NAMBLA and LGBT Politics, 1978-1994
The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in December 1978, just fourth months after the ILGA was formed. Three historic events in 1977, the year prior to its founding, set the stage for NAMBLA’s emergence, as they marked a growing North American “panic” around the figure of the homosexual child molester.[1] The first was Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign, the infamous anti-gay rights movement in Miami-Dade County, which painted homosexuals as “recruiters” and “molesters” of children.[2] The second was the raid of the Canadian gay liberation magazine The Body Politic after it published an essay describing one man’s sexual activities with three boys.[3] The third, and most directly related, was local gay activist organizing in response to what John Mitzel refers to as the “Boston sex scandal.”[4]
In June 1977, only weeks after a congressional hearing on the Kildee-Murphy Bill (often referred to as the “Kiddie Porn” bill), police arrested Richard Peluso, a resident of the suburb of Revere, Massachusetts, after discovering a sizable collection of polaroid photographs of nude boys in Peluso’s apartment.[5] Peluso later admitted in court to having sexual relations with over 200 teenaged boys since 1964. According to Mitzel, over the following months police “coerced” thirteen of the sixty-three youths identified in the photographs to cooperate with law enforcement. In December 1977, Boston police used these youth testimonies to arrest twenty-four more men who were indicted on over one hundred felonies, including “rape and abuse upon a child under 16, unnatural acts, open and gross lewdness, and indecent assault.” District Attorney Garrett Bryne, who had launched the investigation, said that these arrests “were just the tip of the iceberg” and announced the establishment of a special hotline for Boston citizens to report any suspected contact between gay men and youth under the age of sixteen.[6] The hotline was widely supported by local politicians, including the prominent lesbian activist and Massachusetts State Representative Elaine Noble.[7] Following the arrest of these twenty-four men, the Boston Herald-American newspaper published “Who’s Who among the Defendants in Sex Case,” which featured a photograph of five of the accused men shackled together at the ankles walking in a line into their arraignment. Underneath the photograph a caption accused them of being members of an organized “Revere sex-ring.”[8] The article listed the names of fifteen of the twenty-four accused in bold font, followed by their ages, addresses, occupations, and the charges brought against them. The media’s references to an “organized sex ring” provoked fear and panic across Boston; the hotline was abuzz with tips from concerned citizens.
Gay activists were outraged with the media coverage, noting that “on the few occasions that straight men are arrested for sex with female minors, they are never subjected to such sensational yellow press.”[9] Activists framed the arrests as a homophobic witchhunt against gay men, rather than as arising out of legitimate concern for the wellbeing of Boston youth. Members of Boston’s radical gay liberation journal Fag Rag gathered to form the Boston-Boise Committee (B/BC) on December 9, 1977, the same day as D.A. Bryne’s announcement, to raise awareness about the arrests and to organize to end the hotline.[10] The B/BC was highly successful in garnering widespread support from the Boston community, organizing a massive rally outside city hall, where activists called for an immediate end to the hotline because it unjustly targeted gay men.[11] After the hotline was discontinued, the B/BC focussed its efforts on raising awareness about responsible media reporting on alleged sex crimes involving gay men.[12] The effective messaging and large turnout at its protests reflected a unique ability to unite an often fractured gay and lesbian community, especially on issues like gay cruising and public sex.[13] In the coming months, the B/BC would harness this unity to connect and raise awareness among gay activists on the controversial issue of age-of-consent laws.
Indeed, piggybacking on the success of these efforts, a few B/BC members organized a public forum on the topic of “Man/Boy Love and the Age-of-Consent” in Boston’s Community Church in December 1978.[14] The event was attended by about 150 people and was only the second event in American history to explicitly address the topics of man/boy love and age-of-consent laws.[15] The event spurred so much interest that Tom Reeves, along with David Thorstad and around thirty “boy-lovers” and a couple of youths, subsequently decided to form the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
Two core beliefs were foundational to NAMBLA’s formation and subsequent mission: (1) that all age of sexual consent laws should be abolished and (2) that men who were incarcerated for having non-violent, non-coercive, and consensual sex with boys should be freed from prison.[16] Although NAMBLA became infamous for its radical call to abolish age-of-consent laws, the organization more generally challenged the widespread cultural aversion to discussing children’s sexuality. It brought critiques about children’s political, economic, and sexual oppression to the table for open debate. NAMBLA even incorporated several political positions on children’s liberation and related issues into its constitution. These included condemning circumcisions and clitoridectomies (1982); criticizing corporal punishment, kidnapping, rape, and sexual exploitation (1983); decriminalizing hustling and commercial sexual relationships (1981); opposing military conscription (1980) and U.S. military intervention in El Salvador (1981); supporting the free circulation of pornography and erotic materials (1981); and increasing awareness about HIV infection and AIDS hysteria (1985).[17] NAMBLA’s political positions were developed and passed democratically—they were drafted, debated, and then either ratified or rejected by vote at its annual general membership conference.
