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The '''North American Man/Boy Love Association''' ('''NAMBLA''') is a [[United States|U.S.]]-based organisation which advocates the abolition of [[age of consent]] laws. The group argues that age of consent laws sometimes criminalize otherwise healthy sexuality relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys). |
The '''North American Man/Boy Love Association''' ('''NAMBLA''') is a [[United States|U.S.]]-based organisation which advocates the abolition of [[age of consent]] laws. The group argues that age of consent laws sometimes criminalize otherwise healthy sexuality relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys). |
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NAMBLA describes itself as a "support group for intergenerational relationships," and used the slogan "sexual freedom for all." According to its website, its aim is to "support the rights of youth as well as adults to choose the partners with whom they wish to share and enjoy their bodies." NAMBLA claims to advocate a "comprehensive youth rights platform" of which sexual freedom is only a small portion. |
NAMBLA describes itself as a "support group for intergenerational relationships," and used the slogan "sexual freedom for all." According to its website, its aim is to "support the rights of youth as well as adults to choose the partners with whom they wish to share and enjoy their bodies." NAMBLA claims to advocate a "comprehensive youth rights platform" of which sexual freedom is only a small portion. |
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Many critics, however, see NAMBLA as a front for the criminal sexual exploitation of children. A number of alleged NAMBLA members have been charged with and convicted of sexual offences against children. NAMBLA's website says: "NAMBLA does not provide encouragement, referrals or assistance for people seeking sexual contacts. NAMBLA does not engage in any activities that violate the law, nor do we advocate that anyone else should do so." NAMBLA's critics say that despite this disavowal, NAMBLA functions as a meeting place and advocacy service for men who engage in illegal sexual acts with children. |
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At its peak in the early [[1980s]], NAMBLA reported over 300 members, as well as famous supporters like [[Allen Ginsberg]] and [[Gore Vidal]]. After repeated infiltration by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigations]] (FBI), legal difficulties of high-ranking members, and increased notoriety in the press, the group has all but dissolved, though it still maintains mailing addresses in [[San Francisco]] and [[New York City]]. |
At its peak in the early [[1980s]], NAMBLA reported over 300 members, as well as famous supporters like [[Allen Ginsberg]] and [[Gore Vidal]]. After repeated infiltration by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigations]] (FBI), legal difficulties of high-ranking members, and increased notoriety in the press, the group has all but dissolved, though it still maintains mailing addresses in [[San Francisco]] and [[New York City]]. |
Revision as of 05:30, 9 April 2005
The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a U.S.-based organisation which advocates the abolition of age of consent laws. The group argues that age of consent laws sometimes criminalize otherwise healthy sexuality relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys).
NAMBLA describes itself as a "support group for intergenerational relationships," and used the slogan "sexual freedom for all." According to its website, its aim is to "support the rights of youth as well as adults to choose the partners with whom they wish to share and enjoy their bodies." NAMBLA claims to advocate a "comprehensive youth rights platform" of which sexual freedom is only a small portion.
Many critics, however, see NAMBLA as a front for the criminal sexual exploitation of children. A number of alleged NAMBLA members have been charged with and convicted of sexual offences against children. NAMBLA's website says: "NAMBLA does not provide encouragement, referrals or assistance for people seeking sexual contacts. NAMBLA does not engage in any activities that violate the law, nor do we advocate that anyone else should do so." NAMBLA's critics say that despite this disavowal, NAMBLA functions as a meeting place and advocacy service for men who engage in illegal sexual acts with children.
At its peak in the early 1980s, NAMBLA reported over 300 members, as well as famous supporters like Allen Ginsberg and Gore Vidal. After repeated infiltration by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), legal difficulties of high-ranking members, and increased notoriety in the press, the group has all but dissolved, though it still maintains mailing addresses in San Francisco and New York City.
History
In order to understand NAMBLA's establishment and early history, one must realize the radical and highly charged political atmosphere of the late 1970s. Just a few years earlier, in 1969, the gay community -- especially the gay street youth -- in Greenwich Village in New York ignited the modern-day gay rights movement by rioting at the Stonewall Inn bar. It was from this defense of alternative sexualities that NAMBLA emerged.
Trouble in Revere
On December 8, 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb of Revere, Massachussetts. Twenty-one men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts of sex with boys aged eight to thirteen. Eighty-year-old Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne announced that the men used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house on Mountain Avenue. There the men allegedly photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Byrne, who was facing re-election the next year, declared that the men composed a "sex ring" of which the arrest was only "the tip of the iceberg." The arrest sparked intense media coverage, and local newspapers published the photographs and personal information of the accused men.
