"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered (Long Post)

[MrMateo]

(from The Weekly Standard)

"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered
The taboo against sex with children continues to erode.
By Mary Eberstadt

Until very, very recently, public questioning of the social prohibition
against pedophiliaóto say nothing of positive celebration of child
molestationówas practically non-existent in American life. The reasons
why are not opaque. To most people, the very word "pedophilia" summons
forth a preternatural degree of horror and revulsion; and the criminal
law that reflects those reactions has consistently treated the sexual
molestation of minors as a serious and eminently punishable offense. So
it is small wonder that, historically speaking, the taboo against using
legal minors for sex was no more publicly controversial in the United
States than the prohibitions against, say, cannibalism or bestiality.
Those few partisans of the idea who did sometimes sally forth
customarily found themselves regarded as the lowest of the social low,
even by the criminal class.

This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and
adolescents, howeveróunlike those against, say, animal sex or incestóis
apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast
majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For
elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sexómore
accurately, man-boy sexóis now out in the open. Moreover, it is on
parade in a number of placesótherapeutic, literary, and academic
circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and
bookstoresówhere the mere appearance of such ideas would until recently
have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to
prosecution.

Dramatic though this turnaround may be, it did not happen overnight.
Four years ago in these pages, in an essay called "Pedophilia Chic," I
described in some detail a number of then-recent public challenges to
this particular taboo, all of them apparently isolated from one
another.1 Plainly, as the record even then showed, a surprising number
of voices were willing to rise up on behalf of what advocates refer to
as "man-boy love," or what most people call sexual abuse.

Yet while the examples themselves were easy enough to document, their
larger meaning seemed far from clear. Why, in a post-Cold War world
bursting with real political controversies, were some people intent on
insisting that the time had come to rethink an issue that most people
already vehemently, passionately, agreed about? And why was the taboo
against pedophilia under particular pressure in the mid-1990s, of all
timesóan interval when, readers will recall, public attention to the
sexual abuse of girl children had simultaneously reached an all-time
high? Perhaps, or so it seemed reasonable to speculate, all that really
lay behind these efforts was just that familiar postmodern idol, shock
value. Perhaps this "pedophilia chic," I guessed then, was simply "the
last gasp of a nihilism that has exhausted itself by chasing down every
other avenue of liberation, only to find one last roadblock still
manned by the bourgeoisie."

Four-plus years and many other challenges to the same taboo later, it
is clear that this hypothesis got something wrong. For one thing, no
sustained public challenges have arisen over other primal taboos. Even
more telling, if nihilism and nihilism alone were the explanation for
public attempts to legitimize sex with boy children, then we would
expect the appearance of related attempts to legitimize sex with girl
children; and these we manifestly do not see.2 Nobody, but nobody, has
been allowed to make the case for girl pedophilia with the backing of
any reputable institution. Publishing houses are not putting out
acclaimed anthologies and works of fiction that include excerpts of men
having sex with young girls. Psychologists and psychiatrists are not
competing with each other to publish studies demonstrating that the
sexual abuse of girls is inconsequential; or, indeed, that it ought not
even be defined as "abuse."

Two examples from the last few weeks will suffice to show the double
standard here. In the November 12 New York Times Book Review, a writer
found it unremarkable to observe of his subject, biographer Gavin
Lambert, that when "Lambert was a schoolboy of 11, a teacher initiated
him [into homosexuality], and he 'felt no shame or fear, only
gratitude.'" It is unimaginable that New York Times editors would allow
a reviewer to describe an 11-year-old girl being sexually "initiated"
by any adult (in that case, "initiation" would be called "sexual
abuse"). Similarly, in mid-December the New York Times Magazine
delivered a cover piece about gay teenagers in cyberspace which was so
blasÈ about the older men who seek out boys in chat rooms that it
dismissed those potential predators as mere "oldies." Again, one can
only imagine the public outcry had the same magazine published a story
taking the same so-what approach to online solicitation, off-line
trysts, and pornography "sharing" between anonymous men and underage
girls.

No: As was true four years ago, contemporary efforts to rationalize,
legitimize, and justify pedophilia are about boys. Forget about
abstractions like nihilism; what the record shows is something more
prosaic. The reason why the public is being urged to reconsider boy
pedophilia is that this "question," settled though it may be in the
opinions and laws of the rest of the country, is demonstrably not yet
settled within certain parts of the gay rights movement. The more that
movement has entered the mainstream, the more this "question" has
bubbled forth from that previously distant realm into the public
square. It should go without saying, though under the circumstances it
cannot, that many, many leaders and members of that movement draw a
firm line at consenting adults, want no part of any such "debate," and
are in fact disgusted and appalled by it. Then there are other opinions.

I

Let us begin with one recent public challenge to the taboo against
pedophilia that did garner the public attention it deserved, albeit
belatedly, and which demonstrates both the boy-specific character of
today's revisionism and the gulf between popular and other views of the
subject. This was the episode that began with the publication in July
1998 of an essay in the American Psychological Association's (APA)
prestigious Psychological Bulletin called "A Meta-Analytic Examination
of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples" and
co-authored by Bruce Rind (Temple University), Robert Bauserman
(University of Michigan), and Philip Tromovitch (University of
Pennsylvania).

The density of its professional jargon and 30-plus pages aside, the
argument of "Meta-Analytic" was straightforward enough: that the common
belief that "child sexual abuse causes intense harm, regardless of
gender" was not supported by the studies the authors cited; that, to
the contrary, "negative effects [of child sexual abuse] were neither
pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less
negatively than women." The article also criticized the "indiscriminate
use of this term [child sexual abuse] and related terms such as victim
and perpetrator," suggesting instead that the child's feelings about
sex acts with adults should be taken into account, and that "a willing
encounter with positive reactions would be labeled simply adult-child
sex."

What was equally radical about "Meta-Analytic," though less discussed
at the time, was its specific comparison of pedophilia to "behaviors
such as masturbation, homosexuality, fellatio, cunnilingus, and sexual
promiscuity." All such, the authors noted, "were codified as
pathological in the first edition of the American Psychiatric
Association's (1952) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders"; and all are so codified no more. What this analogy tacitly
suggested, of course, was the assurance that pedophilia, too, would
someday take its place at the liberationist table. In the meantime, as
the authors put it, "This history of conflating morality and law with
science in the area of human sexuality by psychologists and others
indicates a strong need for caution in scientific inquiries of sexual
behaviors that remain taboo, with child sexual abuse being a prime
example [emphasis added]."

As MIT psychologist G.E. Zuriff observed later in an essay for the
Public Interest, "It is not difficult to see how these ideas would
antagonize not only Dr. Laura [Schlessinger] but the public at large."
For although the incendiary potential of asking people to give
pedophilia a second look may or may not have been grasped by the APA
authorities who accepted the article for publication, no such ambiguity
marked the reaction of the lay public. Most people were made aware
of "Meta-Analytic" in March 1999, when Schlessinger devoted the first
of two radio talks to attacking the article, and their own livid view
of the matter was made known in the course of a multi-dimensional
public uproar that took months to die down. The denouement was a series
of unusual events, including a public castigation of the American
Psychological Association by majority whip Tom DeLay; a House vote to
condemn the "Meta-Analytic" essay itself (355-0, with 13 abstentions);
and a highly unusual public rejection by the APA of the piece's
conclusions, along with a promise to acquire an independent evaluation
of the article.

In retrospect, there were two significant and little-noticed facts in
all this. One was not so much the schism that this controversy revealed
between elite-therapeutic and popular thinking about pedophilia, but
rather that the schism itself had gone unnoticed for so long. For
shocking though it may have been to the general public, "Meta-Analytic"
was in fact only the latest in a very long series of professional
attempts to revise therapeutic conceptions of boy pedophilia, attempts
of which most lay readers remain quite ignorant.

Professionals in the field know better. Fifteen years ago, for example,
in his careful research volume Child Sexual Abuse, noted authority
David Finkelhor was already drawing attention to the "body of opinion
and research [that] has emerged in recent years which is trying hard to
vindicate homosexual pedophilia." To read Finkelhor's sources on the
subjectóor, for that matter, to read the notes in the heavily
sourced "Meta-Analytic" itselfóis to see exactly what he means. In
their call to redefine "abuse" as "contact," for example, Rind,
Bauserman, and Tromovitch were merely resurrecting research and
conceptual work stretching back over two decades; similarly, their
distinctions between boys' and girls' supposed experiences of abuse
have a pedigree that begins with Kinsey and branches out dramatically
in professional publications of the last 25 years. The authors of "Meta-
Analytic" may have made their points boldly enough to get noticed; but
that is the only academic novelty to which they could truly lay claim.
The real news about the normalization of pedophilia displayed in "Meta-
Analytic" was that nothing about it was conceptually new.

