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| <CENTER><P><B><FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><FONT SIZE=+3>Pederasty and Homosexuality</FONT></FONT></B></P></CENTER> | |
| <CENTER><P><FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><FONT SIZE=+2>by David Thorstad</FONT></FONT></P></CENTER> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#EC2813"><FONT SIZE=+1>Speech to the <B><I>Semana Cultural | |
| Lesbica-Gay</I></B>, Mexico City, June 26, 1998. More than 600 people showed | |
| up for the talk: standing room only, and many had to be turned away. [This | |
| is an English translation of the speech, which was given in Spanish]</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <UL> | |
| <P><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900></P> | |
| </UL> | |
| <UL> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>"Our movement today stresses | |
| the liberation and empowerment of young people. Instead of pedagogy, democracy. | |
| Rather than a Greek love mentor-relationship, the companionship of independent | |
| and autonomous individuals. In place of male supremacy, a vision of sexual, | |
| economic, and political liberation for all. Freedom is indivisible. The | |
| liberation of children, women, boy-lovers, and homosexuals in general, | |
| can occur only as complementary facets of the same dream."</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900> <BR> | |
| </P> | |
| </UL> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><FONT SIZE=+3> <BR> | |
| T</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=+1>he issue of love between men and boys has intersected | |
| the gay movement since the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the | |
| first gay rights movement in Germany. In the United States, as the gay | |
| movement has retreated from its vision of sexual liberation, in favor of | |
| integration and assimilation into existing social and political structures, | |
| it has increasingly sought to marginalize even demonize cross-generational | |
| love. Pederasty - that is, love between a man and a youth of 12 to 18 years | |
| of age - say middle-class homosexuals, lesbians, and feminists, has nothing | |
| to do with gay liberation. Some go so far as to claim, absurdly, that it | |
| is a heterosexual phenomenon, or even "sexual abuse." What a | |
| travesty! </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Pederasty is the main form that | |
| male homosexuality has acquired throughout Western civilization - and not | |
| only in the West! Pederasty is inseparable from the high points of Western | |
| culture - ancient Greece and the Renaissance. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In Germany, in the late nineteenth | |
| century, pederasty was an integral part of the new gay movement. The first | |
| gay journal in the world - <B><I>Der Eigene</I></B>, published beginning | |
| in 1896 (one year before the formation of the first homosexual rights group, | |
| the Scientific Humanitarian Committee of Magnus Hirschfeld) - was a pederast | |
| and anarchist journal "for male culture" with an individualist | |
| anarchist outlook based on the ideas of Max Stirner (author of <B><I>Der | |
| Einzige und sein Eigentum</I></B>). Its publisher, Adolf Brand, was a leading | |
| figure of the gay movement throughout the first decades, until the Nazis | |
| came to power. The journal continued to appear until 1933. Brand died in | |
| an Allied bombing of Berlin in 1945. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Another leading pederast and writer, | |
| Benedict Friedlaender, was also a leader of Hirschfeld's committee, until | |
| 1908 when he committed suicide. Not unlike today, the two groups - the | |
| pederasts in the <B><I>Gemeinschaft der Eigenen</I></B> (the Community | |
| of Self- Owners) and the Hirschfeld group - constituted two wings of the | |
| gay movement. Although they collaborated in some things (for example, both | |
| opposed the sodomy statute, Paragraph 175), sharp ideological and scientific | |
| differences separated them. In uncanny ways, many of these differences | |
| persist in the quite different circumstances of today. </FONT></FONT><BR> | |
| </P> | |
| <CENTER><P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>---</FONT></FONT></P></CENTER> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><FONT SIZE=+3>W</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=+1>ith | |
| the spread of the medical model of homosexuality in the late nineteenth | |
| century came an increasing influence of doctors and psychiatrists in the | |
| gay movement. These viewed homosexuals as a "third sex," or as | |
| "intermediate sexual types" (<B><I>Zwischenstufen</I></B> in | |
| German), a "male soul trapped in a female body" (or vice versa | |
| for lesbians) - a view advanced by Hirschfeld. The pederasts actively combated | |
| this view. They believed in an inherent bisexuality of human beings and | |
| argued that the influence of the medical profession gave the gay movement | |
| the aura of a hospital. Most felt that younger and older males were naturally | |
| attracted to each other and that pederasty was a positive good for society | |
| because it helped to socialize young males and provided them with a necessary | |
| sexual outlet, thereby reducing undesirable social phenomena such as unwanted | |
