to the responsibility to the male lineage.

Even up until part way through the 20th century, girls have been married off far younger than they are today, but there was also an expectation that people in general would be part of the workforce at an earlier age. Having a family at 17-18 wasn't that uncommon - and yes you had people having sanctioned sex younger, but then those same people also didn't know the carefree 20-30 something lifestyle that a lot of people enjoy today. And again, we didn't care so much about the quality of life for women, nor cared if they had an equal stance in their relationships.

Biological facts notwithstanding, the trademark of the human race has been one of curbing our own nature to fit the society we *want* to create: Besides sexual urges, we're programmed for a lot of things that have been made unnecessary by modern society. Our bodies tell us to eat what we can when we can, because for millions of years, scarcity has been a cruel reality for all living things. The industrialized nations have removed that issue (for the most part) and now we have the health problems associated with indulgence.

So why suddenly put guidelines for relationships where there were none before? (Especially when mother nature doesn't seem to care) - because if we are going to build an enlightened society that cares for the individual well being of *everyone*, we'll push for creating relationships that provide the same opportunities for self-actualization and fulfillment. This isn't to say that a 50 year old man can't show genuine love and respect for his 20-something (or younger) partner, but that the danger for an unhealthy inequality is much higher when there is an age difference. To help prevent that, we have a general guideline for young people to be legally incapable of entering into a relationship with someone significantly older, regardless of their level of 'maturity'.