In discussing the agency of children in the context of this thread, I was reminded of the situation surrounding this photo of a 9 year old girl smoking a cigarette in a pool.

The subject of the photo is now grown, and has had a tough life. I think a lot of us could assess a situation where we see a child smoking and understand that there are a lot of factors going on in this kid's life that demonstrate she is not being given adequate protection and guidance by the adults around her.

Amanda, the now grown person in the photo, says something particularly heartbreaking

"When she came along and took those photos, I thought, 'Well, hey, people will see me and this may get me the attention that I want; it may change things for me,' " Ellison says. She thought someone would see the images and come rescue her. "I had thought that that might have been the way out. But it wasn't."

Many of us don't understand how the world works, how our bodies function, how marketing and advertising generate many of our wants and desires, but as a kid all of these things are even more unknown. This poor little person thought, at 9 years old, if people saw her they'd understand and help her. And instead she was just an accolade for someone else's career.

That's a big part of why there's no acceptable arena in which any -Philia associated with young people is acceptable. Ultimately this is an issue of all adults being ethically and morally responsible for the children they encounter developing into a capable adult.

When we're discussing the idea of adults having sex with children, there needs to be a fundamental respect for the concept that kids just don't know so many things, be it lack of experience, information, or capacity. Even in some sort of anarchist utopia, there would still be a responsibility for adults to respect the fact that they have advantages children don't, and that they have a profound ability to shape children into the adults they will become.

There is an implicit and explicit responsibility adults with adult capacities and understandings of the world have in enabling children to grow up into successful, healthy beings that can make their own decisions.

Sex with kids is a complete disregard for the responsibility grown people have to young people. There is no context where an adult interacts with kids and would not be someone in a position of trust or authority, I.e a coach, teacher, parent, friend of the family, pastor, etc. in all of those situations it would be abuse of hierarchy and power, even if we make a hypothetical concession that both the child and adult have a mutual attraction to one another.

Furthermore, in all of those situations it's not really beneficial for adults to be in sexual relationships with each other, which is why most work environments don't want managers dating employees, or even if you've graduated high school your "hot teacher" can't date you because of the implications of a whole lot of abuse of authority.

It frankly doesn't matter that a 15 year old boy might find his teacher attractive and want to sleep with her... That's an abuse of power and is completely counter productive to the educational environment.

The only people arguing that pedophilia should be acceptable are the older parties involved, there's no 12 year olds gathering together saying their rights are being denied because they can't hook up with their parents' friends. The one sidedness of the arguments should be a dead giveaway that it's a power-fetish apologist issue and not a real issue about the agency and rights of children and young people.