Dare We Get Real About Sex?

“Pedophilia Chic” & the Challenge to Conservatism

by Carson Holloway

Cultural conservatives, horrified by the precipitous decline in public decency over the last generation, must ask with an even greater dread: What comes next? Mary Eberstadt, writing in The Weekly Standard, provides an unsettling answer in her two articles, “Pedophilia Chic” (June 17, 1996) and “Pedophilia Chic Reconsidered” (January 1, 2001). “The social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents . . . is apparently eroding,” she notes, documenting her claim with a disturbing survey of recent literature, science, and social commentary arguing for or insinuating the normality of adult sexual contact . . .

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Carson Holloway is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the author of a book on Darwinism and political theory from Spence Publishing.

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