Has it occurred to you that your opposition to repression, conquest and genocide might just be cultural norms?

And that you actually share much with those whom you would disparage, whose ethical system, like yours, are informed by their understanding of life’s meaning, which ultimately, like yours, are based on unproveable assertions.

An 11-year-old girl is clearly a vicious, disgusting crime.

Clearly, that designation has more to do with your feelings about the crime than any property of the crime itself.

Ok, there may be a difference between a Raymond Radiguet and an 11-year-old girl. I am not sure there is harm in The Devil in the Flesh situation. I think many men might confess to envying Radiguet, altho’ now of course in the USA we would jail the woman for a lengthy term. An 11-year-old girl is clearly a vicious, disgusting crime.

@ an

It does remain common in some African and Muslim societies today, does it not?

I do not believe we have evidence that poly among consenting adults is harmful. Robin’s question is after all focused on children. I agree with you overall, of course it’s wrong.

Thanks for the pointer to that study, though; I hadn’t seen that before. I can’t accept its findings whole-heartedly; Dallam’s criticism of its sample bias seems particularly apposite. My perception of harm caused comes largely from court news: if you exclude those who stand to gain from taking their abusers to court (i.e. by financial compensation) then I think what’s left counts as data rather than anecdote, and accounts for the most traumatised people left out of Rind et al’s study.

Society’s judgement against paedophiles is actually the kids’ own judgement; it doesn’t need to be argued further.

Not necessarily, though – at least one 1998 meta-analysis found that ‘childhood sexual abuse’ does not cause significant harm: “3 out of every 100 individuals in a CSA population had clinically significant problems (compared to 2 out of every 100 in a general population)“. At least according to that study, the deciding factor was whether or not the child considered the act consensual – in other words, sexual actions with children causes trauma if it’s a rape, but it’s also perfectly possible to have consensual, non-traumatic encounters. The paper was loudly and generally condemned, but the journal that published the paper resubjected it into a new round of peer review after the article got into the public eye, and found no methodological errors.

Objective analysis of the topic is likely to be impossible, considering that any researcher publishing results supporting the hypothesis of paedophilia being harmless is certain to get publicly condemned, regardless of how valid his results are. (And I do not feel comfortable pointing out this study other than with an anonymous comment.)

No need to. Kids have a habit of growing into adults and speaking out for themselves; from this we already know that having sex too young can cause great psychological harm. Society’s judgement against paedophiles is actually the kids’ own judgement; it doesn’t need to be argued further.

If polygamy caused the same sort of harm, it would be right to safeguard kids from it. I haven’t heard that it does. But my point is that reality is a better guide than principles when making such judgements on behalf of others.