Unlike other modern pedophile activist groups, such as the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE), NAMBLA always denied that its primary purpose was to build networks and facilitate information exchange among pedophiles.[18] Rather, NAMBLA positioned itself as a sexual freedom organization exercising its constitutional right to free speech. Although it did not condone or facilitate illegal activity, with increasing police and state surveillance, NAMBLA struggled to protect itself as well as its members from getting into trouble with the law.[19] Despite its leaders and members being constantly embroiled in criminal investigations and police raids, NAMBLA membership grew steadily throughout the 1980s, reaching a peak of about 1,200 general members by 1995.[20] NAMBLA’s decline in the early 2000s was due not only to its endless association with criminal cases and political scandals, but also to the invention and increased accessibility of the world wide web.[21]
While other modern pedophile activist groups also sought to address the issue of intergenerational sex, age-of-consent laws, and children’s sexuality, NAMBLA was the first and only activist organization to address the issue of sex between men and boys.[22] NAMBLA viewed sexual contact between men and boys as exceptional and different from the often oppressive and harmful dynamics of sex between adult men and younger girls. Drawing on academic studies and first-hand accounts of man/boy love, it sought to debunk the “myth” that these relationships, when consensual and not coercive, are harmful to boys.[23] Contrary to this belief, NAMBLA argued that the real harm to boys were the social taboos prohibiting cross-generational sex. Part of its sexual freedom argument, then, rested on the notion that sexual relationships between men and boys had already been overdetermined as inherently exploitative and harmful before they even occurred. NAMBLA challenged this dogmatic viewpoint, arguing that these relationships had largely positive, rather than negative, benefits on a boy’s social and sexual development.
In its early years NAMBLA enjoyed the support of a number of prominent gay, lesbian, and feminist intellectuals and activists, including Harry Hay, Gayle Rubin, Patrick Califia, Samuel R. Delany, Larry Kramer, Camilla Paglia, Allen Ginsberg, and Jim Kepner.[24] NAMBLA also drew support from other gay and sexual liberation organizations.[25] This coalitional support of its call to abolish age-of-consent laws, however, appeared to be fractured and short-lived; detractors criticized NAMBLA for not actively lobbying Congress or state legislatures to enact legal change as well as for its refusal to pick a reasonable age of consent.
More broadly speaking, while gay and lesbian activists were willing to rally around the right to freedom of speech and organize against police persecution and brutality—such as in the case of the raid of the TBP or the Boston sex scandal—they were not as eager to lend their support to an organization whose mission was to abolish age-of-consent laws. NAMBLA’s attention to the sexual rights of children made it an outlier within the gay rights movement. Many gay activists were unwilling to risk directly addressing the topic of children’s sexuality, let alone incorporating it into any kind of official agenda or solidarity framework, often out of fear of further fueling the stereotype of the homosexual as child molester. Indeed, NAMBLA’s greatest challenge would be publicly defending its call to abolish age-of-consent laws.
Controversy around NAMBLA sparked debate both in the mainstream and gay press.[26] Most critics claimed that supporting NAMBLA’s position would be suicidal for the gay rights movement, playing right into the hands of politically conservative opponents who associated homosexuality with child molestation. Even liberal gay rights activists, who may have been open in private to taking seriously arguments in favor of lowering the age of consent, often publicly denied NAMBLA support; one noted in 1983 that “as a movement and a community we cannot support NAMBLA at the risk of bankrupting ourselves.”[27] Others lamented NAMBLA’s refusal to choose an age of consent as potentially turning off and alienating a large contingent of middle-class, open-minded, liberals who were more comfortable with the idea of pubescent teenagers having sex but could not stomach the concept of prepubescent children’s sexuality.