| pregnancies and prostitution. A few (Hans Blüher, for example, famous | |
| for his book on the Wandervogel movement) believed that pederasty and male | |
| bonding provided a basis for a stronger nation and state - a view that, | |
| in a perverted form, found a distorted expression in the militarism of | |
| the Hitler Youth. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Friedlaender, for example, ridiculed | |
| the concept of "a poor womanly soul languishing away in a man's body, | |
| and of the `third sex,'" and attacked the third sex concept as "degrading | |
| and a beggarly...pleading for sympathy." He insisted on a historical | |
| approach that also took into account anthropological evidence, and wrote: | |
| "A glance at the cultures of countries before and outside of Christianity | |
| suffices to show the complete untenability of the [<B><I>Zwischenstufen</I></B>] | |
| theory. Especially in ancient Greece, most of the military leaders, artists, | |
| and thinkers would have had to be 'psychic hermaphrodites.'" <SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 1">1</A></SUP></FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In their critique of the third-sex | |
| concept and their recognition of the ambiguities and potential bisexuality | |
| of the human animal, the pederasts had their feet more securely on the | |
| ground than did the larger "mainstream" gay movement. The third-sex | |
| argument has been thoroughly discredited for years. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Increasingly, the assimilationist | |
| gay and lesbian groups in the United States, in a kind of throwback to | |
| the nineteenth century, argue that homosexuality is inborn, that it is | |
| genetically determined ("we can't help it that we're gay, we were | |
| born that way, so please don't discriminate against us" - an echo | |
| of the nineteenth-century argument that practically solicits pity and that | |
| in no way challenges the built-in social repression of same-sex love). | |
| The middle-class gay movement today seeks special treatment for a special | |
| kind of person who has adopted a "gay" identity - "gay people" | |
| - rather than seeking to liberate the repressed sexual potential of everyone. | |
| For them, what matters is identity, not practice. The basic argument of | |
| the gay movement today boils down to the following: Homosexuals are born | |
| that way, and heterosexuals are born that way; therefore, homosexual liberation | |
| poses no threat to the status quo and dominance of hetersupremacy. This | |
| is the old "nature versus nurture" argument dressed up in new, | |
| accommodationist clothes. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>The theoretical poverty of this | |
| view can be seen in the fact that many people - including, no doubt, some | |
| in this room change their sexual behavior depending on the circumstances | |
| or over the course of their lives. If there is a genetic basis for homosexuality | |
| and heterosexuality - that is, our behavior is determined by our genes, | |
| rather than myriad social and cultural variables that differ from person | |
| to person - it is not as distinct and mutually exclusive categories, but | |
| as potentials for varieties of sexual expression that lie within everyone's | |
| reach. (This line of antighetto thinking has been eloquently expressed | |
| by the late Italian gay activist Mario Mieli in his book, <B><I>Homosexuality | |
| and Liberation</I></B>.) </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>The real motivation behind this | |
| revival of the "inborn" argument is political, not scientific. | |
| The gay assimilationists want to become part of an existing, inequitable | |
| capitalist society, not change that society in any fundamental way. Their | |
| approach is inherently selfish, not altruistic. They seek minor adjustments | |
| in the status quo, not radical social change. They have been co-opted by | |
| the heterosupremacist power structure. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>One obvious contradiction in the | |
| assimilationist position is that if homosexual identity is inborn, as they | |
| say, then why do they oppose freedom of sexual expression for minors? Assimilationists | |
| argue that sexual identity is fixed by age six, but they deny young people | |
| the right to enjoy sexual pleasure with the person of their own choice. | |
| For them, "protection" is the key word, not "liberation"; | |
| they call on the state to "protect" young people from expressing | |
| and exploring their own sexual behavior. They want to "protect" | |
| young people from "dirty old men" (I, incidentally, am speaking | |
| as a "dirty [gay] old man" - something I take as a positive goal), | |
| but in reality are protecting them from themselves. They support criminalization | |
| of young people's sexuality, especially if it involves sex with an adult | |
| man. They condemn any adult who helps a young person to explore his or | |
| her sexuality. They are like parents - only worse, because they pretend | |
| to offer a guide to the gay future. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Of course, money plays a role in | |
| this too. This is very clear, for example, in the many scandals in the | |
| United States over sex between priests and youths, in which the Catholic | |
| church has paid out millions of dollars in an effort to resolve them. If, | |
