That reminds me...

Of a segment I heard on NPR (National Public Radio) one evening. The reporter/essayist encountered a neighbor's child who was wandering the street. Upon his asking, the child indicated that her/his (I forget gender) mom had gone to the store and the door was locked. Being worried about the child, his instincts said he should take it home and leave a message on the mom's answering machine. However, as he contemplated the situation, he came to the conclusion that he would be opening himself up to baseless allegations or at least, to dangerous suspicion, and that the best course of action was to leave the child on the street.

The thrust of his essay being; Where have we come to, as a society, when it is necessary to choose whether to ignore an 'abandoned' child or to open oneself up to the possibility of suspicion, allegations, and perhaps even incarceration?

It seems that if you are a male 'stranger', any contact with children is generally presumed prurient unless proven otherwise - and good luck proving your motives are pure. So, if you actually are sexually attracted to children, I would imagine that those fears, precisely because they are irrational, could easily lead to allegations of inappropriate or indecent conduct, and that 'orientation' would provide circumstantial evidence in support of the allegations. Unfortunately, like obscenity, lewdness is defined through emotion rather than through logical reasoning.