While a small faction of radical lesbian feminists were sympathetic to the argument that “boy lovers” were unfairly persecuted by the state in comparison to their straight male counterparts (mostly heterosexual fathers who had sex with their daughters), most were highly skeptical and critical of man/boy love.[28] Most feminist critiques drew attention to the power differentials between adults and children, arguing that the man’s power made consent impossible. Feminists were also especially skeptical of NAMBLA’s claim that man/boy love was about children’s liberation. Rather, they argued it was about men’s increased sexual access to children. Nancy Walker called out what she saw as underpinning the real motivations of boy lovers: not to liberate youth, or help them explore their sexual curiosity, but rather to instantiate a right for adult men to have sex with children. In a Gay Community News column she wrote, “The issue is not whether we should be fighting for the rights of small children to explore their sexual potential. They will inevitably do that. Let[’s…] say what the real issue is: that they want to fuck children.”[29] Thus many feminists felt that NAMBLA’s call to abolish age-of-consent laws was motivated primarily to establish the right for men to have sex with boys.
NAMBLA’s expulsion from the ILGA occurred against a backdrop of international debates on sex tourism at the United Nations during the 1980s and 1990s. In this period, the UN and various international bodies were grappling with the complexities of sex tourism, particularly in relation to the exploitation of children and intersections of gender, age, and consent.[30] These discussions were fueled by increasing awareness of how wealthy men from Western countries, including the United States, were traveling to the Global South to engage in sexual activities with boys, often under the guise of seeking "exotic" experiences. This scrutiny heightened sensitivities around any groups or movements perceived as endorsing or trivializing child sexual abuse. NAMBLA, with its controversial stance on abolishing age of consent laws, found itself at odds not only with mainstream gay rights organizations but also with broader international efforts to combat child exploitation and sex tourism.
Stonewall 25, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, was scheduled to occur the same weekend as the ILGA World Conference where NAMBLA’s membership was scheduled to be addressed. The Stonewall 25 parade was set to conclude outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Given the intense media attention around NAMBLA’s membership in the ILGA, Stonewall 25 organizers faced significant pressure to exclude it from marching. Concerned about the potential backlash and negative media attention, the organizing committee decided to ban NAMBLA from participating in the parade, fearing that its inclusion would cast a shadow over the event’s focus on celebrating LGBTQ+ liberation.
NAMBLA and its supporters—which included social critic Camilla Paglia, gay activist Harry Hay, and poet Allen Ginsberg—instead chose to march alongside ACT UP and Radical Faeries in the alternative Spirit of Stonewall (SOS) parade.[31] Speaking as a member of SOS and as the co-founder of NAMBLA, Tom Reeves stated, “We criticize the Stonewall committee and gay and lesbian leadership for falling away from the original purpose of sexual liberation as experienced in the Stonewall riots.”[32] Of course, this was not the first time that NAMBLA had been banned from a march for gay and lesbian rights. Perhaps the most infamous and controversial protest against bans on NAMBLA marching was when prominent gay activist Harry Hay, co-founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, was arrested at the 1986 Los Angeles Christopher Street West march for refusing to take off his t-shirt, the back of which read “NAMBLA WALKS WITH ME.”[33] While Hay was not a registered NAMBLA member, he routinely defended its right to freedom of speech and said that banning the group from marches and political organizing defied the principles of gay liberation.[34]
Hay’s defense of NAMBLA’s right to free speech never wavered, but at the annual NAMBLA conference before the scheduled SOS march he did ask whether the organization needed to adjust its terminology to effectively convey its message: “‘Boy lovers,” he says, then pauses. ‘Maybe that expression has been used up.’”[35] For Advocate reporter John Weir, who was also in attendance at the NAMBLA meeting, Hay’s ambivalence about the relevance of the term was part of a larger issue plaguing NAMBLA: its members “seem to be turned on more by some idealistic notion of boyhood than by intergenerational sex.”[36] The NAMBLA meeting, Weir conveyed, was saturated with a collective feeling of nostalgia, confusion, and mourning for a lost world. Weir postulated, “Hay’s presence at the NAMBLA meeting signified that NAMBLA is more than just an advocacy group for men imprisoned for sex with underage boys or a support group for men who need an outlet for their sexual feelings. It has become in part the last refuge for longtime activists who feel alienated from the current mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian community.”[37]
NAMBLA's vexed and vexing position within lesbian and gay organizing underscores the deep tensions between radical and mainstream lesbian and gay movements. While NAMBLA's controversial advocacy for intergenerational sexual relationships challenged prevailing norms and sparked critical dialogue on a taboo subject, it simultaneously alienated mainstream lesbian and gay rights organizers who were striving for broader acceptance and respectability. The 1994 suspension of ILGA from the United Nations marked a final, decisive moment reflecting these irreconcilable differences. The ILGA's decision to expel NAMBLA reflected the organization’s need to distance itself from any associations perceived as endorsing harmful practices or undermining the broader fight against sexual exploitation. This pivotal moment highlighted the broader struggle within lesbian and gay advocacy between maintaining radical ideals and achieving mainstream acceptance. The decision to censor NAMBLA marked a shift in gay and lesbian organizing; by the 1990s, most movement activists were no longer willing to give it a platform as the risk in doing so appeared too high. NAMBLA’s expulsion from the ILGA in 1994 underscores the fragility of radical queer inclusivity in the pursuit of broader social and political legitimacy.