| as has happened frequently in these scandals, (1) the boy came back regularly | |
| over a period of years in order to have sex with the priest, and (2) the | |
| "victim" waited twenty to thirty years before denouncing the | |
| priest, one is entitled to wonder whether his motive was not financial | |
| above all; and if there is a sense of guilt, it results mainly from the | |
| medieval and hypocritical attitude of the church, and not automatically, | |
| nor necessarily, from the sexual relationship itself. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>There are also a growing number | |
| of gay child protection agencies (I call them "boy dick protection | |
| societies"), youth support organizations, groups that work with abused | |
| children and runaways (victims of family violence) who are receiving money | |
| from the state. But that money is available only if these agencies parrot | |
| the official antisexual (or antihomosexual) line of the state funders. | |
| </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In my state of Minnesota, for example, | |
| these gay agencies do not fight to remove the sodomy statute. Minnesota | |
| is considered to be one of the most liberal states in the United States | |
| (and has had openly gay and lesbian legislators for more than a decade), | |
| but the gay assimilationists barely acknowledge that the state still has | |
| a sodomy statute when more than half of the others have eliminated theirs, | |
| and this more than two hundred years after the French Revolution repealed | |
| the French law. They are lapdogs of the ruling-class parties who prefer | |
| cocktail parties with the oppressor as a way of protesting against oppression. | |
| They also refuse to call for a lowering or a repeal of the age-of-consent | |
| laws (in Minnesota, the age of consent for heterosexual sex, of course, | |
| because homosexual sex is still not legal at any age - is, as it is in | |
| Mexico, 18). The state also has no "emancipation of minors" law, | |
| something that is desperately needed to empower minors who cannot live | |
| with abusive families; but the gay youth protection agencies maintain a | |
| deafening silence about the need for such a law. They do not wish to confront | |
| the antisexual policies of the state, because the state is paying their | |
| salaries, and they have become like pigs at the trough. As the great black | |
| leader Malcolm X once said: "When they lay those dollars on you, your | |
| soul goes." <BR> | |
| <BR> | |
| ---</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><FONT SIZE=+3>T</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=+1>he | |
| German penal code in the nineteenth century set the age of consent at 14. | |
| In 1897, the Scientific Humanitarian Committee began circulating a petition | |
| calling for repeal of the sodomy statute (a campaign that lasted twenty-five | |
| years, without success). It hoped to make its proposal more palatable to | |
| the authorities by proposing that, in exchange for repeal of the statute, | |
| the age of consent be raised to 16! It thereby began a trend, which has | |
| continued in the gay movement to this day, to shift the focus away from | |
| the consensual nature of sexual acts toward achieving greater sexual elbow | |
| room for adults at the direct expense of others - boy-lovers and young | |
| people, whose relationships they know (or ought to know) are no less consensual. | |
| </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>The writer John Henry Mackay expressed | |
| indignation at the efforts of Hirschfeld's committee to trade off an increase | |
| in the age of consent for repeal of Paragraph 175. In his 1907 pamphlet | |
| Gehör! Nur einen Augenblick! (Listen Only a Moment!), he noted that | |
| "No law can protect youth from seduction. Only enlightenment can do | |
| that." Instead of the law, we should trust the unwritten "law | |
| of love." He denounced "professional seducers of youth" | |
| who would seduce a boy "before he has reached the time of maturity," | |
| but noted that everyone is different and therefore age cannot be the criterion: | |
| "This is where the borderline lies, and not in an artificial stipulation | |
| of age. One person is mature, yet still looks like a child; the next person | |
| is still a child, although we take him to be mature on account of his age."<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 2">2</A></SUP> | |
| Summarizing his struggle in 1912, he concluded: "it is our task, those | |
| of us who love young people, to win them for ourselves - not through persuasion | |
| and seduction, but through love and friendship."<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 3">3</A> | |
| </SUP></FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In 1924, Mackay voiced bitterness | |
| at the efforts of Hirschfeld and others to accommodate themselves to prejudices | |
| against man/boy love:</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <UL> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>For it has been shown again in these | |
| years that this love has to look for its worst enemies among those who | |
| call themselves "leaders" in this fight and have made themselves | |
| responsible, in one of their ridiculous and degrading petitions to those | |
| currently in power, who have publicly advocated an "age of consent" | |
