Right. I'm all for forgiveness in the sense that of course I don't believe that a sex offender and his victim can't move beyond the crime. However, it is not up to individual victims of crimes to absolve criminals in a legal sense. Just because one woman is able to forgive the man who raped her, does not mean that the justice system should send the message that what happened is acceptable. I'm sure that there are many people capable of committing such a crime, who would be especially attuned to the Polanski case, who would love an excuse to act on their more anti-social impulses. We should not be making it harder for these people to do the right thing by sending them mixed signals.

And as for consent, yes, I am well aware of the fact that our society's ideas about what is and is not acceptable are not consistent with every societies' ideas. But that argument can be used to justify almost any act, and it's foolish to become a complete moral relativist on such a basis. We treat 13-year-olds like children in this country, and relative though that may be, we can't just turn around and change the laws to make them responsible for their actions, sexually or otherwise, as if they were adults. (If life expectancy were 45 and the average 15-year-old was finished with school and ready for the working life or child bearing, then maybe, but honestly I'm glad those days are behind us.) Childhood is a construction I'm pleased to preserve.