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The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a U.S.-based organization that advocates the abolition of age of consent laws.

NAMBLA is an unincorporated association based in New York and San Francisco, guided by a steering committee. There is an annual gathering in New York, and monthly meetings around the country. In the early 1980s, NAMBLA was reported to have had over 300 members, and was supported by celebrities such as Allen Ginsberg and Gore Vidal. Since then, the organization has kept membership data private, but an undercover FBI investigation in 1995 discovered that there were 1,100 people on the rolls.

Since 1995, public scorn and law enforcement infiltration has taken a toll on the group. Its national headquarters now consists of little more than a private mail box service in San Francisco, and inquiries are rarely responded to. NAMBLA is often accused of fronting an informal network that promotes the sexual exploitation of children. It denies this charge, and further, claims that not all sex between adults and minors is exploitative and thus deserving of criminalization.

Platform and positions

NAMBLA describes itself as a "support group for intergenerational relationships," and uses the slogan "sexual freedom for all." According to the group's web site, 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."

One of the group's arguments is that age of consent laws can unnecessarily criminalize sexual relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys). 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." This policy was still in NAMBLA's "official position papers" in 1996.

NAMBLA advocates a comprehensive youth rights platform of which sexual freedom is only a portion. In addition to supporting the repeal of age of consent laws, NAMBLA has also opposed corporal punishment, rape, and kidnapping, and has declared that sexual exploitation is grounds for expulsion from the group.

Although some sources allege that NAMBLA has used the slogan "sex by eight is too late" or "sex by eight or else it's too late", this motto is properly attributed to the Rene Guyon Society.

History

NAMBLA emerged from the radical political atmosphere of the 1970s, particularly from the leftist wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Although discussion of gay adult-minor sex did take place, gay rights groups immediately following the Stonewall riot were more concerned with issues of police harassment, nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas.

Not until a "sex ring" of underage boys brought intense media scrutiny in Boston in the closing weeks of 1977, and police closed down the Toronto-area gay newspaper The Body Politic for publishing an article titled Men Loving Boys Loving Men did the subject of adult-minor sex garner enough attention to prompt the formation of a group like NAMBLA.

The founding of NAMBLA (1977-1978)

In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb of Revere. Twenty-four men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts, including child pornography and sex with boys aged eight to fifteen. Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne alleged that the men used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Byrne accused the men of being members of a "sex ring", and said that the arrest was only "the tip of the iceberg." The arrests sparked intense media coverage, and local newspapers published the photographs and personal information of the accused men.

Staff members of the gay newspaper Fag Rag believed the raid was politically motivated. They and others in Boston's gay community saw Byrne's round-up as an anti-gay witchhunt. On December 9, they organized the Boston-Boise Committee, a name intended as a reference to a similar situation that unfolded in Boise, Idaho in the 1950s. The group sponsored rallies, provided funds for the defendants, and tried to educate the public about the case by passing out fliers. It would also later spawn NAMBLA.

District Attorney Garrett Byrne was defeated in his re-election bid. The new DA said that no man should fear prison for having sex with a teenager unless coercion was involved. All charges were dropped. The few who had already pled or been found guilty received only probation.

On December 2, 1978, Tom Reeves of the Boston-Boise Committee convened a meeting called "Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent." Approximately 150 people attended. At the meeting's conclusion, about thirty men and youths decided to form an organization which they called the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA for short.

Ostracism

At the time of NAMBLA's founding, it was not the only group that opposed age-of-consent laws. Faced with disparate age-of-consent laws for homosexual and heterosexual couples, many gay rights groups immediately following Stonewall perceived age-of-consent laws as governmental tools to suppress homosexual behavior rather than safeguards against the sexual abuse of small children. The 1972 Gay Rights Platform , adopted by about 200 radical gay activists at a convention in Chicago held by the National Coalition of Gay Organizations (NCGO), called for the "repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent" at the state level. (The NCGO, which was formed at the Chicago convention, primarily consisted of New York's Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), which was composed of many small gay activist groups organized mostly on college campuses throughout the U.S. PDF). The GAA opposed age of consent laws and had hosted a forum on the topic in 1976. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition also supported eliminating the existing age-of-consent laws.

The relative acceptance or indifference to opposition of the age-of-consent began to change at the same time as accusations that gays were child pornographers and child molesters became common. Judianne Densen-Gerber, founder of the New York drug rehabilitation center Odyssey House, argued that gays were responsible for child pornography. In 1977 former beauty queen Anita Bryant staked a similar position, starting the "Save Our Children" campaign. "The recruitment of our children," she argued, "is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality."