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[1] For an account of the figure of homosexual child molester in U.S. history, see Philip Jenkins, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). For analysis of U.S. aversion to gay rights in the 1970s as a “moral panic,” see Fred Fejes, Gay Rights and Moral Panic: The Origins of America’s Debate on Homosexuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
[2] Anita Bryant, singer and national spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission, formed a vocal coalition of concerned parents to organize against a Miami Metro Commission ordinance that provided protection against discrimination based on “affectional or sexual preference in the areas of housing, employment, and public housing.” After the ordinance was passed, Bryant collected 10,000 signatures to force the Metro commission to either repeal the amendment or hold a public referendum on it; the latter option was chosen. The ensuing months saw large campaigns to defeat and defend the Dade County ordinance. Bryant and Save Our Children framed gay civil rights as threatening the rights of parents to protect their children from sexual corruption. Their main argument was that schools would be unable to fire openly gay teachers. This would leave children vulnerable to being influenced, or worse yet sexually abused, by homosexual predators. On the other end of the political spectrum, gay rights activists formed the Dade County Coalition for Humanistic Rights of Gays (DCCHRG). The coalition did not address Bryant’s depiction of homosexuals as child molesters head-on but rather chose to emphasize the protection of basic human and civil rights. Although the gay rights campaign was well-funded, it ultimately was unsuccessful at courting public support—the ordinance was defeated on June 7, 1977, with only 30.6% of voters rejecting repeal. The results reverberated across the country.
[3] The Body Politic (TBP) headquarters in Toronto were raided in November 1977 after publishing Gerald Hannon’s now infamous essay, “Men Loving Boys Loving Men.” Charges were brought against Hannon and TBP’s editorial staff on January 5, 1978, for "possession of obscene material for distribution" and "use of the mails for the purpose of transmitting indecent, immoral or scurrilous materials." Julia Pyryeskina explains that the charges in 1978 came at a “remarkably dense historical and political conjuncture” for Canadian gay and lesbian activists, who were frantically trying to respond to a series of interrelated events. These included the start of the Emanuel Jacques trials, which focussed on a twelve-year-old Portuguese boy who was raped and murdered in Toronto a few months earlier in what the media described as a “homosexual orgy,” a scheduled parliamentary hearing on adding sexual orientation as a protected class to the Ontario Human Rights Code, and the impending visit of Anita Bryant in Toronto. See Julia Pyryeskina, “‘A Remarkably Dense Historical and Political Juncture’: Anita Bryant, The Body Politic, and the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Community in January 1978,” Canadian Journal of History 53, no. 1 (2018): 58-85.
[4] John Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal (Boston: Glad Day, 1980).
[5] The Kildee-Murphy (“Kiddie porn”) bill was the first national legislation to prohibit the production and trade of child pornography. The legislation authorized a maximum fine of $50,000 and up to twenty years in prison for those convicted of filming or photographing children in sexual acts. The two congressmen who authored the bill, Democrats Dale E. Kildee and John M. Murphy, were responding to growing public awareness and concern about the issue after Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, founder of a drug rehabilitation center for “troubled” teens, had gone on a national tour to raise awareness of the findings of Robin Lloyd’s For Money or Love: Boy Prostitutes in America. The charges against Peluso could not have come at a worse time politically – they were the perfect fodder to keep fueling the “kiddie porn panic.” See, for example, “12 Arrested as Child Molesters in a Boston Area Ring,” New York Times, Dec. 9, 1977.
