I have just removed my review for Charlotte's Web in protest

I have just removed my review for Charlotte's Web in protest of the decision by the movie's young star, Dakota Fanning, her mother Joy ,and agent Cindy Osbrink, to star in a movie that features the rape of her preteen character.

I will not name the movie. I will not see the movie. And I won't review another movie in which Dakota Fanning stars. Ever.

This movie isn't art, it isn't entertainment, it's pedophilia. And the fact that in real life children are raped is no argument for depicting it. It wouldn't hurt my feelings or slight my reverence for our First Amendment rights if the district attorney where those scenes were shot charged the producers of the movie with child abuse.

Dakota Fanning... who won't be 13 until February 2007... is hardly the first mainstream starlet to act in a movie that presents the sexual exploitation of children, but she's probably the youngest.

Brooke Shields was less than 15 when she was in the 1978 Pretty Baby, a movie wherein her character's virginity was auctioned off. Jodie Foster was about the same age when she played a teenage prostitute in Taxi Driver in 1976.

But there is a difference. Reportedly, Fanning is shown in the nude or scantily clad during the movie and during the rape itself her face is reportedly shown in close-up.

There's a second difference. Pretty Baby was banned in a number of countries, including Canada. Not even 30 years has passed, and Dakota Fanning's movie will be banned almost nowhere.

In other words, our morality and sense of outrage over the sexual exploitation of children has measurably declined. We ruffled our national feathers when Rep. Mark Foley sent salacious instant messages to young Congressional pages, but the depiction of the rape of a child brings an actor early Oscar attention. This is morally wrong.

Hollywood can't stop itself from producing these kinds of films. But Americans of normal sensibilities can respond by actively shunning them, their producers and the actors who star in them.

I hope you'll join me in doing so.