The second peculiarity of the outrage over "Meta-Analytic," which also
went unnoticed at the time, was that it was not, in fact, universally
shared. The notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA),
predictably enough, cheered the study as "good news." Less explicable
was the reaction within the gay press, which not only failed to
distance its movement from the study, but went on to excoriate the
APA's critics (particularly Laura Schlessinger). This was the same
approach taken, independently, by at least two mainstreamóand
relatively conservativeógay journalists.

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, prominent author and activist
Andrew Sullivan complained about the "sour reception" that had greeted
the study. After all, he wrote, Rind et al. had found that "lasting
psychological trauma among adult survivors of abuse, particularly for
men, was much less than feared." This, according to Sullivan, should
be "a reason for relief." Instead, and what he evidently found
disagreeable, "outraged members of the religious right accused the APA
of tolerating pedophilia" and "launched a crusade to punish the
organization." He concluded sarcastically: "That'll teach them to look
on the bright side."

Another writer outraged over the outrage about "Meta-Analytic" was
respected reporter and political analyst Jonathan Rauch. In his
commentary on the controversy published in the National Journal, Rauch
roundly defended the study. It was the critics of the "Meta-Analytic"
piece, Rauch wrote, who were "turning out stomach-churning stuff." The
vote in Congressóas opposed, say, to what Rind et al. had writtenó
was "faintly sinister." Like the authors of the piece itself, Rauch
advocated that, in the name of "science," researchers should "abandon
the current custom of referring to all adult sexual encounters with
minors, regardless of the circumstances, as 'child sexual abuse,'"
because they could "perform finer-grained analyses if they used 'abuse'
to denigrate injurious or unwilling encounters. Other encounters,"
Rauch echoed, "could be called 'adult-child sex' or 'adult-adolescent
sex.'"

To his credit, Rauch did report that "in 1989, when he was 23 and just
out of college, Bauserman [one of the Meta-Analytic authors] published
a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward man-boy sexual
relations in a Dutch journal called Paidika." This journal, in Rauch's
description, "had taken pro-pedophilia stands"ósomething which he
admitted "raises red flags."

But at the same time Rauch, like Sullivan, avoided the real issue at
handóthat "Meta-Analytic" quite obviously aimed at de-stigmatizing boy
pedophilia itself. Even more startling, though, was his bland depiction
of Paidika. This is not exactly a journal in which pro-pedophile ideas
have somehow surfaced accidentally. It is a publication dedicated to
the phenomenon of "boy-loving," the most prominent such "scholarly
journal" in the world, whose long-time editor, the late Edward
Brongersma, was a convicted pedophile as well as the author of a two-
volume pedophile classic, Loving Boys. (To describe this as a journal
which "had taken pro-pedophilia stands" is akin to describing The
Weekly Standard as a magazine where conservative arguments have
reportedly appeared.) And, of course, the qualifier "23 and just out of
college" served to soften Bauserman's earlier appearance in Paidika,
suggesting it was an excess of youth.

Both Sullivan and Rauch are not only prominent gay journalists but also
leading proponents of the worldview to which the gay rights movement
owes much of its recent and stunning political successóthe argument
that, as Sullivan's Virtually Normal puts it, "homosexuals . . . have
the equivalent emotional needs and temptations of heterosexuals." Both
writers are also members of the Independent Gay Forum, an institution
aimed at "forging a mainstream identity"; and both have frequently
broken ranks with the leftists and radicals who dominate gay activism.
That two such mainstream authors should mock the public outcry against
that APA article illustrates something noteworthy: that in place of a
social consensus against pedophilia per se, a separate optionócall it
anti-anti-pedophiliaóappears to have taken root. According to that
view, the problem is less sex with minors than the people who declare
themselves against itóDr. Laura fans, congressmen, dissident
therapists, religious types, and anyone else who does not grasp the
necessity of putting words like "child sexual abuse" in quotes.

II

In some of the clinical and therapeutic literature on pedophilia, it
has become customary to distinguish between "ephebophilia," or sexual
attraction to postpubescent children and teenagers, and "pedophilia"
proper, meaning attraction to prepubescent children. Both forms are
exhibited more than occasionally in another part of the written world,
namely gay fiction. "Fiction" here emphatically does not mean
pornography as such, but the kind of literature authored by self-
consciously gay writers, published by reputable houses, and reviewed
respectfully in the mainstream press. Again, it must be emphasized that
numerous gay authors of note do not positively portray sex between
adults and minors, and ipso facto are not part of this discussion.

Plenty of authors do cross the line, though. "Gay fiction," Philip
Guichard complained in an article for the Village Voice last
summer, "is rich with idyllic accounts of 'intergenerational
relationships,' as such affairs are respectfully called these days."
Over four years ago, "Pedophilia Chic" quoted passages from the works
of several acclaimed authorsóincluding Edmund White, the late Paul
Monette, and Larry Kramerówhich frankly and often sympathetically
portrayed men seeking and having sex with underage boys. Today there
are many more such examples to be found in gay fiction, all verifiable
by a trip to the local chain bookstore.

Last year, for example, St. Martins Press published a novel called The
Coming Storm by Paul Russell, a professor of English at Vassar and the
author of three previously well-received works of fiction. The drama of
this tale revolves around something that remains an imprisonable
offense in almost every stateóa sexual "affair" between a troubled 15-
year-old boy (Noah) and his 25-year-old gay boarding school teacher
(Tracy). (The age of 15, incidentally, is no definitive limit in
Russell's narrative. In the course of the book, Tracy also fantasizes
about 14-year-old boys.)

The Coming Storm became the object of effusive praise by award-winning
reviewer Dennis Drabelle in the Washington Post Book World (August 15,
1999). The Coming Storm, Drabelle enthused, "takes off from a
sensational subjectóforbidden sexualityóto arrive at unexpected heights
and subtleties." It "persuades the reader" that "the sexual
relationship between Noah and Tracy is not only not harmful to either
but a boon to the precocious junior partner, who becomes a better, more
engaged student after the affair gets under way." What is "troublesome"
about the book, according to Drabelle, is not that anyone
is "corrupted" by what happens ("no one is"), but that "it is apt to be
stereotyped, not least by the legal system that makes it a crime
[emphasis added]."

This cheerleading for the sexual molestation of teenagers in the Sunday
pages of one of the country's major newspapers did not pass without
comment. One reader berated Drabelle in the letters column
for "strongly implying that child abuse, when it takes place between
two males, should no longer be viewed by the public as either a social
offense or a crime."3 Yet as even a partial survey of related
literature shows, what is truly anomalous about this caseóof a
mainstream reviewer in a mainstream family newspaper ratifying sex
between grown men and boysówas that anyone bothered to be bothered
about it at all. Other writers, including prominent writers among them,
have gone further still, and with even less consequence.

Consider David Leavitt, one of the best known of contemporary gay
authors, whose numerous novels and short stories, among them The Lost
Language of Cranes and, most recently, Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing,
are routinely reviewed in the better journals and magazines. In fact,
it would be hard to think of a gay fiction writer more consistently
represented in mainstream publishing.

For that reason, it is all the more surprising to read what this
ostensibly mainstream author chose to write in his introduction to the
equally mainstream Penguin Book of International Gay Writing (1995,
edited by Mark Mitchell). There, in the course of describing what the
anthology includes, Leavitt notes matter-of-factly
that "Another 'forbidden' topic from which European writers seem less
likely to shrink is the love of older men for young boys." He then
draws attention to one particular book excerpted in the volume, When
Jonathan Died, by Tony Duvert. "The coolly assured narrative" of this
work, Leavitt informs, "compels the reader to imagine the world from a
perspective he might ordinarily condemn." Duvert, writes
Leavitt, "offers us a homosexual Lolitaóone in which the child is
seducer as much as seduced."

The object of this praise by one of America's leading gay novelists,
appearing in one of publishing's most prestigious book series, is the
tale of a man and boy who are living together in Italy. The scene
selected is sexually graphic. And the age of this child, whom Leavitt
considers "seducer as much as seduced"? He isópage 427 in the hard
cover editionó"hardly seven."

Another seemingly representative collection of gay literature, this one
on the shelf at Barnes & Noble and also apparently selling without
comment, is The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read, an
Anchor Book published by Doubleday in 1998. Its editor/author, Robert
Drake, is a novelist and editor of other anthologies who has won the
Lambda Literary Award. Like the Penguin anthology edited by Leavitt,
Drake's book too strives for canonical status, aspiring to offer a
roadmap to the most important texts of gay history.