Bryant's campaign focusing on the alleged "recruitment" of boys by gay men succeeded in overturning a law that had protected civil rights for gays in Dade County, Florida. As a result, the age-of-consent issue became a hotly debated topic within the gay community, and disputes over the age of consent issue within and between gay rights groups -- many of which directly or indirectly involved NAMBLA -- began to occur on an increasingly frequent basis.

Disagreement was evident following the conference that organized the first gay march on Washington in 1979. In addition to forming several working committees, the conference was responsible for drafting the basic organizing principles of the march (“the five demands” PDF ). Originally, the Gay Youth Caucus had won approval for its proposal demanding “Full Rights for Gay Youth, including revision of the age of consent laws.” However at the first meeting of the National Coordinating Committee, a contingent of lesbians threatened not to participate in the march unless a substitute was adopted. The substitute, authored by an adult lesbian and approved in a mail poll by a majority of delegates, stated: “Protect Lesbian and Gay Youth from any laws which are used to discriminate against, oppress, and/or harass them in their homes, schools, job and social environments.”

In 1980 a group called the “Lesbian Caucus – Lesbian & Gay Pride March Committee” distributed a hand-out urging women to split from the annual New York City Gay Pride March because the organizing committee had supposedly been dominated by NAMBLA and its supporters. The next year, after some lesbians threatened to picket, the Cornell University gay group Gay PAC (Gay People at Cornell) rescinded its invitation to NAMBLA founder David Thorstad to be the keynote speaker at the annual May Gay Festival. And in the following years, gay rights groups attempted to block NAMBLA’s participation in gay pride parades, prompting Harry Hay to wear a sign proclaiming “NAMBLA walks with me” as he participated in a 1986 gay pride march in Los Angeles.

Thus by the mid-1980s, NAMBLA was virtually alone in its positions and found itself politically isolated. Gay rights organizations, burdened by accusations of child recruitment and child abuse, had abandoned the radicalism of their early years and had "retreat from the idea of a more inclusive politics," opting instead to appeal more to the mainstream. Support for "groups perceived as being on the fringe of the gay community," such as NAMBLA, vanished in the process. Today almost all gay rights groups disavow any ties to NAMBLA, voice disapproval of its objectives, and attempt to prevent NAMBLA from having a role in gay and lesbian rights events.

The ILGA Controversy

The case of ILGA illustrates this opposition. In 1993, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, of which NAMBLA had been a member for a decade, achieved United Nations consultative status. NAMBLA's association with ILGA drew heavy criticism, and many gay organizations called for the ILGA to dissolve ties with NAMBLA. Republican Senator Jesse Helms proposed a bill to withhold $119 million in U.N. contributions until U. S. President Bill Clinton could certify that "no UN agency grants any official status, accreditation, or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones, or seeks the legalization of pedophilia, that is, the sexual abuse of children". The bill was unanimously approved by Congress and signed into law by Clinton in April 1994.

ILGA had passed a resolution in 1985 which stated that "young people have the right to sexual and social self-determination and that age of consent laws often operate to oppress and not to protect." In spite of this apparent agreement with NAMBLA on the age of consent issue just nine years before, ILGA, by a vote of 214-30 expelled NAMBLA and two other groups (MARTIJN and Project Truth) in early 1994 because they were judged to be "groups whose predominant aim is to support or promote pedophilia." Although ILGA removed NAMBLA, the U.N. reversed its decision to grant ILGA special consultative status. Repeated attempts by ILGA to reacquire special status with the U.N. have not been successful, but the group does exercise consultative status with the European Commission.

Gregory King of the Human Rights Campaign Fund later said that "NAMBLA is not a gay organization ... They are not part of our community and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights." NAMBLA responded by claiming that "man/boy love is by definition homosexual," that "man/boy lovers are part of the gay movement and central to gay history and culture," and that "homosexuals denying that it is 'not gay' to be attracted to adolescent boys are just as ludicrous as heterosexuals saying it's 'not heterosexual' to be attracted to adolescent girls."

1990s

In 1994 the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) adopted a "Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA" saying GLAAD "deplores the 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 that 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."

Documents relating to the court case Curley v. NAMBLA and others provide further information on NAMBLA's structure and activities. In March 2003 Judge George O'Toole of the Massachusetts federal court found that in the 1990s (the period being considered by the court), NAMBLA was controlled by a national Steering Committee, "a group which purposefully directed NAMBLA's outreach activities generally."