| - not for children, but for mature boys and youths - and thereby the prosecution | |
| and punishment of those whom they know, as no others do, to be just as | |
| innocent as themselves, and once again those who love an older age have | |
| sought to save themselves at the cost of the comrades-in-fate of their | |
| time - a betrayal of the cause more disgraceful in intention and more dreadful | |
| in its result cannot be imagined.<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 4">4</A></SUP></FONT></FONT></P> | |
| </UL> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>A more recent example of this tendency | |
| to seek improvements for some at the expense of others was the decision | |
| of the state of Wisconsin in May 1983 to decriminalize consensual homosexual | |
| sex between adults. Tacked onto the measure was an amendment that increased | |
| from a misdemeanor to a felony sex between and adult and a teenager of | |
| 16 or 17 years of age! This attack on the sexual rights of young people | |
| sailed through the legislature without any outcry from the lesbian and | |
| gay movement. </FONT></FONT><BR> | |
| </P> | |
| <CENTER><P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>---</FONT></FONT><BR> | |
| </P></CENTER> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><FONT SIZE=+2>I</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=+1>n the | |
| early part of the twentieth century, pederasts reacted to the stifling | |
| and sex-repressive atmosphere of pre- World War I Germany by celebrating | |
| nudity and the beauty of the body. Glorification of the male body ... la | |
| ancient Greece made it possible to depict and discuss a universal aspect | |
| of human sexuality in the face of widespread ignorance, the increasing | |
| medicalization of homosexuality, and repressive legislation. Together with | |
| this glorification of the male body, however, went a tendency on the part | |
| of some pederasts to denigrate other forms of sexual expression - particularly | |
| between two adult members of the "third sex" - and even misogyny. | |
| Friedlaender, for example, went so far as to reject Marxism and Social | |
| Democracy on the grounds that their support for the right of women to vote | |
| demonstrated that they had caved in to pressure from women! </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Such views were strongly criticized | |
| by other pederasts. One of them, Edwin Bab, wrote several articles at the | |
| beginning of this century that remain strikingly contemporary in their | |
| analysis. For him, the goal of the boy-love movement was "a fundamental | |
| reform of our morals," and this could not be accomplished in isolation | |
| from the women's movement, let alone in opposition to it. He accused Friedlaender | |
| of having developed "the most reactionary viewpoints," and warned | |
| boy-lovers against allowing their "cult of the love of friends to | |
| drag along with it a contempt for women similar to the position of the | |
| woman in ancient Greece." Both the boy-love movement and the women's | |
| movement, he argued, "unquestionably must work hand in hand." | |
| If both movements could join forces, he hoped, "in the not too distant | |
| future, a truly human culture would bloom."<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 5">5</A></SUP> | |
| Adolf Brand, Mackay, and Elisar von Kupffer all opposed Friedlaender's | |
| misogynist views. Unfortunately, however, in view of the antisexual trends | |
| within the women's movement over the past twenty years, Bab's views were | |
| overly optimistic. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Mackay saw as the greatest mistakes | |
| of the German gay movement the following: (1) an attempt to present this | |
| love as "nobler and better," when in reality it is "a love | |
| like any other, neither better nor worse," and equally able to bring | |
| happiness if it is a true love; (2) an attempt "to promote the freedom | |
| of men to love, at the expense of women"; and (3) a final error, which | |
| was "more disastrous, in my view, than all the others": "This | |
| love, persecuted by judges and damned by priests, has fled to the medical | |
| doctors, as if it were a sickness that could be cured by them."<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 6">6</A></SUP> | |
| </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><FONT SIZE=+3>P</FONT></B><FONT SIZE=+1>arallel | |
| to, and overlapping with, the early pederast movement in Germany were the | |
| Wandervogel and youth movements. The first Wandervogel group was founded | |
| in 1896, the year the first issue of <B><I>Der Eigene</I></B> appeared. | |
| By 1913, there were approximately 800 different Wandervogel groups, with | |
| more than 25,000 members. The Wandervogel (which literally means "migratory | |
| bird") was initially all-male, and organized youth into outdoor activities | |
| such as hiking and camping. It represented a reaction to the constraints | |
| of bourgeois society. The movement continued off and on until it was largely | |
| subsumed by the Hitler Youth. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>It was not a gay movement, and its | |
| ideology was "lead and be led." The Wandervogel institutionalized | |
| homoerotic sentiment - though not necessarily sex between leaders and followers. | |
| This outlook contained an inherent ambiguity: it institutionalized something | |