As it turns out, several of the texts that editor Drake thought worth
including feature scenes of man-boy sexóagain, what most of the rest of
the public calls abuse or molestation. One work is something called The
Carnivorous Lamb by Agustin Gomez-Arcos, described as a book about an
incestuous relationship between a boy and his older brother (to
Drake, "the best, most complex yet satisfying novel of filial love ever
written"). Another text, this one by writer Matthew Stadleródescribed
as the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for his first novelóis
called The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee. This book, says editor
Drake, "is an operatic adventure into the realms of love, personality,
ambition and art . . . a pure joy to read." Its protagonist is "a
pedophile's dream: the mind of a man in the body of a boy." Drake also
excerpts and discusses William S. Burroughs's nightmarish The Wild
Boys: A Book of the Dead, the pederastic violence of which defies
description. Yet this work, according to Drake, "tears straight to the
heart of one of the greatest sources, community-wide, of 1990s gay
angst: What to do with men who love boys?"4

Still another example of how standards are being lowered by a major
publisher and respected writeróthis one from academia and available at
Bordersóis A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, published
in 1998 by Yale University Press. This book, "the first full-scale
account of gay male literature, across cultures, languages and from
ancient times to the present," is authored by Gregory Woods, described
on the jacket as "the foremost gay poet working in Britain today." It
includes a longish chapter on "Boys and Boyhood" which is a seemingly
definitive account of pro-pedophile literary works, ranging over texts
from the platonic Death in Venice to the noir likes of the
aforementioned Tony Duvert. Nothing is questioned, much less condemned,
in the course of Woods's account of these works. The only moral
ambiguity that occurs to him concerns not the boy but the man in the
equation. Woods concludes: "By playing [i.e., having sex] with boys,
the man remains boyish. Whether you regard this as a way of retreating
from life or, on the contrary, as a way of engaging with it at its most
honest and least corrupted level, depends on which writer you consult
at any given time [emphasis added]."

III

As for the related matter of gay non-fiction, here too, judging by the
public domain, the subject of boy pedophilia has a manifest niche.

One book only recently available in the "gay studies" section of a
Borders in downtown D.C., for example, is a peculiar classic of a sort
entitled Male Inter-Generational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-
Psychological, and Legal Perspectives, edited by the aforementioned
pedophile icon Edward Brongersma and two colleagues. This book,
according to one of its jacket endorsements, "shed[s] critical light on
the broad spectrum of man-boy love and its place in ancient and
contemporary societies." In other words, it is a series of briefs using
scientistic polemics in an effort to rationalize the sexual molestation
of boy children. The article abstracts speak for themselves.
("Pedophilia is always considered by mainstream society as one form of
sexual abuse of children. However, analysis of the personal accounts
provided by pedophiles suggests that these experiences could be
understood differently." "The incidence of violence is very low in
pedophile contacts with boys. The influence can be strong in lasting
relationships; it can either be wholesome or unwholesome." And so on.)

Of course, this opus that "gay studies" bookshelves now reserve space
for did not spring from nowhere. The book itself grew out of two issues
of the American Journal of Homosexuality (Vol. 20, Nos. 1/2, 1990)
dedicated to the pondering of "male inter-generational love." Here
again, an ostensibly mainstream gay vehicle was put to the service of
advocating pedophilia. In fact, the case of the Journal of
Homosexuality is particularly interesting as a case study of how a
pernicious idea can spread. The editor of this reputable gay journal,
John P. DeCecco, is a psychologist at San Francisco State University.
DeCecco is favorably quoted in the introduction to Male Inter-
Generational Intimacy for having praised the "enormously nurturant
relationship" that can result from pedophile-boy contact. DeCecco is
also on the editorial board of Paidika.

As one would expect, such cross-pollination in gay fiction and
criticism is verifiable many times over via the inhuman efficiencies of
cyber-correlation. It was not immediately obvious, for exampleóin fact,
it came as a surpriseóthat typing "Paidika" into an ordinary search
engine would turn up a reference to Gay Men's Press bestsellers; but it
did not take long to see why. For one of the books on the Gay Men's
Press bestseller list turns out to be Dares to Speak: History and
Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love, edited by Joseph Geracióall of
whose chapters but one appeared originally in Paidika itself. Another
book on the same bestseller list is Some Boys, described as a "memoir
of a lover of boys" that "evokes the author's young friends across four
decades and as many continents." Another on the same list is For a Lost
Soldier by Rudi van Dantzig, advertised as involving sex between an 11-
year-old boy and a Canadian soldier in Holland in 1944. There are more.

Surfing also makes plain that the better-known gay organizations, all
of whom stand dead set against any conflation of homosexuality and
pedophilia, are nonetheless sending mixed messages about what is and is
not off-limits for the underage. Most of them, for instance, now
have "youth sections" on their websites for and about legal minors. The
justification for this heightened attention to the young is to
ameliorate the angst of gay teenagers. At the risk of stating the
obvious, though, it is hard to see how this purpose is served by
encouraging boys to act and think sexually at ever younger ages, which
is an all but unavoidable side effect of the type of "outreach" these
sites engage in.

Consider, for example, the website of PFLAG (Parents, Families and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays), one of the more respected gay rights
organizations in the country. It is just a click of the mouse from
PFLAG's "useful links" to a site where one can read the "coming-out"
stories of children aged 10, 11, and 12. Similarly, the "youth" section
of GLAAD's publication list (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)
simply assumes that minors are sexually autonomousóand active. One
piece ("Landmark Survey Shows Gay Youth Coming Out Earlier than Ever")
notes approvingly that most children now "realize" their orientation at
age 12. Another piece, "Lesbian and Gay Youth Find Safe Place in
Cyberspace," counsels: "Don't believe much of the hype about how
cyberspace is populated with pedophiles." These citations are taken
from just the first two pages of GLAAD's 15-page list of publications
for and about "gay youth."

At OutProudóanother site recommended and linked by leading gay
organizationsóvisitors are routed to a comic strip called "Queer Boys."
It features two boys who are said to be 16 and look younger. They set
off for Manhattan ("Let's run away to New York, where it's safe to be
Queer!!" "Kewl!"), where they triumph over evildoers (i.e., parents and
reparative therapists) and find happiness at last thanks to the
habituÈs of a bar in the West Village. ("A gay rock club! That's so
cool! Damn! I wish we were old enough to get in!!" says one of the
boys. "Damn those politicians! Damn them all to hell!!" replies the
other.)

For a final example of how pedophilia is being defined down, consider
XY magazineówhich would doubtless have run afoul of the obscenity laws
until very recently. Started just four years ago, XY is now, according
to its founder and publisher Peter Ian Cummings, the "third largest gay
magazine in the U.S., selling over 60,000 copies per year and hav[ing]
more than 200,000 readers." (These numbers are unaudited, but would put
XY on a par with the Advocate in circulation, though lower than Out
magazine's 120,000.) Cummings also reports that "you can find XY on
sale in Borders, Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, B. Dalton, Barnes &
Noble, Waldenbooks, and many others."

What gives XY its unprecedented niche is that here, for the first time,
is a mass-market magazine "officially targeted toward 12-29 year old
young gay men," every issue of which, as one admiring journalist puts
it, "features scantily clad young men in several photo spreads and on
the cover." Then there is the non-photo content. The first issue was
stamped "Underage." Another issue included a sympathetic pro-and-con
interview with a prominent member of NAMBLA. An article in another
issue was titled "Fó the Age of Consent." There is also a smattering of
self-help that can only make minors easier to findófor example, advice
about what kids should do if their parents install a filtering system
that prevents them from reaching gay cyberspace (answer: get around it).

In sum, if one had taken on the challenge of designing a magazine for
pedophiles, it would probably look a lot like XY, which is why its
market niche and evident reader support invite reflection. So too, for
obvious reasons, does the public (gay) reaction to all this. On the one
hand, Out magazine referred to XY's debut as a "dubious achievement"
and suggested that it was equivalent to child pornography. Similarly,
Philip Guichard complained in his Village Voice piece (headlined "I
Hate Older Men"): "Mainstream gay culture dresses up its kiddie porn in
a pretense of serving teens. As nice as it is to believe that magazines
like XY and Joey [a recent competitor] are actually consumed by gay
teens, it's obvious to me that the shirtless kids in provocative poses
who fill their glossy pages are there for older men." What's more, XY's
publisher has complained of "pedophobia" on the part of his gay
critics; and most advertisers, by Cummings's account, including those
popular with the male gay market (Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch,
the Gap), have demurred from buying space in its pages. Apparently, the
fear of supporting child sex, or the fear of appearing to do soóor bothó
remain potent corporate motivators.5

At the same time, however, to judge by the endorsements on XY's
website, numerous other observers have weighed in favorably. The San
Francisco Examiner says that of all magazines, XY is "the one most on
the cutting edge of change." The Ft. Lauderdale Express Gay News calls
it "the most courageous magazine in America." The general-interest
entertainment guide Time Out New York observes that "XY has boldly
established itself as a unique publication that tackles sex, romance,
and other issues facing gay teens and men." But perhaps the most
accurate indication of XY's community standing comes from the business
publication Advertising Age, which noted: "XY is playing a significant
role in mainstream online media. . . . The magazine's site can be
accessed directly via America Online, and the magazine is also
providing content to the 'youth channel' on PlanetOut.com." This
success is a sign of the times. Some of the largest and most respected
gay organizations in the country now list XY, of all things, as
a "resource" for gay youthóthis, alongside a burgeoning number of
websites also aimed at minors and replete with personal ads, chat
rooms, "pen pals," and other forms of anonymous contact rife with the
potential for subterfuge.

