Imagine my surprise when, yesterday evening, the image of a NAMBLA news bulletin flashed across the TV screen on Fox News. Barely paying attention, I later googled the name I managed to remember from the newscast, "Harry Hay," and found a transcript. In a tabloidesque ratings-grab, host Sean Hannity tried to discredit openly gay Obama Dept. of Education appointee Kevin Jennings by associating him with NAMBLA.
In fact, Kevin Jennings does not have any clear ties to NAMBLA. The reason the FOX newscaster said this was because Jennings once professed his admiration for Harry Hay, an important early LGBT rights activist who helped found both the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries. Although himself not a card-carrying member of NAMBLA, in 1994, Hay refused to march in the official Stonewall commemoration parade because of its exclusion of the organization from the event. As one editorialist noted, "From Hay's point of view, silencing any part of the movement because it was disliked or hated by mainstream culture was both a moral failing and a seriously mistaken political strategy for the gay community."
Indeed, the body of thought that developed during gay liberation about intergenerational intimacy was much more sophisticated than the current discussions within gay communities. Consider, for example, this article from the June 1979 issue of gay lib. journal The Body Politic.
Given the network's conservative bent, FOX's portrayal of the NAMBLA position as one promoting the abuse of babies (see transcript) is not altogether surprising. More unsettling should be the fact that the response within the gay blogosphere did not try to reconceptualize this right wing image of the organization as a malevolent group of psychopaths intent on exploiting unconsenting infants (The above-cited blogger, for example, calls the organization "heinous."). Capitulating to what FOX wants us to think about NAMBLA is unproductive. It is essential that we develop a concept of sex for minors that does not automatically refer to abuse or exploitation.
The FOX News Christian-Republicans have always ferociously defended their own First Amendment right to free speech, but they are ironically condemning Harry Hay for defending freedom of speech.
Harry Hay was a big believer in freedom of speech, especially because he was as a former Communist Party member who had been accused by Sen. Joe McCarthy of being un-American.
Harry Hay courageously defended the First Amendment freedom-of-speech rights of NAMBLA members to advocate for lowering the legal age of consent to sex. Harry Hay never defended breaking any age-of-consent laws, although he confessed to having had an affair with an older man when he was a teenager.
The moral panics over pedophilia and homosexuality have obscured the important political discussion surrounding age-of-consent laws, which are vastly different from state to state. For example, when sodomy was legalized in Oregon, the age-of-consent was simultaneously raised to age 18 as a political compromise to "protect children from homosexual men." Other state laws have set a much lower age-of-consent for heterosexuals than for homosexuals.
The definitive biography by Stuart Timmons, "The trouble with Harry Hay: founder of the modern gay movement," Alyson, 1990 on p. 296 explains Harry Hay's principled position.
For a scholarly analysis of pedophilia vs. ephebophilia, see the 1991 academic book edited by Theo Sandfort, Edward Brongersma, A. X. van Naerssen, "Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives," Haworth Press, 1991
My previous blog post Vern Bullough, NAMBLA, and Paidike (8/15/07) discusses how the distinguished heterosexual researcher Vern Bullough also defended NAMBLA. In another post I discuss how NAMBLA killed Gay Liberation (2/14/09) because mainstream gay rights groups moved from advocating for sexual freedom to things such as gay marriage and adoption in response to rightwing attacks.
A couple of things. You're right the issue of minors' sexuality does not automatically have to refer to abuse or exploitation, and is likely another extension of our cultural gag reflex to sexuality with creatures we generally assume to innocent, and by that implying avoid of sexual inclinations.
However, the issue of adults having sex with minors is a different story altogether, because of the very nature of the relationship, where it is largely one person, the adult, relying on deception, emotional manipulation, and trickery to prompt the minor into sex.
And the stigma to the organization largely stems from our belief and understanding that minors cannot fully appreciate the seriousness of their actions (particularly with adults), despite how mature they are or may seem; and that men who are in NAMBLA are trying to exploit in most cases (though cases involving even younger minors have been heard) a very sensitive time in human development under the guise that they "love" them. But you don't love a human characteristic, i.e. age, you love a person.
Now as for NAMBLA's role and or place in the gay community, there is no denying that they had a historical place in the early movement (as regrettable as that is). The movement then was a hodgepodge of communities resolved around sexual discrimination and stigma form the mainstream; however, collectively the the goals now are not the same, and more importantly why should they be? They are inherently different.
Thanks Thomas, as always, for this wealth of information. Theo Sandfort's book is a favorite of mine. Incidentally, another book of his, *Boys on their contacts with men: a study of sexually expressed friendships,* is available online. http://www.ipce.info/host/sandfort_87/ In this volume, there is a short, very interesting introduction by influential sex researcher John Money.
I also happen to agree with your analysis that moral panics about pedophilia and homosexuality have obstructed productive discussion about age-of-cosent laws. Thank you for this valuable insight.