| like the Greek mentor-relationship on the one hand, but on the other contained | |
| an implicit militaristic potential. Today, most of us would find the combination | |
| of homoeroticism and leadership outlook less appealing than the free development | |
| of all forms of tenderness and true democracy.<SUP><A HREF="#Footnote 7">7</A></SUP> | |
| </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>One of the leading figures in the | |
| Wandervogel movement was Hans Blüher, who joined in 1902 at the age | |
| of 14. He was a misogynist who believed in the innate inferiority of women | |
| - yet also that bisexuality was the natural human condition. Homosexual | |
| and bisexual men, in his view, make the best teachers of the young - a | |
| view strikingly expressed by Friedlaender too: "Only he who is a good | |
| pederast can be a perfect pedagogue." </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Blüher professed disgust with | |
| Hirschfeld and his circle, and said that the campaign to repeal Paragraph | |
| 175 "was of no interest whatsoever to me." Homosexuality, he | |
| said, should be accepted, not tolerated. Everyone has a gay component, | |
| so knowledge about homosexuality benefits everyone. Homosexuality is more | |
| social than heterosexuality, which leads to isolated coupling, whereas | |
| homoeroticism naturally gives rise to larger social units, such as nation-states. | |
| </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Such views contain some insight, | |
| but also have their problems, and are not of much relevance to today. Where | |
| the Wandervogel movement looked to leadership and guidance of the young | |
| (still preferable to the "protection" approach of today's gay | |
| assimilationists), the pederast movement today stresses the liberation | |
| and empowerment of young people. Instead of pedagogy, democracy. Rather | |
| than a Greek love mentor-relationship, the companionship of independent | |
| and autonomous individuals. In place of male supremacy, a vision of sexual, | |
| economic, and political liberation for all. Freedom is indivisible. The | |
| liberation of children, women, boy-lovers, and homosexuals in general, | |
| can occur only as complementary facets of the same dream.</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Having touched on a few of the historical | |
| and ideological aspects of our topic, I would like to conclude on a more | |
| personal note. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>As middle-class gays become increasingly | |
| part of the mainstream, and turn their backs on the ideas that gave rise | |
| to and inspired their movement - and even on comrades who fought the heterosexual | |
| dictatorship before they themselves had come out - and as the ruling class | |
| steps up its efforts to control, police, and instill fear in the population, | |
| and as it passes laws criminalizing more and more things, and builds prisons | |
| at a breakneck pace to hold the millions it has criminalized (huge numbers | |
| of whom are imprisoned for consensual and harmless activity, such as possession | |
| of marijuana), life and survival for men and boys who love each other is | |
| becoming extremely dangerous. To be an active pederast in the United States | |
| today is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany. The United States is becoming | |
| - perhaps already has become - a police state. The backlash against the | |
| increased visibility of homosexuality since the Stonewall Riots in 1969 | |
| is striking pederasts most severely. Thousands are currently in jail in | |
| the United States for purely consensual relationships, and the gay movement | |
| will not lift a finger or a voice in protest. All the liberation movements | |
| of the 1960s blacks, women, homosexuals, the left - have either moved to | |
| the right or, in the case of the left, virtually disappeared. The women's | |
| movement and the gay movement have fallen in love with the state and seem | |
| no longer able to differentiate between their friends and their enemies. | |
| In fact, these days, the gay movement in the United States functions more | |
| as an adjunct of the police than as a movement for liberation. Nowadays, | |
| I sometimes feel as if I need to be liberated from assimilationist gay | |
| men and lesbians as much as I do from heterosupremacy, capitalism, and | |
| police repression. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>It is difficult to identify with | |
| a movement whose primary goals are to win official approval for gay marriage, | |
| gay families, and acceptance in the imperialist military. Homosexuals in | |
| the United States seem intent on demonstrating that they can be as conventional | |
| as heterosexuals. These days, I have to struggle with myself not to be | |
| antigay. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In April of this year, Edward Brongersma, | |
| a distinguished Dutch political leader and writer, as well as a pederast, | |
| died. He was well known for having once spent time in jail for his sexuality, | |
| yet eventually rose to a seat in the Dutch Senate. In that capacity, he | |
| proposed a bill to lower the age of consent to 16, and the bill was adopted | |
| with widespread support, including from the church. Yet, the antisex hysteria | |
| that originated in the United States in the late 1970s has reached Holland | |