IV

It is tempting to throw up one's hands on reading a litany like this
one, and to blame it all on our anything-goes postmodern life. But this
is determinism masquerading as pessimism, and a determinism that does
not fit the facts. Today's pressures to normalize pedophilia are not
the result of some omnipotent and unstoppable taboo-devouring social
and moral juggernaut; they are occurring one bookstore, one magazine,
one publisher and advertiser, one author and editor and consumer at a
time. Case by case, given a more enlightened public, it is not hard to
imagine these decisionsólike the one that led to Penguin's putting its
imprimatur on a pedophilic sex scene, or like the misguided efforts by
some gay organizations to refer teens to unsavory and perhaps even
unsafe websitesóbeing made otherwise. Such a turnaround is particularly
imaginable in the case of chain bookstore merchandisers, who routinely
place pro-pedophile works on the gay-interest shelvesóa phenomenon that
thoughtful movement activists must find outrageous.

It would help immensely if those members of the gay rights movement who
have not realized what is being committed in their nameóalong with
those who do realize what is going on, and who deplore itójoin forces
against this trend. Here too, one can imagine progress being made;
decent people, by definition, tend ultimately to do what decency
requires. When "Pedophilia Chic" appeared four years ago, for example,
a poignant response soon came from Paul W. Simmons, the political
director of the Log Cabin Republicans in Houston. He feared that the
piece would leave readers with the "erroneous impression that the gay
male community endorses sexual exploitation of adolescent males." The
letter continued: "Unfortunately, the homosexual community's political
leadership, which is dominated by radical leftists, has failed to
denounce loudly the North American Man-Boy Love Association and other
nefarious groups. But on this issue, as with many others, the
leadership is removed from the constituency it purports to serve. For a
sizable majority of gay men, sexual relations with children are viewed
as morally appalling, and the adult practitioners of it are seen as
pathological deviants."

These are words with which any reasonable person will agree. They also
raise the question of whyóparticularly in light of the astonishing
political and social victories of the last several yearsóleaders of
that movement have not been more scrupulous about some of its ranks.

In an interesting pro-movement 1996 book, Perfect Enemies: The
Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s,
authors John Gallagher and Christopher Bull propose an answer of sorts
to this question. Most national gay groups, they note, opted for
respectability as the movement grew, particularly by passing
resolutions denouncing NAMBLA and all it stood for. At the same time,
according to the authors, pedophilia advocates did enjoy lingering
protection among parts of the movement because "many thoughtful
activists who opposed NAMBLA's goals could not escape the suspicion
that to denounce the organization would be to mimic society's
condemnation of their own sexual orientation."

Whatever its origins, the reluctance by some activists to draw such
lines means this: Today, instead of standing foursquare with the rest
of the public against this evil, the gay rights movement appears
divided. A few proclaim boys to be sexual fair game. Influential others
disavow pedophilia per se, but tolerate its advocacy on grounds of
political solidarity with persecuted groups. Still others, in the
relatively new development noted earlier, appear to have opted for a
kind of anti-anti-pedophilia, according to which the "real" problems
for the movement are somehow Dr. Laura and the religious right, rather
than the facts to which such critics draw attention: e.g., that efforts
are being made to destigmatize the sexual exploitation of boy children;
or that positive portrayals of "inter-generational sex," which are
extremely rare in the rest of the culture, are not rare in gay
literature and journalism. And, once again obviously, there are the
many, many other peopleórepresentative of that "sizable majority" of
which the Log Cabin Republican wroteówho must be as distressed by such
advocacy as he is, but appear undecided what to do about it.

Today's gay rights advocates preside over what is probably the single
most successful domestic political movement of the post-Cold War era.
The sine qua non of its dramatic advance has been the tolerance of the
civic majority, for whom the movement's most stirring appealsóto equity
and fair treatment and "a place at the table," as Bruce Bawer put itó
have turned out to resonate more deeply than even most activists could
have imagined. This is not to say that public unanimity reigns here,
any more than it does over the agendas of other special interest
groups. Reasonable people, both inside and outside of the gay rights
movement, disagree in good faith on profound pointsófrom the
interpretation of Judeo-Christian teachings, to the implications of
civil unions, to the appropriate public health measures in the wake of
AIDS, to the judicial propriety of hate-crime laws.

But it is not and will not be the case that this same tolerance can be
parlayed into support for predators. About pedophilia there remains one
and only one proposition that commands public assent. It is this: If
the sexual abuse of minors isn't wrong, then nothing is.

1These included, among other events and soundings, a much-publicized
Calvin Klein ad campaign that paid homage to the conventions of child
pornography; the publication by a reputable publisher, Prometheus
Books, of a book advocating "intergenerational intimacy," i.e.
pedophilia; a still-notorious piece in the May 8, 1995, New Republic
praising NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, for
its "bravery" and suggesting that we lower the age of consent for boys;
a sympathetic profile in Vanity Fair of a convicted child pornography
trafficker; a sympathetic profile of a pedophile in a celebrated book
by author Edmund White; and a review of the writings of several
prominent gay authors, all published and acclaimed in mainstream
circles, whose books featured sex scenes between men and underage boys.
Literary critic Bruce Bawer was a minority voice objecting to the
latter trend. See "Pedophilia Chic," The Weekly Standard, June 17, 1996.

2The antinomian and arguably malignant exercise of Nabokov's Lolita,
written 45 years ago, has not only not been surpassed, but remains so
controversial today that the latest Hollywood version of the story was
not even released in movie theaters in the United States.

3In response, Drabelle wrote that he "supported the laws that protect
children from the sexual advances of predatory adults," that nothing in
his review "says or implies otherwise," and that the reader
is "entitled to his opinion" about whether "any such affair would
inexorably result in wreckage."

4Drake's own answer: "Even as the homo culture of this fin de siËcle
seeks to puritanically clamp down on boy-love advocates, it riddles
itself with a fixation on lithe, boyish sexuality and smooth-chested
youthful attractivenessóand the perpetration of same as the physical
and erotic ideal apparent in clubs, online profiles, porn films and
mainstream advertisements. It is nothing more than blatant hypocrisy."

5According to the publisher, Virgin records, Tower Records, and Smith
Kline Beecham have been among XY's few paid advertisers.

Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

[Johnny Anonymous]

Fascinating article, and extremely insightful. I had already read elsewhere
that one of the authors of the infamous APA report was actually a closet
pedophile. Its interesting that one of the psychological trademarks of
pedophiles is "cognitive distortion", in which they twist reality in order
tojustify their manipualtive, destructive behavior and be able to live with
themselves. Hence the extremely self-serving and specious Meta-Analytic
report to the APA.

Its a shame so much of the (vocal) gay community seems committed to
knee-jerk anti-anti-pedophilia, thereby giving these monsters the illusion
of "support". I also wonder how much of the anti-anti hysteria is born of
insecurity. While I believe some people are "born" gay, I think others end
up "being" gay simply because an adult got ahold of them early and screwed
with them, both mentally as well as physically. It probably forces a lot of
men (and women) to consider whether or not they "chose" their orientation or
whether it was thrust upon them (no pun intended). I don't know many women
who considered being molested by a 35 year old man when they were 12 a
positive thing, and, as a human being, I refuse to believe that girls and
boys are so radically different that being manipulated and exploited is less
harmful to one than it would be the other.

The really disgusting thing, though, is how these guys try and pass
themselves off as role models and father figures to these hapless children.
Pedophiles prey on the offspring of negligent parents or over-stressed
single-parent families, and often the kids have some kind of learning
diability or social anxiety problem as well. The pedophile's thought process
seems to be: "These people don't give a shit about their kid already. What
difference does it make it make? Besides, by the time they figure out what
I'm doing, if they figure it out at all, they'll feel so guilty about
handing the kid over to me, they'll be afraid to press charges, because I
can always say they were in on it." Sexual politics aside, pedophiles are
no different than the criminal sociopaths who prey on fraile old ladies by
pretending to resurface their driveways or fix their roof.. Pedophilia is
not a "lifestyle choice" or an "orientation"; it's a crime.

[Hester Mofet]

Johnny Anonymous wrote:

>I don't know many women
>who considered being molested by a 35 year old man when they were 12 a
>positive thing, and, as a human being, I refuse to believe that girls and
>boys are so radically different that being manipulated and exploited is less
>harmful to one than it would be the other.