[6] Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 18, 22, 27.
[7] After the charges were announced, Noble declared: “I have called this news conference as a legislator and concerned citizen to express my deep concern and outrage regarding the scandalous sexual exploitation and abuse of young children by adults…. Gross personal abuse and affrontery of innocent children is a sacrilege of the highest order. Adults involved in the corruption of unprotected, impressionable children by dugs, alcohol and sex must immediately be halted and reprimanded. We will not tolerate nor in any way condone through lack of aggressive action the perpetuation of such deviant, defiant behavior.” She appeared on a talk show shortly thereafter and added, “Those people who manipulate children [should be] pictured as an extremely small minority within the gay community…. The guilty parties should be brought to trial and dealt with accordingly.” Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 32.
[8] According to Mitzel, later it was discovered that the majority of these indictments resulted from the sexual activities of two 15-year-old “hustlers” in Revere, Mass. See Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 22.
[9] Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 29.
[10] Mitzel notes that the name Boise was included to reference John Gerassi’s 1966 book, The Boys of Boise, which detailed a similar anti-gay witchhunt in Idaho in 1955.
[11] It was not until B/BC threatened to take legal action, with support from the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, that the D.A. announced that the hotline would be “voluntarily” discontinued. B/BC filed an injunction to immediately halt the usage of the hotline based on the fact that it violated constitutional rights. The hotline was discontinued on the first day of the scheduled hearing to address the filing. According to Mitzel, B/BC attorney John Ward received a telephone call from Assistant D.A. Jack Gaffney the night before the hearings. Gaffney threatened that “we’ll make sure you never practice law in this town again.” Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 39.
[12] One of its most significant contributions was publishing and distributing a set of guidelines for responsible and ethical media coverage on handling alleged sex crimes involving gay men. See Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 146.
[13] The B/BC, for example, organized over 500 people to protest the arrest of 103 men on charges of “open and gross lewdness” at the Boston Public Library. See Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, 52.
[14] David Thorstad, "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," Journal of Homosexuality 20, no. 1-2 (1991), 254.
[15] The New York Gay Activists Alliance sponsored a public forum about two years prior to the Boston meeting; the forum, titled “Of Men and Boys: Pederasty and the Age-of-Consent,” was held on Apr. 4, 1976, in the Church of the Beloved Disciple. See Thorstad, "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," 252.
[16] In May 1979, NAMBLA settled on its first statement of purpose: “That NAMBLA take a public position that, while opposing any age-of-consent laws, we do not lobby for changes in the law at this time [and] that we favor complete sexual freedom in all cases not involving coercion.” A year later, in June 1980, NAMBLA adopted a second statement of purpose, which declared: “NAMBLA calls for the abolition of age-of-consent and all other laws which prevent men and boys from freely enjoying their bodies [and] calls for the release of all men and boys imprisoned by such laws.” NAMBLA Constitution and Position Papers 1979-1991, Box 49, Folder 16: NAMBLA Constitutions, DTP.
[17] NAMBLA Constitution and Position Papers 1979-1991, Box 49, Folder 16: NAMBLA Constitutions, DTP.
[18] In December 1983, at its seventh Annual General Membership Conference, NAMBLA passed a resolution on “Facilitating Contact Between Members” reaffirming that “it does not and will not organize or facilitate any personal contact services or computer ‘bulletin boards.’” See NAMBLA Constitution and Position Papers 1979-1991, 3, Box 49, Folder 16: NAMBLA Constitutions, DTP.
[19] Larry Goldsmith, “NAMBLA Members Busted,” Gay Community News, Dec. 18, 1982; Larry Goldsmith and Bob Nelson, “FBI Searches NAMBLA Members’ Homes,” Gay Community News, Jan. 1, 1983; Mitzel, “NAMBLA Says National Crackdown Starting,” Gay Community News, Aug. 1, 1981; Mitzel, “Davis Convicted of ’72 Sex Act,” Gay Community News, Apr. 18, 1981; David Morris, “Boy-Lover Pleads Guilty,” Gay Community News, June 12, 1982. For a comprehensive account of the 1982 FBI crackdown, see A Witchhunt Foiled: The FBI vs. NAMBLA.
[20] Meeting Minutes, 19th Annual General Membership Meeting, Nov. 5, 1995. Box 49, Folder 3: NAMBLA Membership Conference 1999s, DTP.