The court documents also shed light on some of NAMBLA's activities, including that:

"NAMBLA was established as an unincorporated association in 1978 to encourage public acceptance of consensual sexual relationships between men and boys. Its principal place of business is New York, and its primary mechanisms of public outreach include its Bulletin, a quarterly publication sent to dues-paying members... Gayme Magazine, a NAMBLA publication mailed periodically to dues-paying members and sold at some bookstores; a NAMBLA website... TOPICS, a series of booklets providing more focused consideration of issues related to "man-boy love"; a prison newsletter; Ariel's Pages, a NAMBLA project through which literature concerning "man-boy love" was sold; and membership conferences.

"The Steering Committee, through several of its members, also formed "Zymurgy, Inc.," a Delaware corporation, which was operated as a profit-making arm of NAMBLA. Although the defendants describe the Bulletin, Gayme Magazine, Ariel's Pages, and Zymurgy, Inc. as separate and distinct from NAMBLA, it appears from the materials submitted, including minutes of Steering Committee meetings, that the Steering Committee controlled all of these entities, providing monies to initiate and support various projects and freely transferring funds among them."

"In addition to managing NAMBLA's financial matters, the Steering Committee also directed the association's policy, political, legal, and public relations efforts. Steering Committee members held frequent meetings and retreats during which they discussed NAMBLA's public image, formulated the association's outreach efforts, and nominated spokespersons. Members of the Steering Committee in close coordination with each other, created and maintained NAMBLA's website, and wrote, marketed, sold, and otherwise disseminated a variety of publications. Working in Massachusetts, William Andriette served as the editor of the Bulletin and Gayme Magazine. He did not act alone but rather under the supervision of the Steering Committee in producing these publications and in holding himself out as a NAMBLA spokesman.

"In addition to the financial support and supervision provided by the full Steering Committee, the content of the Bulletin was guided by the "Bulletin Collective," an editorial board comprised of NAMBLA members from across the country who contributed and edited articles, screened photos and pictures, and participated in coordinating the production and distribution of the publication."

Judge O'Toole found that Dennis Bejin, Joe Power, David Thorstad,Paul 'Biff' Rose, David Miller (also known as David Menasco), Peter Melzer (also known as Peter Herman), Arnold Schoen (also known as Floyd Conaway), Dennis Mintun, Chris Farrell, Tim Bloomquist, Tecumseh Brown, Gary Hann, Peter Reed, Robert Schwartz, Walter Bieder and Leyland Stevenson were or had been members of the NAMBLA Steering Committee or had held other leading positions in the organization.

(The full text of these documents can be seen here.)

Today

More recently, media reports have suggested that for practical purposes the group no longer exists and that it consists only of a web site maintained by a few enthusiasts. NAMBLA maintains a web site at http://www.nambla.org that shows addresses in New York and San Francisco and a phone contact in New York, and offers publications for sale, including the NAMBLA Bulletin.

Criticism and response

Gay groups, Christian groups, anti-sexual abuse organizations, law enforcement agencies and other critics see NAMBLA as a front for the criminal sexual exploitation of children. They say NAMBLA functions as a meeting place for male pedophiles and pederasts and their sympathizers. A number of alleged NAMBLA members have been charged with and convicted of sexual offenses against children.

Onell R. Soto, a San Diego Union-Tribune writer, 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."

Suspicion pertaining to the group's activities led both the U.S. Senate and U.S. Postal Service to conduct investigations of the group, both of which concluded without allegations of legal impropriety.

NAMBLA responds to the criticism that it is a "front for criminal and sexual exploitation of children" and that it advocates sex between men and boys by stating unequivocally that "NAMBLA does not engage in any activities that violate the law, nor do we advocate that anyone else should do so" . Since sex between adults and minors is illegal, it is presumably included in NAMBLA's avoidance of advocating activities that violate the law.

NAMBLA rejects the widely held view that sex between adults and minors is always harmful, arguing that "the outcomes of personal experiences between adults and younger people primarily depend upon whether their relationships were consensual," . In support of this position NAMBLA cites research such as A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples, which was published in the Psychological Bulletin in 1998. NAMBLA devoted a web page to a brief overview of the study under the heading "The Good News About Man/Boy Love," and claimed the study showed, "On average, nearly 70% of males in the studies reported that as children or adolescents their sexual experiences with adults had been positive or neutral." . Some researchers dispute the findings of the meta-analysis .