The thing is, if the girl sought out sex, is it still molestation if she was
12?15?17?

Hester Mofet

[phoenix]

john...@butterfly.net

Your well thought out opinion was fwd to many groups.

AC
========================

MrMateo <hou...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:93j700$2k5$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <93ihd1$jsa$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>,
> "jc" <jcfa...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Shut up shut up shut up!
>
> Yes! Shut up! JC cannot handle the truth!
>
> Too bad.
>
> > Homosexuals are not pedophiles!
> > The vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual. Even the
> > men who molest members of the same-sex--they claim they are
> > straight.
> > And guess about the majority of rapes committed ...
> > gay rights has nothing to do with pedophilia.
> > gay rights is a *human* rights issue. It is not considered
> > a human right to molest a child or anyone.
> > Don't you people have anything better to do than litter
> > newsgroups with such drivel? Why not start your own group:
> > "Anti-Prozacians Unite Against Everybody." Oh, and better
> > make that a support group.
> > jc
> >
> > "phoenix" <NoDeathThreatsPlease@fromDrugZombies----------->
> > wrote in message news:93i8ig$tpu$0...@pita.alt.net...
> > >
> > > Johnny Anonymous <john...@butterfly.net> wrote in message
> > > news:3A5C9C16...@butterfly.net...

[Kevin Burnett]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:06:06 -0600, Dog3 <Do...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>"Hester Mofet" <demo...@aol.comsnitfit> wrote in message
>news:20010110184543...@ng-cg1.aol.com...

>Same with boys. I'm not saying it's right for an adult to act upon this but
>if a child is seeking out sex, should it be considered molestation? Gawd,
>in some cultures young girls are married off at 10 to 12 years of age.

I have a hard time believing that a 10-year-old would "seek out" sex.

--
Kevin Burnett http://www.catnip.org/

[Lars Eighner]

In our last episode, <slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net>,
the lovely and talented Kevin Burnett
broadcast on alt.true-crime:

KB> I have a hard time believing that a 10-year-old would "seek out"
KB> sex.

I did. You must be new here. Those who have heard this before can
go to the next post.

When I was 9, I was 6'1" and having to shave at least every other day.
(I ended up at 6'3", the shortest man in my family out to 2nd cousins.)
At that age I began taking the bus to the local university - a trip that
could take as long as two hours if I missed connections - to meet,
or perhaps to solicit would be more accurate, men for sex. I knew how
to do this because I read "case histories" at the public library. These
were really thinly veiled pornography, but they had lots of footnotes
and a doctor's name on the cover so they were shelved with abnormal
psychology in the nonfiction section. In any event, from reading these -
while standing in the stacks since there was no question of my checking
them out - I got a fairly good idea of where I might find like minded
men and how I might proceed if I found them.

Now I must admit that many of the older "men" I met were college kids,
and many of them had not yet acquired the discernment to guess my
actual age. If we stuck to literature, art, history, current events -
that sort of thing - I could hold my own in a conversation. I was
bigger than many of them and brighter than a few, and since I met them
on campus they were predisposed to accept the illusion. I did meet
some older and even much older men - but I think in most cases they
too were inclined to make an assumption based on where they met me
and what I looked like - I didn't stand out among the undergraduates.

I was always well treated - although as in all such relationships,
things did not always go perfectly. I think it is really very silly
to say I was molested or abused.

But you know there are people who claim to know my experiences better
than I know them myself - and we may hear from a few of them shortly.
They say I was harmed in some mysterious and magical way that only
they can perceive. They can't offer any evidence of how I was abused,
how I suffered from it, or what negative results came of it. They just
know it. Well, you can't argue with that. It is like a religious belief
for them - an assumption that transcends the real world and exists
independently of any fact.

I'm the first to admit that my experiences were exceptional - as my
situation was exceptional. And I certainly do not advocate my course
of action to anyone else - because really, anyone who is ready to do
as I did doesn't need any encouraging, and anyone who does want
encouraging isn't ready.

The world is a very big place and people should pause whenever they
are tempted to say "always" or "never."

--
Lars Eighner eig...@io.com http://www.io.com/~eighner/
College: The fountains of knowledge, where everyone goes to drink.

[NEON NAPPI]

"Kevin Burnett" <k...@usenet.catnip.org> wrote in message
news:slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net...

> On Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:06:06 -0600, Dog3 <Do...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >x-no-archive: yes
> >
> >"Hester Mofet" <demo...@aol.comsnitfit> wrote in message
> >news:20010110184543...@ng-cg1.aol.com...
> >> Johnny Anonymous wrote:
> >>
> >> >I don't know many women
> >> >who considered being molested by a 35 year old man when they were 12 a
> >> >positive thing, and, as a human being, I refuse to believe that girls
and
> >> >boys are so radically different that being manipulated and exploited
is
> >less
> >> >harmful to one than it would be the other.
> >>
> >>
> >> The thing is, if the girl sought out sex, is it still molestation if
she
> >was
> >> 12?15?17?
> >>
> >> Hester Mofet
> >
> >Same with boys. I'm not saying it's right for an adult to act upon this
but
> >if a child is seeking out sex, should it be considered molestation?
Gawd,
> >in some cultures young girls are married off at 10 to 12 years of age.
>

> I have a hard time believing that a 10-year-old would "seek out" sex.

I'm not sure where you live but in New York City, it is not unusual for kids
who seek out sex to be younger than 10.

It may be "molestation" by legal standards but I have a difficult time
accepting the entire concept of justification for the charge being the lack of
informed consent when it is defined only by chronological age.

Barbara

[James Gordon]

Hester Mofet wrote:

Yes.

>
>
> Hester Mofet

[James Gordon]

Dog3 wrote:

> x-no-archive: yes

>
> "Kevin Burnett" <k...@usenet.catnip.org> wrote in message
> news:slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net...

> You'd be surprised, but it does happen. I was leaning more towards the
> cultures that marry off kids at a very young age. It's usually young girls
> that are married off. Usually with a large dowry.

And what does this exactly have to do with the push to put
pedophilia in the mainstream?

>
>
> Michael

[Johnny Anonymous]

Lars Eighner wrote:

> In our last episode, <slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net>,
> the lovely and talented Kevin Burnett
> broadcast on alt.true-crime:
>
> KB> I have a hard time believing that a 10-year-old would "seek out"
> KB> sex.
>
> I did. You must be new here. Those who have heard this before can
> go to the next post.
>
> When I was 9, I was 6'1" and having to shave at least every other day.

Then its safe to say you weren't a "typical" 10 year old boy, and hardly the type
pedophiles are usually interetsed in. You weren't small, hairless, physically
weak & waifish, which means your own personal expereince is not a yardstick by
which to judge child molestation. It probably also means you'll be expereincing
premature old age, too, since girls who get their periods early (8-10), usually
find themselves going through menopause in their late 30s, early 40s instead of
their 50s.

Johnny Anonymous

[Johnny Anonymous]

Dog3 wrote:

> x-no-archive: yes
>
> "Kevin Burnett" <k...@usenet.catnip.org> wrote in message
> news:slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net...

> You'd be surprised, but it does happen. I was leaning more towards the
> cultures that marry off kids at a very young age. It's usually young girls
> that are married off. Usually with a large dowry.

Pro-pedophile arguements (especially of those who favor little girls) always
brings up the child bride thing. What most don't realize is that in these
cultures the child might be married to her older "husband" (who is usually in
his teens), in a big ritual ceremony, then goes back to live with her parents
for another 5-10 years, until she is schooled in taking care of a household
(taught how to loom, sew, cook, handle the books, etc.) and her young husband
has built up the wherewithal to provide a decent home. So most of these
"child brides" don't actually sleep with their husbands until they're 18-20
years old. Also, the "child bride" arguement ignores that up until the last 150
years, the average not-rich person (which was 99.9% of the world's population)
probably lived to the ripe old age of 55. So getting married at 15 was the
equivalent of getting married (today) at 25.( However, the younger a bride, the
greater the chance she might die due to childbirth-related problems. Older women
had fewer delivery problems, but had a lower fertility rate.) But the greatest
hole in this whole agruement is the inarguable fact that all women were
considered legal chattel back then, and most had little or no say in who they
married or why.

Johnny Anonymous

[Johnny Anonymous]

NEON NAPPI wrote:

Did it ever occur to you that a child "seeking out sex" is either 1) being pimped,
or 2) acting out a molestation scenario he/she has been subjected to?

> It may be "molestation" by legal standards but I have a difficult time
> accepting the entire concept of justification for the charge being the lack of
> informed consent when it is defined only by chronological age.

