Re: Michele Bachmann: Gays Want To Let Adults 'Freely Prey On Little Children Sexuall
Right after Stonewall, the early Gay Liberation Movement called for repeal of sodomy laws and repeal of age of consent laws. At that time being gay was a crime in all 50 states. Police could, and did, break down locked doors of private homes, force their way into bedrooms, and arrest consenting adults having private sexual relations. Police raided gay bars, even though it is not a crime for people of legal drinking age to have a drink in a bar. Gay people meeting was considered prelude to a crime. In fact just meeting was in many places a crime. In the 1980s the US Supreme Court held it was Constitutional for police to break into a home, break down a bedroom door, and arrest two adult men having consensual sex. This decision was overturned by the Court about 15 years later, a decision slammed by Antonin Scalia (who famously said it would lead to masturbation) and conservative commentators. In fact the first time I ever saw/heard Ann Coulter was when she screamed bloody murder over the idea that consenting adults could now legally have sex in private.
Initially repeal of age of consent laws was also a demand. Bars, bad as they were then, were at least a meeting place for the over 21 crowd. For gay and lesbian youth there was nothing. No clubs, no gay straight alliance, no place to meet, socialize and make friends in a normal teenage fashion (well, as normal as anything in teen years can be!) But young men (this was pretty much exclusively a guy thing) had places where they would meet for quickie sex. Not a healthy relationship, to be sure, but as Dan Savage once said, gay people were forced to live in shadows and then slammed for doing so. And cops would raid these cruising spots. Underage youth were released to the tender mercies of their parents, where they would often be beaten to a bloody pulp, kicked out, locked up in juvenile detention, or sent to psychiatric facilities to get electric shocks to their genitals - I have friends who went through all these. But a youth who was 18 was in deep deep legal trouble, even if his partner was only a few months younger. So repeal of age of consent laws seemed logical; the right of teens to sexual privacy.
This all blew up at a national gay rights conference. I knew David Thorstad when he was sane, a leader of gay rights and active in other movements. By the late 70s he was no longer sane. He had founded NAMBLA, which was never as big as its publicity, and came to this conference seeking endorsement of sex with children. He claimed that there was no such thing as child molestation, that children who said they did not want sex with adults were just making it up and really liked it, that even if a child fought back the first time the fact that he/she did not subsequent times meant the child really wanted it. He accused those who disagreed of being prudes and Puritans. Women at the convention threatened to walk out en masse - this was clearly exactly the language used to justify rape. In fact it was rape, just of boys rather than women. The upshot was that our community realized that while we supported sexual privacy for teens, repeal of all age of consent laws was not a valid slogan as there is a big difference between a 16 year old with an 18 year old lover and a 6 year old being sexually exploited by a 30 year old.
NAMBLA has been barred from all Pride Parades and all community activities in every city in the U.S. We have a very diverse community, business leaders, leather fetishists, clergy, drag queens, coal miners, firefighters, professionals, students, farmers, laborers - but we are all in agreement on consent. NAMBLA is not part of our community. Like I said, they are a lot smaller than their publicity. They are no more a part of our community than that pig in Ohio who kept the women in captivity for years is part of yours.
Sorry if this is long winded. No one has to read it.
