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 with teenagers and even prepubescent children.

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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.

more on sex from the online archives

33.1—January/February 2020

Forbidden Lies

Speaking Truth About the Sexes Is Not Optional by Anthony Esolen

23.5—September/October 2010

No Ado About Something

The Loss of a Christian Understanding of Virginity Is Pure Tragedy by Eleanor Bourg Donlon

28.3—May/June 2015

Of Bicycles, Sex, & Natural Law

Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving by R. V. Young

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