Some members of the gay community surprised Byrne by defending the men.[1] Staff members of the newspaper the Fag Rag believed that the bust was politically motivated, and that Byrne had repeatedly used the strategy of exposing sensational "vice rings" in order to garner publicity before elections. To them and many other in the gay community, Byrne's round-up was little more than a smear campaign on gays. On December 9, they organized the Boston-Boise Committee, a name intended to reference a similar situation that unfolded in Boise, Idaho in the 1950s. The committee sponsored rallies, provided funds for the defendants, and tried to educate the public by passing out fliers. Morever, it was the committee that led to the formation of NAMBLA.
The Beginning of NAMBLA
The Revere incident alarmed members of the Boston-Boise Committee who had an exclusive attraction to teenage males. They believed it underscored their vulnerability within the larger gay community. Tom Reeves of the Boston-Boise committee responded to this perceived weakness. On December 2, 1978, he convened a meeting called "Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent." Roughly 150 attendees discussed the problems of pedophiles. At the meeting's conclusion, approximately thirty men and youth decided to form an organization of their own. The name they chose was the North American Man/Boy Love Association (or NAMBLA).
In its early years NAMBLA found some degree of support among the gay rights movement. Gay groups such as New York's Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) opposed age of consent laws and had hosted a forum on the topic in 1976. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition held a similar position. Yet most gay rights groups paid little attention to the pederasts in their ranks. To them, the idea of "boylove" was just another variation of gay love that was sharing in the struggle for liberation. Thus gay rights groups did little to distance themselves from NAMBLA's platform at the time the group formed. This, however, was soon to change.
Controversy
"Save Us From The Anita Nightmare" was the headline that appeared on the cover of the April 20, 1977 edition of the gay magazine The Advocate. Former beauty queen and commercial spokewoman Anita Bryant was indeed the object of scorn to gays nationwide. With her "Save Our Children" Crusade, she had begun to harness a growing anti-gay backlash. "The recruitment of our children," she argued, "is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality." The idea that homosexuality was a threat to children, transforming perfectly normal kids into deviant sex machines, had a chilling effect on the gay rights movement. Instantly the issue of gay liberation shifted out of the arena of civil rights and into the realm of child protection.
The notion of "recruitment" was so absurd to gays that initially the charges caught them completely off guard. By the time it recovered, a pro-gay law in Dade County, Florida had been overturned, and gays were convinced that the only way to prevent further damage was to distance themselves from the issue of youth sexuality. The next several years saw a rift develop in gay rights circles between a small faction of radical gays and "boylovers" who championed the sexual rights of youths, and a much larger group of pragmatists. By the early 1980s almost every well-known gay organization adopted the latter position and jettisoned NAMBLA. The promotion of sexual rights for youth created a lightning rod with which other gay rights groups were unable or unwilling to cope. Consequently, NAMBLA descended to its current state of disrepute, invoked more often by its enemies than by its supporters.
Isolation
Almost all modern-day gay rights groups disavow any ties to NAMBLA and its objectives. In 1994 the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) adopted a "Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA," which said that GLAAD "deplores North American Man Boy Love Association's (NAMBLA) goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD." Also in 1994 the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) adopted a resolution on NAMBLA which said: "NGLTF condemns all abuse of minors, both sexual and any other kind, perpetrated by adults. Accordingly, NGLTF condemns the organizational goals of NAMBLA and any other such organization."
In the early 1990s, the International Lesbian and Gay Association sought consultative status as a non-governmental organization to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The U.N. admitted the group, after which time news surfaced that ILGA had ties to NAMBLA. ILGA expelled and disavowed any affiliation with the NAMBLA, but to no avail. Amid what many have dubbed a witchhunt atmosphere, the U.N. later reversed its decision and revoked ILGA's special status. Despite repeated attempts, ILGA has not been able to reacquire consultative status with the U.N. although it does enjoy consultative status with the European Commission.
Some conservative Christians in the United States have exploited NAMBLA's infamous reputation to attack more conventional gay rights groups. With the outbreak of the Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal in 2002, this practice intensified. The television airwaves were filled with Christian organizations repeating claims that homosexuality is a perversion that contributes to child sexual abuse ([2]). Critics of such organizations have pointed to statistics which indicate that most sexual molestations are crimes of opportunity committed by otherwise normal heterosexual men who use children as a substitutes for same-age partners.
NAMBLA's positions
NAMBLA's concrete political objective is the repeal of age of consent laws. In 1980 a NAMBLA general meeting passed a resolution, proposed by Tom Reeves, which said: "(1) The North American Man/Boy Love Association calls for the abolition of age-of-consent and all other laws which prevent men and boys from freely enjoying their bodies. (2) We call for the release of all men and boys imprisoned by such laws." [3] This policy was still in NAMBLA's "official position papers" in 1996.
Criticism and response
Critics see NAMBLA as a front for the criminal sexual exploitation of children. They say that NAMBLA functions as a meeting place for male homosexual pedophiles (men who are sexually attracted to children) and pederasts (men who are sexually attracted to adolescent males), and their sympathizers. A number of alleged NAMBLA members have been charged with and convicted of sexual offences against children.
