C.C., a friend who is a retired ethicist from the University of Leeds (U.K.) told me this in a recent e-mail:
"Child-molestation, though recognised as wrong, and no doubt very wrong, was not until recently thought of as harmful in many cases. In any case the enormous emphasis at the present day on the harm done is often empirically unjustified, and in any case does not well explain the way we --- very reasonably --- object.I'm not saying I am following C.C. in all of this, but these are issues we're hardly able to discuss. Just as a simple example: when I was little, probably kindergarten age and younger,I used to play in the bathtub with my brother Jim, who's 2 years older than me. My mother snapped our pictures from time to time. Is that indecent? Does it matter which parts were covered with soap bubbles? Some would say yes, and some no.In particular, any kind of touching whatever without proper consent - babies for example being unable to consent - is evidently not in itself harmful. Sexual (or quasi-sexual) touching can run a spectrum between a kiss planted on a baby's bum, and forcible sodomy: what is a "difference in kind" and what is a "difference in degree" is not terribly well-defined. People say "Well, anybody would know the difference" when that is not true. That's why today people speak of "boundary issues" which can vary between families, between generations, between classes and between cultures.
But can "consent" be the boundary? Care of a child very often requires acting without consent.
The well-nigh universal thought in our time that those molested are unjustly treated if the molesters are not publicly shamed and punished represents a (surprisingly illiberal) error about justice. "
I am not writing this to minimize genuine abuse. I am just pointing out that some things thought innocent, or at most harmless and minimally objectionable, 70 years ago, sets off alarms today. A grown man interested in this kind of contact was at one time thought odd, even creepy; at other times, a molester.
