The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a U.S.-based organization that advocates the abolition of age of consent laws. NAMBLA has frequently been accused of being a front for the sexual exploitation of children. It denies these charges, claiming not all sex involving minors is exploitation.

NAMBLA is an unincorporated association based in New York. Little is known of its organization, operations or current membership. In the 1990s it had a national "Steering Committee," but whether it is still operating is unknown. In the early 1980s, NAMBLA reported over 300 members, as well as famous supporters like Allen Ginsberg and Gore Vidal. One anti-NAMBLA source says that in 1990 it had 3,000 members [1], but how accurate that figure was is unclear.

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." [2]

One of the group's arguments is that age of consent laws can unnecessarily criminalize sexual relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys). [3] 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." [4] This policy was still in NAMBLA's "official position papers" in 1996.

NAMBLA claims to advocate a comprehensive youth rights platform of which sexual freedom is only a small portion. In addition to supporting the repeal of age of consent laws, NAMBLA has also taken an active stance against corporal punishment, rape, and kidnapping, and has declared that sexual exploitation is grounds for expulsion from the group. [5]

Issues besides youth rights have also attracted NAMBLA's attention. Often these issues have been related to left-wing politics, unsurprising in light of the ideologies harbored by NAMBLA founders like David Thorstad. In the early 1980s NAMBLA participated in demonstrations in support of nuclear disarmament. The group also expressed disapproval of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq shortly after the war began. [6]

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 radical wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.

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. [7] The NCGO, which was formed at the Chicago convention, primarily consisted of New York's Gay Activist Alliance (GAA); small local chapters of the GAA countrywide; and many small gay activist groups mostly organized on college campuses (PDF). The New York 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 were more concerned with issues of police harassment and nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas, and paid little attention to the pederasts in their ranks.

The founding of NAMBLA 1977-1978

In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb of Revere. Twenty-one men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts of sex with boys aged 8 to thirteen. Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne announced that the men used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they allegedly photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Byrne declared that the men were members of 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.

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 committee sponsored rallies, provided funds for the defendants, and tried to educate the public by passing out fliers. It was this committee that led to the formation of NAMBLA.

On December 2, 1978, Tom Reeves of the Boston-Boise Committee convened a meeting called "Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent," at which roughly 150 people discussed the problems of men attracted to underage males. At the meeting's conclusion, approximately thirty people decided to form an organization which they called the North American Man/Boy Love Association, NAMBLA.

Backlash 1977-1980

As the gay liberation movement progressed into the late 1970s, detractors became more vocal. One of the figures at the center of this opposition was former beauty queen Anita Bryant. With her "Save Our Children" Crusade, she began in 1977 to harness the growing anti-gay backlash. "The recruitment of our children," she argued, "is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality." Judianne Densen-Gerber , founder of the New York drug rehabilitation center Odyssey House , also used the issue of child sexuality to oppose gays, claiming that they were responsible for child pornography.

Bryant's campaign focusing on the alleged "recruitment" of boys by gay men resulted in the overturning of a pro-gay law in Dade County, Florida. As a result, gay groups in the United States sought to distance themselves from such suggestions by making it clear that they did not support NAMBLA or its objectives. By the early 1980s almost every well-known gay organization had made its opposition to NAMBLA clear.

NAMBLA and gay rights groups 1980-1995

Almost all modern-day gay rights groups disavow any ties to NAMBLA and its objectives. They ended any formal association with NAMBLA and prevented NAMBLA from taking part in gay and lesbian rights movement events.

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, accredation, 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." ^[10]

Suspicion pertaining to the group's activies 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" [11]. Since sex between adults and minors is illegal, it is presumably included in NAMBLA's avoidance of advocating activites 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," [12]. 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." [13]. Some researchers dispute the findings of the meta-analysis [14].

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 [15] 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 [the man/boy love issue] 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. [16]

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 [17], 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 [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 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." [18]

The Boston Globe editorialized: "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." [19]

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. [20]

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. [21]

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.[22]. 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. [23][24]

• 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 [25][26].

• 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. [27],[28], [29]

• 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 [30].

See also

• Childlove movement
• Pederasty
• Pedophilia
• homosexuality
• 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

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
• David Thorstad, "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," Journal of Homosexuality 20 (1990): 251-274.

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