If two children are sexual with one another, it is not considered molestation,
unless violence or other forms of abuse are involved. Most states place a 5 year
age difference between the partner to help clarify the situation. But a 10 year
old having sex with a 6 year old is just as abusive as that of a 25 year old.
Like rape, it's about power, not sex. The adage 'go pick on somebody your own
size" comes to mind.

But what I was originally commenting on is the extremely erroneous belief that,
for some reaon, many people believe that a boy who has been sexually molested
suffers less from the experience than a girl. What utter bullshit. But then
again, this culture (for the most part) refuses to admit that emotional damage
requires treatment and seems to believe something that happened "a long time ago"
doesn't have anything to do with how a person behaves. If you broke your leg when
you were five and never had it set properly, no one would be surprised to discover
you walked with a limp and couldn't run, jump, etc. But people are constantly
amazed that someone who was molested/abused as a child and never got treatment
ends up fucked up as an adult.

I'm not saying everyone who was molested as a child grows into a molester or
serial killer (although some do), but at the very least these people grow up
having problems trusting others, can't seem to differentiate sex from love, suffer
from intimacy problems, and have self-esteem issues that invariably place them in
bad/abusive relationships, and many fail to learn how to protect their own
children from predators.

Johnny Anonymous

[Johnny Anonymous]

James Gordon wrote:

Amen. Just because a child/teen asks you for sex doesn't mean you *have* to give it
to them. Being an adult, you have the *legal* burden to act responsibly in such a
situation. And, to be frank, these children aren't asking for sex. They're asking
for attention. Those that have been sexualized by molesters/pedophiles have been
taught that's the only way they can get anything resembling attention and affection
from others. And that's horribly, horribly sad.

Johnny Anonymous

[Johnny Anonymous]

Dog3 wrote:

> x-no-archive: yes

>
> "Johnny Anonymous" <john...@butterfly.net> wrote in message

> news:3A5DFA92...@butterfly.net...
> >
> > Pro-pedophile arguments (especially of those who favor little girls)

> always
> > brings up the child bride thing.
>

> Well, I'm not in favor of it in the slightest but I am curious about these
> cultures.

>
> >What most don't realize is that in these
> > cultures the child might be married to her older "husband" (who is usually
> in
> > his teens), in a big ritual ceremony, then goes back to live with her
> parents
> > for another 5-10 years, until she is schooled in taking care of a
> household
> > (taught how to loom, sew, cook, handle the books, etc.) and her young
> husband
> > has built up the wherewithal to provide a decent home. So most of these
> > "child brides" don't actually sleep with their husbands until they're
> 18-20
> > years old.
>

> Can you cite any documentation on this?

Yeah. National Geographics & PBS documentaries. Mostly on Asian, Hindu, &
African cultures.

> >Also, the "child bride" argument ignores that up until the last 150

> > years, the average not-rich person (which was 99.9% of the world's
> population)
> > probably lived to the ripe old age of 55. So getting married at 15 was
> the
> > equivalent of getting married (today) at 25.( However, the younger a
> bride, the
> > greater the chance she might die due to childbirth-related problems. Older
> women
> > had fewer delivery problems, but had a lower fertility rate.) But the
> greatest

> > hole in this whole agreement is the inarguable fact that all women were

> > considered legal chattel back then, and most had little or no say in who
> they
> > married or why.
> >
> > Johnny Anonymous
>

> I figured the age issue out. Many of the people in those cultures died
> rather young from disease etc. In these cultures are women no longer
> considered chattel property?

You're kidding, right? They still have a problem with involuntary suti (widows
being thrown into their husband's funeral pyre) & wife-burning in India (where
the in-laws set the bride on fire because the dowry isn't large enough), not to
mention the infantcide of female children and widows being effectively starved
to death in Asia, not to mention the female genital mutilation situation and
virgin girls being used to "cure" AIDS in Africa. It's a wonderful world we
live in.

Johnny Anonymous

[gemini...@excite.com]

Dog3 wrote:
>
> x-no-archive: yes

>
> "Kevin Burnett" <k...@usenet.catnip.org> wrote in message
> news:slrn95qnq...@yellow.rahul.net...

> You'd be surprised, but it does happen. I was leaning more towards the
> cultures that marry off kids at a very young age. It's usually young girls
> that are married off. Usually with a large dowry.
>

> Michael

And it's not usually something they "seek out,"
either.

...geminiwalker

--
To learn more about me, go to:
http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard
updated 8/6/2000
To learn more about me, go to:
http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard
updated 8/6/2000

[gemini...@excite.com]

Children who "seek out" sex who are under the age
of ten are more than likely seeking out
attention,
affection, or money because they are homeless or,
acting out a history of abuse that has
predisposed
them to sexual behavior.

This is hardly consentual, and it doesn't even
come close to intimacy.

To take advantage of a child in this state to
suit
your own needs, rather than setting the
boundaries
of safety that it is incumbent upon the adult to
set while addressing the underlying roots of the
behavior in question is highly suspect, and has
nothing to do with caring for the child.

[James Gordon]

Dog3 wrote:

> x-no-archive: yes
>
> "James Gordon" <jgo...@gcpd.com> wrote in message
> news:3A5DF44A...@gcpd.com...

> I'm not aware of any pust to put pedophilia in the mainstream.
>
> Michael

Then perhaps you should read the article that heads this thread.

[Michael Newton]

I jsut don't understand why I'm not legally allowed to have consentual
sex with young boys. The boys love me and I give them great gifts. I
never get complaints from the boys, well except for the one who wasn't
sure I was "in" yet. What's the big deal?

mn

In article <93hr0s$ok9$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,

MrMateo <hou...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> (from The Weekly Standard)
>
> "Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered
> The taboo against sex with children continues to erode.
> By Mary Eberstadt
>
> Until very, very recently, public questioning of the social
prohibition

> against pedophilia—to say nothing of positive celebration of child
> molestation—was practically non-existent in American life. The reasons

> why are not opaque. To most people, the very word "pedophilia" summons
> forth a preternatural degree of horror and revulsion; and the criminal
> law that reflects those reactions has consistently treated the sexual
> molestation of minors as a serious and eminently punishable offense.
So
> it is small wonder that, historically speaking, the taboo against
using
> legal minors for sex was no more publicly controversial in the United
> States than the prohibitions against, say, cannibalism or bestiality.
> Those few partisans of the idea who did sometimes sally forth
> customarily found themselves regarded as the lowest of the social low,
> even by the criminal class.
>
> This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and

> adolescents, however—unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest—

is
> apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast
> majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For

> elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex—more
> accurately, man-boy sex—is now out in the open. Moreover, it is on
> parade in a number of places—therapeutic, literary, and academic

> circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and

> bookstores—where the mere appearance of such ideas would until

recently
> have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to
> prosecution.
>
> Dramatic though this turnaround may be, it did not happen overnight.
> Four years ago in these pages, in an essay called "Pedophilia Chic," I
> described in some detail a number of then-recent public challenges to
> this particular taboo, all of them apparently isolated from one
> another.1 Plainly, as the record even then showed, a surprising number
> of voices were willing to rise up on behalf of what advocates refer to
> as "man-boy love," or what most people call sexual abuse.
>
> Yet while the examples themselves were easy enough to document, their
> larger meaning seemed far from clear. Why, in a post-Cold War world
> bursting with real political controversies, were some people intent on
> insisting that the time had come to rethink an issue that most people
> already vehemently, passionately, agreed about? And why was the taboo
> against pedophilia under particular pressure in the mid-1990s, of all

> times—an interval when, readers will recall, public attention to the

> blasé about the older men who seek out boys in chat rooms that it

> subject—or, for that matter, to read the notes in the heavily
> sourced "Meta-Analytic" itself—is to see exactly what he means. In

> their call to redefine "abuse" as "contact," for example, Rind,
> Bauserman, and Tromovitch were merely resurrecting research and
> conceptual work stretching back over two decades; similarly, their
> distinctions between boys' and girls' supposed experiences of abuse
> have a pedigree that begins with Kinsey and branches out dramatically
> in professional publications of the last 25 years. The authors
of "Meta-
> Analytic" may have made their points boldly enough to get noticed; but
> that is the only academic novelty to which they could truly lay claim.
> The real news about the normalization of pedophilia displayed
in "Meta-
> Analytic" was that nothing about it was conceptually new.
>
> The second peculiarity of the outrage over "Meta-Analytic," which also
> went unnoticed at the time, was that it was not, in fact, universally
> shared. The notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association
(NAMBLA),
> predictably enough, cheered the study as "good news." Less explicable
> was the reaction within the gay press, which not only failed to
> distance its movement from the study, but went on to excoriate the
> APA's critics (particularly Laura Schlessinger). This was the same

> approach taken, independently, by at least two mainstream—and
> relatively conservative—gay journalists.