[21] Internet chat rooms and forums provided a new venue for pedophiles to connect and share information with others in real time, both anonymously and from the comfort of one’s home.
[22] Three of the most famous pedophile activist organizations in the period were The René Guyon Society, Childhood Sensuality Circle, and Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE). The René Guyon Society was founded in 1976 by a small group of parents after attending a conference on sexuality and is infamous for its slogan “sex before eight, or it’s too late.” It open advocated for penetrative anal and vaginal sex between children and adults so long as a condom was used. The organization has been extinct since the mid-1980s and was suspected of being a one-man operation run by “Tim O’Hare” (whose real name was Jonathan Evan Edwards) out of Beverly Hills, California. See U.S. Senate, Report of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, Child Pornography and Pedophilia (US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1986), 25, 134, 169. According to sociologist Mary De Young, “The Childhood Sensuality Circle [of San Diego] was established in 1971 with the purpose of promoting sexual self-determination for adults and children. It advocates abolition of age-of-consent laws and encourages children to use their own standards when selecting adult sexual partners.” Mary De Young, "Ethics and the ‘Lunatic Fringe’: The Case of Pedophile Organizations," Human Organization, 43, no. 1 (1984), 72. PIE was formed by three members of the Scottish Minorities Group in October 1975. While it did seek to challenge age-of-consent laws, it also sought to connect and share resources among and between pedophiles. With its membership roster peaking at 450, PIE was the second largest modern pedophile organization to exist. The group was steeped in controversy and dragged into court for postal offences and the common law offence of “conspiracy to corrupt public morals” over advertisements in its journal, Magpie. For a detailed history of PIE and the gay left, see Lucy Robinson, “The Next Big Thing: From Gay Left Collective to Greater London Council, Paedophile Identity and the State of the Left,” In Gay Men and the Left in Post-War Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).
[23] For social scientific studies, firsthand accounts, and poetry that challenge societal attitudes on man/boy love relationships, see Joseph Geraci, Dares to Speak: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love (Norfolk, England: Gay Men’s Press, 1997); Thomas K Hubbard and Beert Verstraete, Censoring Sex Research: The Debate Over Male Intergenerational Relations (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013); Theo Sandfort, Boys on their Contacts with Men: A Study of Sexually Expressed Friendships (Elmhurst, NY: Global Academic, 1987); Theo Sandfort, Edward Brongersma, and Alex X. van Naerssen, Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives (Vol. 20, no. 1-2, Psychology Press, 1991); Richard Yuill and Dean Durber “‘Querying’ the Limits of Queering Boys Through the Contested Discourses on Sexuality” Sexuality & Culture 12, no. 4 (2008): 257–274; Semiotext(e) Special Issue: Loving Boys, ed. Slyvere Lortinger (New York, 1980).
[24] For a collection of quotations from these individuals, see “What People Are Saying on NAMBLA & Man/Boy Love” pamphlet, Box 49, Folder 11: NAMBLA Flyers and Leaflets, DTP.
[25] For example, when charges were brought against co-founder Tom Reeves and Michael Thompson for engaging in consensual oral sex with a fourteen-year-old in 1979, a committee of individuals from various community organizations were sent to put pressure on the district attorney. These included Amy Hoffman, managing editor of Gay Community News; Reverend Marge Ragona, Minister of Boston’s Metropolitan Community Church; and Reverend Ed Hougen and Richard Burns, both of whom were on the board of directors of the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. A NAMBLA memo even reported that members of a cross-section of gay groups—including Third World Gays, Hispanic Gay Men’s Organization, and Lesbian & Gay Media Action— gathered at a 1982 press conference and “cheered in joy” when it was announced that the charges were being dropped. NAMBLA Memo, Tom Reeves, Michael Thompson Cleared of Charges, Mar. 25, 1982, Box 32, Folder 3: Assorted NAMBLA Records and Internal Correspondence, 1979-1986, DTP.
[26] NAMBLA and the topic of intergenerational gay sex was covered, for example, in New York City News, New York Native, Time, The Advocate, Gay Community News, Fag Rag, The Body Politic, Gay Insurgent, and Gay Sunshine. See “‘Under Siege with the Boy-Lovers,’ Interview by Katherine Davenport,” New York Native, Jan. 17, 1983; David Thorstad, “A Statement to the Gay Liberation Movement on the Issue of Man/Boy Love,” Gay Community News, Jan. 6, 1979; Damien A. Martin, “The Case Against NAMBLA: Why Are We Ignoring the Obvious?” New York City News, Mar. 9, 1983. Also see Daniel Tsang, ed., The Age Taboo: Gay Male Sexuality, Power, and Consent (Boston: Gay Men's Press and Alyson, 1981); Thorstad, "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement."
