I'd have to say that the example is a telling one, because it's not obvious that there is anything like an epidemic or open season on relationships between 14-year-olds and 40-year-olds. People like to trot out that example as something unseemly because, I think many of us would agree, it is unseemly—perhaps not to those actually in the relationship, but many of us looking from the outside in might think it's unseemly and inappropriate.
The question is not, though, whether it's inappropriate. To my mind, the question is whether the criminal law should be brought to bear on the issue. When I think about it, I think, gee, aren't there a lot more troubling social issues out there where we actually know that there's a great deal of child exploitation, particularly in the area of abuse by persons in positions of trust, power, and authority? We know that the majority of child sexual abuse occurs within the family by somebody in a position of trust.
If attention is to be paid to this issue, why shouldn't it be paid to the area in which there actually is an epidemic, rather than this marginal issue, which seems to us to be an issue of moralizing, of concern over what kind and when children are having sex, rather than the actual predatory relationships that do exist that we know about, that we have statistics on? That's our position.