>
> Writing in the New York Times Magazine, prominent author and activist
> Andrew Sullivan complained about the "sour reception" that had greeted
> the study. After all, he wrote, Rind et al. had found that "lasting
> psychological trauma among adult survivors of abuse, particularly for
> men, was much less than feared." This, according to Sullivan, should
> be "a reason for relief." Instead, and what he evidently found
> disagreeable, "outraged members of the religious right accused the APA
> of tolerating pedophilia" and "launched a crusade to punish the
> organization." He concluded sarcastically: "That'll teach them to look
> on the bright side."
>
> Another writer outraged over the outrage about "Meta-Analytic" was
> respected reporter and political analyst Jonathan Rauch. In his
> commentary on the controversy published in the National Journal, Rauch
> roundly defended the study. It was the critics of the "Meta-Analytic"
> piece, Rauch wrote, who were "turning out stomach-churning stuff." The

> vote in Congress—as opposed, say, to what Rind et al. had written—

> was "faintly sinister." Like the authors of the piece itself, Rauch
> advocated that, in the name of "science," researchers should "abandon
> the current custom of referring to all adult sexual encounters with
> minors, regardless of the circumstances, as 'child sexual abuse,'"
> because they could "perform finer-grained analyses if they
used 'abuse'
> to denigrate injurious or unwilling encounters. Other encounters,"
> Rauch echoed, "could be called 'adult-child sex' or 'adult-adolescent
> sex.'"
>
> To his credit, Rauch did report that "in 1989, when he was 23 and just
> out of college, Bauserman [one of the Meta-Analytic authors] published
> a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward man-boy sexual
> relations in a Dutch journal called Paidika." This journal, in Rauch's

> description, "had taken pro-pedophilia stands"—something which he

> admitted "raises red flags."
>
> But at the same time Rauch, like Sullivan, avoided the real issue at

> hand—that "Meta-Analytic" quite obviously aimed at de-stigmatizing boy

> pedophilia itself. Even more startling, though, was his bland
depiction
> of Paidika. This is not exactly a journal in which pro-pedophile ideas
> have somehow surfaced accidentally. It is a publication dedicated to
> the phenomenon of "boy-loving," the most prominent such "scholarly
> journal" in the world, whose long-time editor, the late Edward
> Brongersma, was a convicted pedophile as well as the author of a two-
> volume pedophile classic, Loving Boys. (To describe this as a journal
> which "had taken pro-pedophilia stands" is akin to describing The
> Weekly Standard as a magazine where conservative arguments have
> reportedly appeared.) And, of course, the qualifier "23 and just out
of
> college" served to soften Bauserman's earlier appearance in Paidika,
> suggesting it was an excess of youth.
>
> Both Sullivan and Rauch are not only prominent gay journalists but
also
> leading proponents of the worldview to which the gay rights movement

> owes much of its recent and stunning political success—the argument

> that, as Sullivan's Virtually Normal puts it, "homosexuals . . . have
> the equivalent emotional needs and temptations of heterosexuals." Both
> writers are also members of the Independent Gay Forum, an institution
> aimed at "forging a mainstream identity"; and both have frequently
> broken ranks with the leftists and radicals who dominate gay activism.
> That two such mainstream authors should mock the public outcry against
> that APA article illustrates something noteworthy: that in place of a

> social consensus against pedophilia per se, a separate option—call it
> anti-anti-pedophilia—appears to have taken root. According to that

> view, the problem is less sex with minors than the people who declare

> themselves against it—Dr. Laura fans, congressmen, dissident

> therapists, religious types, and anyone else who does not grasp the
> necessity of putting words like "child sexual abuse" in quotes.
>
> II
>
> In some of the clinical and therapeutic literature on pedophilia, it
> has become customary to distinguish between "ephebophilia," or sexual
> attraction to postpubescent children and teenagers, and "pedophilia"
> proper, meaning attraction to prepubescent children. Both forms are
> exhibited more than occasionally in another part of the written world,
> namely gay fiction. "Fiction" here emphatically does not mean
> pornography as such, but the kind of literature authored by self-
> consciously gay writers, published by reputable houses, and reviewed
> respectfully in the mainstream press. Again, it must be emphasized
that
> numerous gay authors of note do not positively portray sex between
> adults and minors, and ipso facto are not part of this discussion.
>
> Plenty of authors do cross the line, though. "Gay fiction," Philip
> Guichard complained in an article for the Village Voice last
> summer, "is rich with idyllic accounts of 'intergenerational
> relationships,' as such affairs are respectfully called these days."
> Over four years ago, "Pedophilia Chic" quoted passages from the works

> of several acclaimed authors—including Edmund White, the late Paul
> Monette, and Larry Kramer—which frankly and often sympathetically

> portrayed men seeking and having sex with underage boys. Today there
> are many more such examples to be found in gay fiction, all verifiable
> by a trip to the local chain bookstore.
>
> Last year, for example, St. Martins Press published a novel called The
> Coming Storm by Paul Russell, a professor of English at Vassar and the
> author of three previously well-received works of fiction. The drama
of
> this tale revolves around something that remains an imprisonable

> offense in almost every state—a sexual "affair" between a troubled 15-

> year-old boy (Noah) and his 25-year-old gay boarding school teacher
> (Tracy). (The age of 15, incidentally, is no definitive limit in
> Russell's narrative. In the course of the book, Tracy also fantasizes
> about 14-year-old boys.)
>
> The Coming Storm became the object of effusive praise by award-winning
> reviewer Dennis Drabelle in the Washington Post Book World (August 15,
> 1999). The Coming Storm, Drabelle enthused, "takes off from a

> sensational subject—forbidden sexuality—to arrive at unexpected

heights
> and subtleties." It "persuades the reader" that "the sexual
> relationship between Noah and Tracy is not only not harmful to either
> but a boon to the precocious junior partner, who becomes a better,
more
> engaged student after the affair gets under way." What
is "troublesome"
> about the book, according to Drabelle, is not that anyone
> is "corrupted" by what happens ("no one is"), but that "it is apt to
be
> stereotyped, not least by the legal system that makes it a crime
> [emphasis added]."
>
> This cheerleading for the sexual molestation of teenagers in the
Sunday
> pages of one of the country's major newspapers did not pass without
> comment. One reader berated Drabelle in the letters column
> for "strongly implying that child abuse, when it takes place between
> two males, should no longer be viewed by the public as either a social
> offense or a crime."3 Yet as even a partial survey of related

> literature shows, what is truly anomalous about this case—of a

> mainstream reviewer in a mainstream family newspaper ratifying sex

> between grown men and boys—was that anyone bothered to be bothered

> about it at all. Other writers, including prominent writers among
them,
> have gone further still, and with even less consequence.
>
> Consider David Leavitt, one of the best known of contemporary gay
> authors, whose numerous novels and short stories, among them The Lost
> Language of Cranes and, most recently, Martin Bauman; or, A Sure
Thing,
> are routinely reviewed in the better journals and magazines. In fact,
> it would be hard to think of a gay fiction writer more consistently
> represented in mainstream publishing.
>
> For that reason, it is all the more surprising to read what this
> ostensibly mainstream author chose to write in his introduction to the
> equally mainstream Penguin Book of International Gay Writing (1995,
> edited by Mark Mitchell). There, in the course of describing what the
> anthology includes, Leavitt notes matter-of-factly
> that "Another 'forbidden' topic from which European writers seem less
> likely to shrink is the love of older men for young boys." He then
> draws attention to one particular book excerpted in the volume, When
> Jonathan Died, by Tony Duvert. "The coolly assured narrative" of this
> work, Leavitt informs, "compels the reader to imagine the world from a
> perspective he might ordinarily condemn." Duvert, writes

> Leavitt, "offers us a homosexual Lolita—one in which the child is

> seducer as much as seduced."
>
> The object of this praise by one of America's leading gay novelists,
> appearing in one of publishing's most prestigious book series, is the
> tale of a man and boy who are living together in Italy. The scene
> selected is sexually graphic. And the age of this child, whom Leavitt

> considers "seducer as much as seduced"? He is—page 427 in the hard
> cover edition—"hardly seven."