A 2000 civil lawsuit against NAMBLA asserted that: "NAMBLA serves as a conduit for an underground network of pedophiles in the United States who use their NAMBLA association and contacts therein and the internet to obtain child pornography and promote pedophile activity." [4]
Onell R. Soto, a writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune, wrote in February 2005: "Law enforcement officials and mental health professionals say that while NAMBLA's membership numbers are small, the group has a dangerous ripple effect through the Internet by sanctioning the behavior of those who would abuse children." [5]
NAMBLA has often responded to such criticism with the reminder that it has never been the target of a criminal prosecution, despite investigations by the U.S. Senate and U.S. Postal Service. Under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, NAMBLA's right to advocate the repeal of age-of-consent laws is protected by law.
Also, according to NAMBLA's website, the group "does not provide encouragement, referrals or assistance for people seeking sexual contacts. NAMBLA does not engage in any activities that violate the law, nor do we advocate that anyone else should do so." NAMBLA supporters are also careful to point out that NAMBLA does not advocate that people engage in interngenerational sexual relationships, only that those who choose to do so should be able to do so without sanctions by the state.
Criminal allegations
Although NAMBLA itself has never been prosecuted, there have been a number of prosecutions of alleged NAMBLA members for sexual offences involving children or adolescents. The most recent of these cases involved a number of men arrested by the FBI in Los Angeles and San Diego in February 2005. Seven men were charged with planning to travel to Mexico to have sex with boys, the FBI said. An eighth man was charged with distributing child pornography.
According to a media report [6], the FBI believes that at least one of the arrested men is a member of NAMBLA's national leadership, a second organized the group's national convention last year and a third said he had been a member since the 1980s.
In 2000, a Boston couple, Robert and Barbara Curley, sued NAMBLA and a number of individuals whom they alleged were NAMBLA members: Roy Radow, Joe Powers, Daniel Thorstad, David Miller, Peter Herman, Max Hunter and Arnold Schoen. ("Daniel Thorstad" is presumably the same person as David Thorstad, a co-founder of NAMBLA and well-known writer). The Curleys alleged that Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari, who were convicted of the rape and murder of their ten-year-old son Jeffrey, were NAMBLA members.
According to the Curley's suit, Jaynes and Sicari "stalked Jeffrey Curley... and tortured, murdered and mutilated [his] body on or about October 1, 1997. Upon information and belief immediately prior to said acts Charles Jaynes accessed NAMBLA's website at the Boston Public Library." According to police, Jaynes had eight issues of a NAMBLA publication in his home at the time of his arrest.
The Boston Globe editorialised in relation to this case: "NAMBLA claims that it has never advocated violence. Their denial, however, relies on an overly narrow definition. The cognitive and emotional violence done to a child's psyche has consequences more lasting than the tearing of bodily tissue. To a child, an adult's wiles can be more coercive than muscular force." [7]
As of 2004 this case was still before the courts, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) assisting the defendants on the grounds that the suit violated their First Amendment rights. [8]
Other cases have been cited as evidence that NAMBLA serves as a meeting place or front for men who commit sexual crimes against children and adolescents.
- Paul Shanley, a Catholic priest convicted of abusing children as young as six years old over a period of three decades, allegedly participated in NAMBLA workshops and advocacy, according to contemporaneous accounts of the events obtained by the Boston Globe. [9][10]
- John David Smith, a San Francisco man convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy he was babysitting, unwittingly spoke of his crimes to an undercover investigator who had infiltrated NAMBLA. Upon obtaining a warrant, the investigator also found guns and child pornography in Smith's apartment [11][12].
- Johnathan Tampico was convicted of child molestation in 1989 and paroled in 1992 on condition of not possessing child pornography. After moving without informing authorities of his new address, he was found after a broadcast of America's Most Wanted. He was arrested and convicted on child pornography charges. In his sentencing, the court stated that Tampico was a member of NAMBLA, and that Tampico and others frequently traveled to Thailand in order to have access to young boys. The court cited a number of Polaroid pictures, provided by Thai officials, depicting Tampico with young Thai boys sitting on his lap as evidence of the latter claim. [13],[14], [15]
- James C. Parker, a New York man who, according to court records, told the police that he was a member of NAMBLA, was arrested in 2000 and convicted in 2001 of committing sodomy with a young boy [16].
See also
Sources
- Art Cohen, "The Boston-Boise Affair, 1977-78", Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Vol. 10, No. 2. March-April, 2003.
- Benoit Denizet-Lewis, "Boy Crazy: NAMBLA: The Story of a Lost Cause," Boston Magazine http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=27 May 2001.
- John Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, Boston, Glad Day Books, 1981
- David Thorstad, "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," in Male Intergenerational Intimacy, edited by Theo Sandford, Edward Brongersma, and Alex Van Naerssen, New York, Haworth Press, 1991 (251-274)