Re: A Question of Accountability
Submitted by Heather on December 11 2000 22:49:52
In reply to A Question of Accountability submitted by Triple Q on December 11 2000 22:09:48
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This is such a sad post that it's hard for me to respond to it with anything but sympathy for Christen. But do you mind if I refine what you said? Because it seems to me that you've failed to notice how widely applicable your words are. Let me just start by suggesting that we separate two issues which you have mixed. One is whether it is right for a minor-attracted adult to have sex with a child. You and I are in agreement on that issue. The other issue – the one that you raised in your post – is whether there is something inherently unfair to children about the fact that minor-attracted adults may be sexually attracted to them for only a short period. I remember a passage in C. S. Lewis in which he talks about a man who lost his attraction to his wife. Lewis's comment on this was: It is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion – as distinct from a transient fit of appetite – that it makes more towering promises than any other emotion. No doubt all our desires make promises, but not so impressively. To be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction that one will go on being in love until one dies . . . Unfortunately, these promises are found often to be quite untrue. Every experienced adult knows this to be so as regards all erotic passions (except the one he himself is feeling at the moment). We discount the world-without-end pretensions of our friends' amours easily enough. We know that such things sometimes last – and sometimes don't." What Lewis is suggesting, I think, is not that people who know that their sexual feelings are likely to die should never allow themselves to fall in love; rather, he is saying that people should realistically know that sexual passions don't always survive, and they should therefore make the founding stone of their relationships with other people something that is likely to last, such as loyalty and agape. So I'd like to echo what you say about accountability, but simply point out that everything you say is just as applicable to people who are attracted to adults. No one who finds himself attracted to another person can be sure that he will be attracted to that other person in twenty years' time. So all of us need to take that into account when making our decisions about how to act toward the person we've fallen in love with.
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