From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Subject: Re: Child Molestors - internationally organized?
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 01:14:41 GMT

In article <16NOV199217341298@csa3.lbl.gov> jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (Ad absurdum per aspera) writes:
>>The FBI, amoung other investigative bodies, has denied finding any evidence
>>of any such groups [in the US] - Child molesters, pedophiles...

Of all the sexual minorities I've encountered in a long and
consensually-perverted life, the childlovers were the most isolated,
marginalized, and desperate.  Face it, these people can't even go to a
shrink to figure out how not to hurt kids, because the therapist can't
promise confidentiality.

Whether you think age-of-consent laws should be changed (I do, for I
was much in love with an older person when it would have been a
career-killer for hir had we expressed our love) or not, I hope you'd
agree that folk whose chief emotional link is with those who cannot
legally give consent do have a problem living in a culture where their
psychiatrist must report them if they speak of the most problematic
portion of their lives.

>There are persistent reports in the popular media of a "North American
>Man-Boy Love Association" (NAMBLA) whose materials, including some
>kind of a newsletter, are sometimes found among pedophiles' effects.

Persistent reports in the popular media?  SHEESH!  I've read some of
their newsletters (try the most alternative bookstore in town), talked
to members, and known folk who might have joined had they dared
believe it wasn't a sting operation.  (I have no knowledge of whether
or not it is a gummint sting.  But I am not on their list, though I
too would like the age-of-consent laws to be loosened.)

Now, your attitude toward child sexuality may influence whether you
role-play with a friend while sie dreams of the girl next door (been
there, done that, got off bigtime) or refuse to let hir take your kid
camping, but these are people, breathing hurting people with just as
much capacity as you or I for ethical choice.  I'm grateful that I do
not carry their sexual imprint through life, because being a bisexual
leatherwoman is plenty enough marginal for me, but the mere fact that
someone's primary attraction is to children does not itself make a
monster.  What sie does or does not do with that fact is still hir
individual human choice.

>If I recall correctly, this came up a year or a year and a half ago
>when a group of such people claimed their right as taxpayers to use 
>some facility of the San Francisco Public Library to hold meetings. 
>As they say in chess, "?!?"

I am not close enough to the local chapter of NAMBLA to know if
they've found a new meeting site.  I hope so, because it's easier to
live up to one's ethical code with support from a community, and in
our sick society, the emotional costs to a child found in love with an
adult are only equalled by the cost to the adult.

>Fact or folklore?  I don't know, and frankly I don't care to associate
>with the kind of people who *would* know, with the guarded exception of
>the enforcement officials who catch 'em and put 'em in the slammer.  

I disagree.  I do not, to the best of my knowledge, know any current
members of NAMBLA.  I am certain that some of their membership are
scum for the same reason I am sure some lefthanded people are scum,
and I am certain that some are ethical and loving people with a sexual
imprint they're forced to carry as a guilty secret, unable even to
talk to a counsellor without getting put on a watch-list.

>Sorry, folks.  Consenting adults can do what they please, but children
>need protection.

Then protect me from battering parents when I'm twelve, not a loving
adult who could not even tell me that sie returned my feelings when I
was fifteen!

>Joe "Can't really think up a lighthearted witticism for this one" Chew

Me neither, Joe.  I've known a boyfucker I'd kill myself (he didn't
back off when the boy called safeword (I think he's still in jail, and
that only hurts my heart once in a while), and I've known folk who
could move their physical expression, if not their hearts, to adult
partners, and I've known one celibate dear who would have collapsed in
dismay if I'd hitched up my crinolines and showed him my frilly
day-of-week panties, back when the world and I were young, and they're
all people, and they're all seen as being the same.  And they're all
as different as any other "group".

Can we see each other as people, rather than stereotypes?

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
aka stella@glg.ucs.dec.com -- ping there if you can't find thelema
Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian!