I believe it is frowned upon because often it does cause so many problems - read the accounts on Child Abuse forums where the posters explain their problems. I know it is difficult to assess the numbers for whom it was a problem and for those for whom it wasn't so it is not clear but the harms are quite serious for those who do see it as a problem. As with adults and children it often is a power issue of older and younger kids.

Trying to get information on intergenerational relationships in a general sense from Child Abuse forums is like trying to get objective, unbiased info about homosexuality from forums dedicated to Victims of Prison Rape. In all honesty, Lee, when you make statements revealing where you get much of your info from, it makes it difficult for us to take you seriously when you say that you have analyzed this topic with an open mind. There are many open-minded victims, but they do not tend to gravitate to these forums, since they are more about venting than seeking information, and such individuals are conditioned by their therapists, talk shows, and the media at large to cast aspersions on adult attraction to minors in general, rather than on the various power issues that cause abuse to occur. And these power issues are largely artificial in nature.

I doubt the clampdown on the Scandinavian countries at the end of the 1970's was coming from the US alone.

The sex abuse industry started in the U.S., and then quickly spread to Britain. It is mostly these two countries that put pressure on other countries to adopt their own policies, and completely wiped out the open-minded research that was capable of being conducted in the mid-1980s in places like the Netherlands by Theo Sandfort.

I'm probably not mixing in the right circles but I haven't seen any evidence for pre-pubescents campaigning for adult/child sexual relations to be made legal or non-paedophiles doing so.

Frankly, Lee, such statements as the above are extremely idiotic, because they are willful attempts to ignore the political reality that pre-pubescents and even adolescents live under today. They have virtually no civil rights at the present time. They are the property of other people, specifically their parents, and under the full control of their teachers while attending the modern totalitarian school system. They are deliberately kept apart from all forms of political influence; not allowed to network or associate with any unauthorized adult who may be able to provide them with such political influence or networking; no access to the media save for the emerging online system of socnet sites and video channels; and they have no right to assemble peaceably under their own volition for any type of controversial purpose. They would be dragged kicking and screaming from any such protest rally!

No minority group in history began advocating strictly by themselves, for themselves, when they were in a similar political situation. Do you seriously think in the pre-Civil War days in the U.S. you would see large numbers of black slaves walking around and picketing for equal rights on the plantations? Do you seriously think they could have gotten away with it if they actually tried to do this when they were the full property of the slavemasters? The great majority of black slaves back then didn't even view themselves as a distinct minority, because they were raised and conditioned from birth to view their servitude as part of the natural order of things (i.e., that it always had been that way, and simply always would be). The first to advocate for their freedom were the abolitionists, who were white, and who had the political influence and resources to help send them on the road to advocating for themselves. The same with the women's rights movement in its early days, as they often needed men in positions of influence to advocate on their behalf. And the same for the youth liberation movement of today, which is still just a decade and a half old at this writing--this is not a long period of time for an abolitionist movement to exist! A decade and a half is a miniscule span of time for a liberation movement of any kind.

However, black slaves would display their dislike for their situation in many semi-covert ways--e.g., by often ruining their masters' equipment or maiming their lifestock when the masters and their black "supervisors" were looking the other way. The same today, with underagers of every age group "acting out" by doing things like running away from home (similar to how black slaves would often try to run from the plantations), which accounts for the largest portion of the 100,000 underagers reported missing every year (and this includes children, not just adolescents); engaging in self-destructive behaviors in obvious rebellion against adult authority; attempting to find ways of earning money--both honestly and otherwise--behind the scenes from parents so as to establish degrees of economic independence; forming street gangs in attempts to establish power for themselves, which they lack in our present gerontocentric society, etc., et al. I even helped form such a gang before my high school years, which was common for young people to do in the urban neighborhoods I grew up in (thankfully, that gang quickly fell by the wayside).

Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet, you see younger people who are censored by their school newspapers given redress by some of the adult youth libbers who have the resources and influence to get their voice heard, like Michael Moore; you see tweens (pre-high school) and increasingly younger kids getting their voices out on socnet sites and video channels, and struggling against the administrative censoring (such as cancellation of their accounts and channels) when they do or say something "inappropriate" according to adult rules. As this technology becomes more common, you will likely see increasingly younger underagers making use of it this way, since it's already starting to happen.

Also, sexual rights are not the only rights that matter, and it won't be the only right you see increasingly younger people fighting for as time passes and more and more people gradually start supporting the youth lib movement. There is the important matter of voting rights (perhaps the most important right of them all), labor rights, free speech rights, freedom of association, educational rights, etc. It is natural that first older underagers in the 16-17 age bracket will be granted their rights, followed by younger adolescents, pubescents, and finally older children, culminating in older people of all age groups agreeing to advocate for the rights of those who truly cannot advocate for themselves in such a direct manner, such as toddlers (e.g., preventing them from being forced to go to church, or treated as property rather than as developing human beings by their various caregivers).