Gay rights groups opposed to NAMBLA contend that their reason for disavowing NAMBLA has always been their sharing of the general public's disdain for pedophilia and child sexual abuse (as expressed in issues statements). These gay rights groups reject NAMBLA's claims of an analogy between the campaign for gay and lesbian equality and the abolition of age-of-consent laws, and view NAMBLA's rhetoric about "the sexual rights of youth" as a cover for its members' real agenda.

Radicals like Pat Califia argue that politics played an important role in the gay community's rejection of NAMBLA. Califia says that although the gay rights mainstream never committed itself to NAMBLA or its platform, neither did it actively ostracise NAMBLA until opponents of gay rights used the group to link gay rights with child abuse and "recruitment." As evidence, subscribers to this theory point to statements made by prominent gay activists which contain political assessments of NAMBLA's impact on gay rights. One such statement was made by gay rights lobbyist Steve Endean. Endean, who opposed NAMBLA, said: "What NAMBLA is doing is tearing apart the movement. If you attach it to gay rights, gay rights will never happen." Gay author and activist Edmund White made a similar statement in his book States of Desire: "That's the politics of self-indulgence. Our movement cannot survive the man-boy issue. It's not a question of who's right, it's a matter of political naivete."

Some conservative Christians in the United States have used NAMBLA to attack gays in general. With the outbreak of the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in 2002, this practice intensified. Critics of such organizations have pointed to statistics from national professional associations, such as the American Psychological Association and the Child Welfare League of America, which indicate that there is no correlation between homosexuality and child abuse.

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 , 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.

Curley v. NAMBLA

In 2000, a Boston couple, Robert and Barbara Curley, sued NAMBLA. According to the Curley's suit, Jaynes and Sicari "stalked Jeffrey Curley... and tortured, murdered and mutilated 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 lawsuit further alleges 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."

The American Civil Liberties Union stepped in to defend NAMBLA as a free speech matter and won a dismissal based on the fact that NAMBLA is organized as an association, not a corporation. The Curleys continued the suit as a wrongful death action against individual NAMBLA members, some of whom were active in the group's leadership.

The target of the wrongful death suits were Roy Radow, Joe Power, David Miller, Peter Herman, Max Hunter, Arnold Schoen and 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.

As of April 2005 the wrongful death cases were still being considered by a Massachusetts federal court, with the American Civil Liberties Union assisting the defendants on the grounds that the suit violated their First Amendment rights to free speech.. The American Civil Liberties Union makes it clear, however, that it does not endorse NAMBLA's objectives. "We've never taken a position that sexual-consent laws are beyond the state's power to legislate," John Reinstein, attorney for the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in 1997. "I've never been able to fathom their position." (Boston Globe, October 9, 1997).

Other criminal cases

In addition to Curley v. NAMBLA, several 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.

• 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 .

• Johnathan Tampico was convicted of child molestation in 1989 and paroled in 1992 on condition that he not possess 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 he and others frequently traveled to Thailand to have easy 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. ,,

• 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 .

See also

• Childlove movement
• Pederasty
• Pedophilia
• Child sexual abuse
• Rind et al. (1998)
• Paedophile Information Exchange

Sources cited

1. Brief of amicus curae of Bill Wood and Joseph Ureneck for Massachusetts Senate Bill 2175
2. Gamson, Joshua. 1997. Messages of Exclusion: Gender, Movements, and Symbolic Boundaries. Gender and Society 11(2):178-199. (view)
3. The Curleys v NAMBLA and others
4. Johnson, Matthew D. 2004. NAMBLA. An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/nambla.html.
5. Thorstad, David. "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," Journal of Homosexuality 20 (1990): 251-274.

References

• 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

External links

• Home page of NAMBLA
• Gay Community Responds to Revere
• NAMBLA-related Documents on the Queer Resources Directory
• Boston Magazine: Boy Crazy A history of NAMBLA, May 2001

• Jeffrey Curley
• The Curleys v NAMBLA and others
• CNN: Parents of murdered child sue child-sex advocates January 8, 2001
• BLOG: Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The ACLU and the NAMBLA Case December 22, 2003
• ACLU of Massachusetts :LEGAL DOCKET 2003- 2004 Summary of their defense of NAMBLA

• Pedophilia
• Interpersonal relationships
• Sexuality and age
• United States organizations
• LGBT organizations