The standard argument against sex between men and adolescents is that the age gap creates a power differential that is inherently coercive, and at first blush that perspective makes intuitive sense. But the fact is that power differentials exist along an infinite number of spectrums. Rich people have more power -- generally speaking -- than poor people. Beautiful people have more power than plain ones -- Barbra Streisand notwithstanding. Corporate executives have more power than file clerks, although perhaps Enron will change that equation. And let's not forget that men have more power than women. So should rich, attractive, male corporate executives be barred by law or custom from having sex with poor, plain female file clerks? Following that logic, I should be allowed to fuck -- or love -- only my (nonexistent) identical twin brother, and only if he has exactly the same professional standing, income and haircut as me.

What's more, some recent studies have tended to debunk the idea that intergenerational sex always has negative repercussions. In 1998, Bruce Rind, a Temple University psychology professor, and two coauthors published a review of 59 studies of college students who, as minors, had experienced sexual contact of any kind with an adult. Analyzing the data, they concluded that the assumption of harm from the experience was greatly overstated. In particular, they reported that 37 percent of boys who reported willing sexual experiences with adults recalled the experiences as positive, and a total of 66 percent experienced it as either positive or neutral. Girls, on the other hand, were more likely to respond negatively -- a finding that may upset some feminists but does not surprise Edmund White.

"I think boys can sail into and out of sexual experience with less psychological damage than girls," says White. "I think a woman talking about a 13-year-old boy having sex with a 30-year-old man will imagine a 13-year-old girl having sex with a 30-year-old man, and I do think that can be frightening. But a 13-year-old boy can be six-feet tall and have a 10-inch dick and be much stronger than the 30-year-old man."

The Rind article provoked an outcry against the American Psychological Association, which had published it in one of its journals. Talk-radio queen and moral crusader Laura Schlessinger blasted the study, the researchers and the association, on her show and in newspaper columns. "The problem for our children and families is the reverent way the media, law, theology and the general public react to so-called psychological scientific revelations," wrote Dr. Laura. "The public must be extremely cautious in accepting and relying upon papers that appear to counter common sense, fundamentals or morality, and long-term understanding of what is socially desirable and basically healthy for any individual."

In other words, if a scientific, peer-reviewed study offends Dr. Laura's sense of morality, or common sense as she defines it -- as the Rind study so obviously did -- everyone else should ignore it, too. Or, better yet, denounce it.

Like Mirkin and Levine, Rind and his coauthors were accused -- absurdly -- of seeking to legitimize pedophilia. A member of Congress even declared the study to be "the emancipation proclamation" of the pedophile movement. In fact, the outraged reaction actually obscured an important point: that many people who as adolescents have sexual relationships with adults don't actually require massive amounts of therapy to overcome the presumed trauma.

You'd think a study that revealed that something previously believed to be uniformly harmful left no apparent negative traces -- at least according to self-reports and standard measurements of psychological health -- would be welcomed. In a subsequent article, Rind traced the current approach to all forms of sex involving an adult and a non-adult to the early 1970s, when the feminist movement first focused societal attention on the real problems of rape and father-daughter incest. The template of coercive sex and the obvious resulting trauma became the prism through which all "age-discrepant sexual relationships" became viewed by both researchers and the larger society, argued Rind.

"Sexual phenomena that have only age-discrepancy in common with incest are reshaped in a narrow, rigid manner to fit the demands of the incest model," he wrote. "Media commentators conclude that willing sexual relations between adolescent boys and unrelated men are invariably profoundly damaging ... Professionals reject or distort data regarding these relations that are inconsistent with the incest stereotype, reaching instead the obligatory conclusion of pervasive harm."

For his part, Edmund White views American society's dogmatic attitudes about sex between men and adolescent boys as a way of dealing with vestigial homophobia now that garden-variety gays have been accepted as part of the general mix. "Gays have been domesticated," he says. "I think that 'Will and Grace' and all that has sufficed to turn adult gays who hang out with other adult gays into lovable sidekicks. They're acceptable as long as they have only one partner, are faithful to that partner and are law-abiding -- if they adopt one Korean girl, go to church and pay their taxes and don't do drugs."

But gays whose lifestyles fail to mimic those of the most staid and palatable straight folk, or those who are open and honest about their relationships with younger men, tap the homosexual dread that still exists in most people, adds White. That dread fuels the quick and dangerous labeling of these men as pedophiles. "They're the new pariahs," he says.

And the older straight woman who fulfills the fantasy of a teenage boy? In "Summer of '42," the widow Dorothy mysteriously disappears from the film after sleeping with the love-besotted Hermie. Were the movie a current hit -- "Summer of '02" -- we would have to presume that she had been locked up as a depraved child molester, never to prey again on an innocent 15-year-old boy.

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