| as well as other countries in Europe. Brongersma was forced to flee his | |
| home temporarily by hostile mobs after the wave of hysteria caused by the | |
| Dutroux affair in neighboring Belgium reached the Netherlands. Brongersma | |
| saw everything he had worked for wiped out in eighteen months. He died | |
| a broken man. He was cremated in private within 48 hours of his death, | |
| and no obituaries or even death announcements were issued for fear of hostile | |
| public reactions. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In Minnesota, a highly respected | |
| and prominent gay man who has worked with youth for years in state-funded | |
| agencies was recently forced to leave his position when parents discovered | |
| that he had an 18-year-old boyfriend (hence, not even a minor). The gay | |
| movement has maintained a deafening silence about this. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>In my own case, my boyfriend is | |
| now 18, but when he was 16 I could not approach any gay or state agencies | |
| for assistance with schooling or anything else for fear that moralists | |
| and television reporters would turn our life into a living hell. The law | |
| stipulates that any person who works in counseling, psychiatry, psychology, | |
| social work, teaching, and so on, who merely suspects that an illegal sexual | |
| relationship may be going on, must report it to the authorities. Investigation, | |
| harassment, hysterical and inaccurate publicity, arrest, and imprisonment | |
| are the likely result. Ten or twenty years ago, the gay movement would | |
| have been a source of support for such relationships. Today, it is virtually | |
| indistinguishable from the heterosexist dictatorship itself. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Pederasty, like homosexuality, has | |
| existed, and exists, in all societies that have ever been studied. Homoeroticism | |
| is a ubiquitous feature of human experience, as even efforts to repress | |
| it confirm. Men and youths have always been attracted to each other, and, | |
| like homosexuality in general, their love is irrepressible. Even if it | |
| is far from triumphing, or flowering with the freedom it merits and has | |
| enjoyed in some other cultures (for example, Siwa oasis in Egypt), still, | |
| it can never be repressed. It will continue to find its way to expression | |
| despite all the efforts to suppress and demonize it. As John Henry Mackay | |
| wrote in 1924 in <B><I>The Books of the Nameless Love: </I></B></FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <UL> | |
| <DD><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>They murder our love and yet it | |
| lives. </FONT></FONT></DD> | |
| <DD><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>They throttle our cry and it echoes | |
| back from the future. </FONT></FONT><BR> | |
| <BR> | |
| <BR> | |
| </DD> | |
| </UL> | |
| <P><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900><BR> | |
| </P> | |
| <P><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Footnotes</FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 1"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP><A HREF="1">1</A></SUP>Quoted | |
| in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, <B><I>The Early Homosexual Rights | |
| Movement (1864-1935),</I></B> rev. ed. (Ojai, CA, Times Change Press, 1995), | |
| p. 54. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 2"></A><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>2</SUP><FONT COLOR="#000080"><B><I>Die | |
| Buecher der namenlosen Liebe, </I></B>vol. 1 (Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel, | |
| 1979), pp. 463-64. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 3"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>3</SUP>Ibid., | |
| p. 66. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 4"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>4</SUP>Mackay, | |
| Preface to the second edition of his <B><I>Buecher</I></B>. Quoted in Hubert | |
| Kennedy, <B><I>Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay</I></B> | |
| (New York, Mackay Society, 1983), p. 10 (Kennedy's translation). </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 5"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>5</SUP><B><I>Frauenbewegung | |
| und Freundesliebe: Versuch einer Lösung des geschlectlichen Problems</I></B> | |
| (Women's Movement and the Love of Friends; Attempt at a Solution to the | |
| Sexual Problem) (Berlin-Charlottenburg: Adolf Brand/Der Eigene, 1904), | |
| pp. 22-23. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 6"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>6</SUP><B><I>Buecher,</I></B> | |
| pp. 62-63. </FONT></FONT></P> | |
| <P><A NAME="Footnote 7"></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1><SUP>7</SUP>For | |
| a more in-depth analysis of the Wandervogelmovement, see Friedrich Kröhnke, | |
| "'Wandervogel' und Homosexuellenbewegung," in <B><I>Der Eigene: | |
| Ein Blatt für männliche Kultur,</I></B> ed. Joachim S. Hohmann | |
| (Frankfurt am Main/Berlin: Foerster Verlag, 1981), pp. 345-73. <BR> | |
| </FONT></FONT><IMG SRC="colorbar.gif" HEIGHT=3 WIDTH=900></P> | |
| <P><A HREF="index.htm"><IMG SRC="m0p7nau7.gif" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=80 WIDTH=80></A><FONT COLOR="#000080"><FONT SIZE=+1>Copyright | |
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