The Taboos of Touch

A new book from University of Minnesota Press has just hit the stores. But weeks before it was available to the public, "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex," had already provoked a rash of national press. The media is responding to what can only be called the usual suspects -- a posse of moral conservatives and practitioners of discredited therapy who've been wreaking havoc lately on scientific research and academic freedom.

They claim they're outraged that the book promotes "pedophilia." The critics' real goal, though, is not to protect children. The right-wingers are pushing a fundamentalist attack on mainstream American institutions such as legal abortion; acceptance of gays as normal people, and sex education in public schools.

I was on the committee the University of Minnesota Press asked to review "Harmful to Minors" suitability for publication. Written by journalist and feminist Judith Levine, the book asks the adults of America to put aside irrational fears about children's sexuality, and to help our kids grow up safe and happy by giving them the information they need to make wise decisions about their sex lives. The best research shows they'll have those sex lives anyway. Levine argues that it makes sense then, to arm them with knowledge and resources to avoid unwanted pregnancy, AIDS, sex abuse, shame, and other miseries; teach them to enjoy their bodies and their desires; and to take comfort in the fact that though sexual abuse is morally wrong, it does not necessarily destroy a child's psyche.

As someone who has written about sex abuse panics and who has spent the last few years raising a teenaged son and daughter, I was struck by how smart the book is. Particularly impressive is Levine's use of social science research to buttress her arguments. Topics such as the need for comprehensive sex ed and accessible abortion are the meat of "Harmful to Minors," and take up the bulk of the book. A discussion about sex between adolescents and adults occupies one chapter. It suggests the need to rethink America's statutory rape laws, which are inconsistent from state to state, and based on antediluvian tenets about preserving girls' virginity, instead of rational concepts like gender equality and child welfare. Again, this brief section is buttressed with solid research data.

Even so, the idea of teen-adult sex gives most American parents the willies. Right-wing fundamentalists and discredited therapists are now using this anxiety as a Trojan horse to attack science and the academy.

The American Psychological Association was the first victim. In 1998, Temple University social psychologist Bruce Rind and colleagues published in the APA's prestigious Psychological Bulletin. Analyzing some five dozen previous studies, the researchers concluded that not all minors who have sexual experiences with adults seem traumatized; in fact, many -- particularly males -- describe their experience as benign, even positive. The article was spotted by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, which believes that homosexuals can and should stop being gay. NARTH spread the word about the study. Soon radio talk show hostess "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger was on the case.

Two years ago, Schlessinger provoked national outrage when she condemned gays as the "deviant" product of "biological error." Today her website collects money for crisis pregnancy centers -- hotbeds of anti-choice organizing. Shlessinger denounced the Rind study repeatedly on her show as dangerous pseudoscience generated by pedophile sympathizers. The APA was deluged with angry calls and hundreds of thousands of form letters. Politicians got them too. At the behest of ultra-conservative Republican Whip Tom DeLay, Congress passed a unanimous resolution censuring the study. This was apparently the first time in history that the federal legislature ever condemned a scientific work because it disliked the findings.