Can liberal opposition to inequality protect children from sexual predators?

In the discussion on “The connection between sexual liberation and sexual abuse,” which was set off by the scandal at Penn State, our leftist commenter Ken Hechtman says we are missing the point. While liberals have no problem with homosexual sex between teenage boys, he writes, they oppose sex between unequals, such as between a boss and his employee, or between an adult man and a teenage girl, or between a football coach and a ten year old boy. I reply that given liberal society’s teaching against making moral judgments, there is no way that the by-now deeply ingrained habit of non-judgmentalness will, in practice, apply only to “consensual” acts and acts between equals, and not to non-consensual acts and acts between non-equals. In short, liberal relativism, which is really nihilism, has opened the gates to moral chaos, and there is no way for liberals to deny it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 13, 2011 07:56 PM | Send