>
> Another seemingly representative collection of gay literature, this
one
> on the shelf at Barnes & Noble and also apparently selling without
> comment, is The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read, an
> Anchor Book published by Doubleday in 1998. Its editor/author, Robert
> Drake, is a novelist and editor of other anthologies who has won the
> Lambda Literary Award. Like the Penguin anthology edited by Leavitt,
> Drake's book too strives for canonical status, aspiring to offer a
> roadmap to the most important texts of gay history.
>
> As it turns out, several of the texts that editor Drake thought worth

> including feature scenes of man-boy sex—again, what most of the rest

of
> the public calls abuse or molestation. One work is something called
The
> Carnivorous Lamb by Agustin Gomez-Arcos, described as a book about an
> incestuous relationship between a boy and his older brother (to
> Drake, "the best, most complex yet satisfying novel of filial love
ever

> written"). Another text, this one by writer Matthew Stadler—described
> as the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for his first novel—is

> called The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee. This book, says editor
> Drake, "is an operatic adventure into the realms of love, personality,
> ambition and art . . . a pure joy to read." Its protagonist is "a
> pedophile's dream: the mind of a man in the body of a boy." Drake also
> excerpts and discusses William S. Burroughs's nightmarish The Wild
> Boys: A Book of the Dead, the pederastic violence of which defies
> description. Yet this work, according to Drake, "tears straight to the
> heart of one of the greatest sources, community-wide, of 1990s gay
> angst: What to do with men who love boys?"4
>
> Still another example of how standards are being lowered by a major

> publisher and respected writer—this one from academia and available at
> Borders—is A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, published

> cyber-correlation. It was not immediately obvious, for example—in
fact,
> it came as a surprise—that typing "Paidika" into an ordinary search

> engine would turn up a reference to Gay Men's Press bestsellers; but
it
> did not take long to see why. For one of the books on the Gay Men's
> Press bestseller list turns out to be Dares to Speak: History and

> Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love, edited by Joseph Geraci—all of

> simply assumes that minors are sexually autonomous—and active. One

> piece ("Landmark Survey Shows Gay Youth Coming Out Earlier than Ever")
> notes approvingly that most children now "realize" their orientation
at
> age 12. Another piece, "Lesbian and Gay Youth Find Safe Place in
> Cyberspace," counsels: "Don't believe much of the hype about how
> cyberspace is populated with pedophiles." These citations are taken
> from just the first two pages of GLAAD's 15-page list of publications
> for and about "gay youth."
>

> At OutProud—another site recommended and linked by leading gay
> organizations—visitors are routed to a comic strip called "Queer

Boys."
> It features two boys who are said to be 16 and look younger. They set
> off for Manhattan ("Let's run away to New York, where it's safe to be
> Queer!!" "Kewl!"), where they triumph over evildoers (i.e., parents
and
> reparative therapists) and find happiness at last thanks to the

> habitués of a bar in the West Village. ("A gay rock club! That's so

> cool! Damn! I wish we were old enough to get in!!" says one of the
> boys. "Damn those politicians! Damn them all to hell!!" replies the
> other.)
>
> For a final example of how pedophilia is being defined down, consider

> XY magazine—which would doubtless have run afoul of the obscenity laws

> until very recently. Started just four years ago, XY is now, according
> to its founder and publisher Peter Ian Cummings, the "third largest
gay
> magazine in the U.S., selling over 60,000 copies per year and hav[ing]
> more than 200,000 readers." (These numbers are unaudited, but would
put
> XY on a par with the Advocate in circulation, though lower than Out
> magazine's 120,000.) Cummings also reports that "you can find XY on
> sale in Borders, Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, B. Dalton, Barnes &
> Noble, Waldenbooks, and many others."
>
> What gives XY its unprecedented niche is that here, for the first
time,
> is a mass-market magazine "officially targeted toward 12-29 year old
> young gay men," every issue of which, as one admiring journalist puts
> it, "features scantily clad young men in several photo spreads and on
> the cover." Then there is the non-photo content. The first issue was
> stamped "Underage." Another issue included a sympathetic pro-and-con
> interview with a prominent member of NAMBLA. An article in another

> issue was titled "F— the Age of Consent." There is also a smattering
of
> self-help that can only make minors easier to find—for example, advice

> about what kids should do if their parents install a filtering system
> that prevents them from reaching gay cyberspace (answer: get around
it).
>
> In sum, if one had taken on the challenge of designing a magazine for
> pedophiles, it would probably look a lot like XY, which is why its
> market niche and evident reader support invite reflection. So too, for
> obvious reasons, does the public (gay) reaction to all this. On the
one
> hand, Out magazine referred to XY's debut as a "dubious achievement"
> and suggested that it was equivalent to child pornography. Similarly,
> Philip Guichard complained in his Village Voice piece (headlined "I
> Hate Older Men"): "Mainstream gay culture dresses up its kiddie porn
in
> a pretense of serving teens. As nice as it is to believe that
magazines
> like XY and Joey [a recent competitor] are actually consumed by gay
> teens, it's obvious to me that the shirtless kids in provocative poses
> who fill their glossy pages are there for older men." What's more,
XY's
> publisher has complained of "pedophobia" on the part of his gay
> critics; and most advertisers, by Cummings's account, including those
> popular with the male gay market (Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch,
> the Gap), have demurred from buying space in its pages. Apparently,
the

> fear of supporting child sex, or the fear of appearing to do so—or
both—

> remain potent corporate motivators.5
>
> At the same time, however, to judge by the endorsements on XY's
> website, numerous other observers have weighed in favorably. The San
> Francisco Examiner says that of all magazines, XY is "the one most on
> the cutting edge of change." The Ft. Lauderdale Express Gay News calls
> it "the most courageous magazine in America." The general-interest
> entertainment guide Time Out New York observes that "XY has boldly
> established itself as a unique publication that tackles sex, romance,
> and other issues facing gay teens and men." But perhaps the most
> accurate indication of XY's community standing comes from the business
> publication Advertising Age, which noted: "XY is playing a significant
> role in mainstream online media. . . . The magazine's site can be
> accessed directly via America Online, and the magazine is also
> providing content to the 'youth channel' on PlanetOut.com." This
> success is a sign of the times. Some of the largest and most respected
> gay organizations in the country now list XY, of all things, as

> a "resource" for gay youth—this, alongside a burgeoning number of

> websites also aimed at minors and replete with personal ads, chat
> rooms, "pen pals," and other forms of anonymous contact rife with the
> potential for subterfuge.
>
> IV
>
> It is tempting to throw up one's hands on reading a litany like this
> one, and to blame it all on our anything-goes postmodern life. But
this
> is determinism masquerading as pessimism, and a determinism that does
> not fit the facts. Today's pressures to normalize pedophilia are not
> the result of some omnipotent and unstoppable taboo-devouring social
> and moral juggernaut; they are occurring one bookstore, one magazine,
> one publisher and advertiser, one author and editor and consumer at a
> time. Case by case, given a more enlightened public, it is not hard to

> imagine these decisions—like the one that led to Penguin's putting its

> imprimatur on a pedophilic sex scene, or like the misguided efforts by
> some gay organizations to refer teens to unsavory and perhaps even

> unsafe websites—being made otherwise. Such a turnaround is

particularly
> imaginable in the case of chain bookstore merchandisers, who routinely

> place pro-pedophile works on the gay-interest shelves—a phenomenon

that
> thoughtful movement activists must find outrageous.
>
> It would help immensely if those members of the gay rights movement
who

> have not realized what is being committed in their name—along with
> those who do realize what is going on, and who deplore it—join forces

> against this trend. Here too, one can imagine progress being made;
> decent people, by definition, tend ultimately to do what decency
> requires. When "Pedophilia Chic" appeared four years ago, for example,
> a poignant response soon came from Paul W. Simmons, the political
> director of the Log Cabin Republicans in Houston. He feared that the
> piece would leave readers with the "erroneous impression that the gay
> male community endorses sexual exploitation of adolescent males." The
> letter continued: "Unfortunately, the homosexual community's political
> leadership, which is dominated by radical leftists, has failed to
> denounce loudly the North American Man-Boy Love Association and other
> nefarious groups. But on this issue, as with many others, the
> leadership is removed from the constituency it purports to serve. For
a
> sizable majority of gay men, sexual relations with children are viewed
> as morally appalling, and the adult practitioners of it are seen as
> pathological deviants."
>
> These are words with which any reasonable person will agree. They also

> raise the question of why—particularly in light of the astonishing
> political and social victories of the last several years—leaders of

> many, many other people—representative of that "sizable majority" of
> which the Log Cabin Republican wrote—who must be as distressed by such

> advocacy as he is, but appear undecided what to do about it.
>
> Today's gay rights advocates preside over what is probably the single
> most successful domestic political movement of the post-Cold War era.
> The sine qua non of its dramatic advance has been the tolerance of the

> civic majority, for whom the movement's most stirring appeals—to
equity
> and fair treatment and "a place at the table," as Bruce Bawer put it—

> have turned out to resonate more deeply than even most activists could
> have imagined. This is not to say that public unanimity reigns here,
> any more than it does over the agendas of other special interest
> groups. Reasonable people, both inside and outside of the gay rights

> movement, disagree in good faith on profound points—from the

> 4Drake's own answer: "Even as the homo culture of this fin de siècle

> seeks to puritanically clamp down on boy-love advocates, it riddles
> itself with a fixation on lithe, boyish sexuality and smooth-chested

> youthful attractiveness—and the perpetration of same as the physical