From: gsmith@lauren.uucp (Gene W. Smith)
Newsgroups: ca.politics,talk.politics.misc,ba.politics
Subject: Re: NAMBLA, reality & perceptions
Date: 28 Sep 92 18:48:35 GMT
Organization: IWR, University of Heidelberg, Germany

In article <1992Sep28.022200.5667@panix.com> roy@panix.com (Roy Radow)
writes:
>In <1992Sep25.172241.28380@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
gsmith@lauren.uucp (Gene W. Smith) writes:

>>OK, let me try once again.  Is it the NAMBLA position that six-year
>>olds can consent to sexual relations, and that these should be legal if
>>they do so consent?

>Please note that we are NOT proposing that ALL six year olds
>(or five year olds, or thirty five year olds) must or should
>engage in intimate sexual relationships.

This is not the question.  My question was really directed at the
notion that there is no minimum age below which sex cannot be consented
to.  My take on it is that the answer "no" is really given in bad
faith.  That is, I take it as given everyone including members of
NAMBLA actually knows that a six-month old infant cannot consent to
sexual relations, so that to maintain this position involves a certain
dishonesty.  

The question is what is the ideological or practical commitment which
has lead to this dishonesty?  If so many NAMBLA members are sexually
interested in four-year olds that no such policy could be adopted, that
would be one kind of answer.  If NAMBLA members in general are afraid
of slippery slope arguments, and don't want to be left on the low side
of any reform of age-of-consent laws, that would be another kind of
answer.  I have to say I don't see what people who are sexually
interested in teenagers stand to gain by associating themselves with
those sexually interested in small children, and this seems to add
credence to the argument that this, primarily, is what NAMBLA is all
about.

>   1) fails to consider individual differences and the 
>      wishes of the individuals involved, 

Which deos not answer the argument that there is an age below which
sex cannot be consented to no matter how precocious the child.

>   2) does not take into account the QUALITY and effect 
>      of such a relationship on the people involved, 

Ditto.

>   3) deals more with repression of individual choice 
>      and the intrusion of the police into people's 
>      private lives, rather than the education and 
>      empowerment of youth to have more control over 
>      their own bodies, and

It would not ordinarily be considered "empowerment of youth" to find
that someone was diddling four-year-olds in the day-care center. 
"Youth" is a word which points to an older age group, and again this
sort of rhetoric is fundamentally dishonest unless some distinctions
are drawn somewhere.

>Other countries have successfully examined this problem
>(with perhaps a lesser degree of prejudice and hysteria)
>and have come up with laws which are more responsive to
>the needs and wishes of all its citizens.

Western countries have come up with the solution of age-of-consent
laws. Not all of these are as low as Spains, nor as high as in the US,
so there certainly are differences.  However, even countries which are
hardly hysterical over these issues, such as Denmark, have
age-of-consent legislation. Denmark is in fact fairly typical, setting
it at 15 years.

>WHEREAS any attempt to set an age would weaken NAMBLA's identity as a
>sexual freedom organization, and limit it to advocating the point of
>view of only a segment of its membership and of youth; and

This sounds like it is saying "Whereas there are so many outright
child-molesters in here, we cannot adopt any other position."  

>WHEREAS the state has no business intervening in any mutually
>consensual relationship, and NAMBLA has correctly refrained from
>asking it to do so;

This finesses the question of what children of various ages *can*
consent to.  Moreover, it ignores the fact that a certain degree of
coercion seems to be fundamental in child-rearing. We don't let
children decide whether or not to get an education, for instance, nor
what subject matters will be taught.
-- 
     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/IWR/Ruprecht-Karls University 
               gsmith@kalliope.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de