What more can they ask for?

In June 1996, the critic Mary Eberstadt wrote a much-noticed article for The Weekly Standard entitled “Pedophilia Chic.” Detailing the many signs in our culture that the taboo against pedophilia was eroding, the piece caused a sensation, and rightly so. Eberstadt showed that there were many signs that pedophilia—and in particular sexual relations between men and legally underaged boys—was in the process of becoming “normalized.” Citing as evidence everything from the notorious Calvin Klein ad campaign for underwear that featured boys and girls in provocative poses to sympathetic profiles of child pornographers in mainstream magazines, Eberstadt sounded a tocsin about this latest instance of what former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously called “defining deviancy down.” Shocking though “Pedophilia Chic” was, in some ways it ended on a note of cautious optimi ...

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