[27] Mitchell Halberstadt, “NAMBLA and the Age of Consent: No Easy Answers,” New York City News, Jan. 26, 1983, 14.
[28] Patrick Califia and Gayle Rubin were some of the most vocal feminist supporters of boy lovers. Califia has since scaled back his support of NAMBLA, as is evident in the 2000 edition of Public Sex. He writes, “Even though I no longer agree with the North American Man-Boy Love Association’s (NAMBLA) political agenda, I will still support the right of NAMBLA to march in gay events, publish their material, and debate these issues.” Rubin, in contrast, has since admitted that her engagement with the issue in her seminal “Thinking Sex” essay were “far too sketchy” and underdeveloped, but notes that since the 1980s the moral panic surrounding children’s sexuality and crossgenerational sex has become so intensified that it might well be impossible to even openly grapple with these issues today.” For reprinted articles on the age of consent, pedophilia, and child pornography from The Advocate and Paidika, see pages 27-71 and 136-149 in Patrick Califia, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, 1st ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1994). For Califia’s more updated take on NAMBLA and age-of-consent laws, see Patrick Califia, “No Minor Issues: Age of Consent, Child Pornography, and Cross-Generational Issues,” in Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, 2nd ed. (Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1994), 54-97. For Rubin’s take on these issues, see "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality," in Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, eds Peter Aggleton and Richard (Parker London: Taylor & Francis, 1999), 143-178; “Sexual Politics, the New Right, and the Sexual Fringe,” in The Age Taboo, 108-115; and "Blood under the Bridge: Reflections on “Thinking Sex,”” GLQ 17, no. 1 (2011): 15-48.
[29] Nancy Walker, “Men and Boys: Appropriate?” Gay Community News, Jan. 13, 1979, 5.
[30] See Matthew Waites, The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 40-59; Christopher Ewing, “Defining Sex Tourism: International Advocacy, German Law, and Gay Activism at the End of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 32, no. 1 (2023): 27–55.
[31] Colin Richardson, “Famous Names Join NAMBLA,” Gay Times, July 1994. For Camilla Paglia’s perspective on NAMBLA, pedophilia, and age-of-consent laws, see Camilla Paglia, “Kids for Sale” The Advocate, Oct. 31, 1995.
[32] John Gallagher, “The Stonewall Shuffle,” The Advocate, June 28, 1994, 18.
[33] Marcos Bisticas-Cocoves, “Harry Hay Barred from Carrying NAMBLA Sign,” Gay Community News, Aug. 10, 1986; Stuart Timmons, “A Sign of the Times? Veteran Gay Activist Removed From Parade,” The Advocate, Sept. 16, 1986.
[34] In 1994 Hay wrote, “I'm here today as a survivor as well as founder of the first ongoing Gay liberation group in the United States: the Mattachine Society, formed in Los Angeles in 1950. I'm here because things we discovered about ourselves, and the first principles we developed between 1950 and 1953, are now -- forty years later -- being trashed by Queers who don't know their own history. We decided from the beginning that having been almost obliterated for so many centuries, we wouldn't censor or exclude each other. If people self-identify themselves to me as Gay or Lesbian, I accept them as Brothers and Sisters with love. When we decided to rejoin the social and political mainstream, we were determined to integrate on our own terms, as we saw ourselves and with our own set of values. Otherwise, we would not integrate at all. And finally, we no longer permitted any heteros -- nationally or internationally, individually or collectively -- to tell us who we were, or of whom our groups should or should not consist. If necessary, we would assert the prior rights of collective self-definition and self-determination. We Queers would decide such matters among ourselves! Those statements, developed 42 years ago, still hold.” Harry Hay, "Our Beloved Gay/Lesbian Movement at a Crossroads," Gay Community News, Fall 1994, 16.
[35] John Weir, “Mad About the Boys,” The Advocate, Aug. 23, 1994, 37.
[36] Weir, “Mad About the Boys,” 35.
[37] Weir, “Mad About the Boys,” 37.