At the extreme edge of youth rights

I don't regard Judith Levine's book as having been about "pedophilia." It largely focused on adolescent sexuality, while "pedophilia" is a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Thus, no matter how many times Bill O'Reilly applies the term to Debra Lafave or Keith Olbermann applies the term to Mark Foley, neither are "pedophiles." Foley is a homosexual, but is not attracted to prepubescent children.

That being said, I don't regard many of the objections to youth, (including both children and adolescents), as being especially valid, the reason for that being that I am a utilitarian. Note: As agonizing as it may be, think of Peter Singer. ;)

Hence, I would regard adult sexual relations with children and adolescents as being negative if they caused said children and adolescents to suffer. The common objections I hear of children and adolescents being unable to offer informed consent to sexual activity are somewhat irrelevant if "informed consent" is only regarded as a means to the end of utility maximization.

That being said, I also have problems with the studies that supposedly prove that long-term psychological harm is caused to children by sexual contact with adults, because many of those studies seem flawed in that they conflate samples of children that have been violently abused or coerced into sexual activity with children who offered what might be considered rudimentary "consent" to sexual activity, even if you believe that this consent is meaningless. They then draw conclusions based on the data they have acquired through the conflation of these two groups. To me, this is akin to mixing a bottle of beer with a bottle of raw sewage and then claiming that as the resulting combination is foul tasting and disgusting, beer must therefore be foul tasting and disgusting.

What is needed are studies that note the difference between the two forms of contact, and the one major analysis that attempted to research such studies, Rind et al., was shot down in a firestorm of political controversy.