The International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) was originally founded as the International Gay Association (IGA) in August 1978 during a meeting at the annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in Coventry, United Kingdom.[1] The “Foundation Document of the IGA” highlighted a set of four interconnected aims: to apply “concerted political pressure on governments and international bodies in the pursuit of gay rights” and to “maximize the effectiveness of gay organizations by co-ordinating political actions on an international level” in order to “promote the unity of gay people throughout the world” and “work for the liberation of gay women and men from legal, social, cultural and economic discrimination.”[2] By coordinating political efforts internationally, the ILGA sought to address the growing divide between nations that were progressing and regressing on LGBT rights. The ILGA built on decades of transnational LGBT organizing and reflected the mass mobilization of LGBT activists across nations and borders in the 1970s.[3]

In July 1993, after years of organizing, the United States and twenty-one other member countries voted to grant ILGA consultative status to the United Nations (UN) as a member organization of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). While joining nearly 900 other organizations, the ILGA was the first to represent gay and lesbian issues on the international stage at the UN. Within weeks, however, this historic achievement was contested and embroiled in controversy after an exposé revealed that several ILGA member organizations—including the infamous North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)—supported pro-pedophilia viewpoints. The exposé, published in the U.S.-based Lambda Report, documented NAMBLA’s and other pro-pedophile groups’ influence in the ILGA, citing multiple resolutions that ILGA had adopted and multiple positions it had taken since its founding in 1978. These included critiques of age-of-consent laws and references to young people’s right to express their sexuality.[4]

Responding to the growing international controversy, in October 1993 the United States Mission to the United Nations sent a letter to the ILGA Information Secretariat warning that its affiliate status as a consultative organization in ECOSOC was being reconsidered and urging it to “dissociate itself from NAMBLA and other affiliation organizations whose objectives are not consonant with United Nations human rights activities.” The letter made it clear that had it been aware of NAMBLA’s membership in the ILGA, it “would not have been able to support the [UN’s] Committee’s recommendation to grant official status to ILGA.”[7] In response, the ILGA circulated a memo that included a resolution, titled “Statement of Protection of Children.” The third paragraph of the resolution read “Every child has the right to protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, including prostitution and involvement in pornography.” The memo explained, “The wording of paragraph 3 of the resolution is in line with article 34 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This resolution which automatically supersedes all previous ILGA resolutions on the subject, was adopted by an overwhelming majority at the Stockholm ILGA World Conference in 1990.”[8]

Facing mounting pressure about the ILGA losing its UN ECOSOC member status, prominent U.S. gay leaders and organizations begin to call on the ILGA to expel NAMBLA and other pro-pedophile groups.[9] Formal statements in favor of expelling NAMBLA were released by the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force (NLGTF); Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG); and the Log Cabin Club. Other member groups and individuals were also publicly supportive of expulsion; these included “openly gay U.S. member of Congress Barney Frank, the National Black L/G Leadership Forum, Stonewall 25 Steering Committee (nation-wide), People of Color Steering Committee, [and] Black L/G Youth Group.”[10] Interestingly, the National Black L/G Forum agreed with NAMBLA’s removal but raised suspicions about the motivations of ILGA critics, which had “very little to do with NAMBLA, but more to do with ignorance and homophobia.”[11]

In an explanatory note following the Statement of Protection resolution, the ILGA secretary reported that it had refunded the membership fees of NAMBLA and two other pro-pedophile groups and asked them to terminate their membership, but that membership could only be revoked through a majority vote of ILGA member organizations at the annual conference, the next of which was scheduled for June 1994.[12] The note indicated that the secretary had received several letters of support from international organizations, in line with the United States Mission to the United Nations memo, calling for the ILGA to disassociate itself from pedophile groups. These included the Australian Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights group and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Rights (RFSL).[13] By January 1994, the ILGA reported receiving more than fifty letters or faxes on the subject. It reprinted a few of these letters in the ILGA Bulletin from groups such as RFSL, the Women’s Secretariat of LGL-Denmark, several Mexican gay and lesbian groups, and the Society for the Protection of Personal Rights for Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals in Israel.[14]

Later in January 1994 the controversy further intensified when Republican U.S. Senator Jesse Helms proposed an amendment to cut $118,875,000 of federal funding earmarked to support international organizations “unless the President of the Senate certifies to Congress that no United Nations Agency or United Nations-Affiliated agency grants any official status, accreditation, or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones, or seeks the legalization of pedophilia, or which includes as a subsidiary or member any such organization.”[15] Other governments, including Canada, the UK, and Australia, also stated publicly “that they could not support ILGA’s consultative status [to the UN] as long as pro-pedophile organizations remained members.”[16] Given the mounting pressure, in June 1994 the ILGA General Assembly successfully passed a motion to expel NAMBLA as an ILGA member organization at its 17th World Conference in New York City.

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[1] A detailed timeline of its history as an organization is available on ILGA’s website. David Potternote notes that “Organisations from Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland and the USA were represented…. Although North and South American as well as Australian and New Zealand organisations were early members, ILGA long remained a mostly European organisation. It was also a predominantly male group, with no women attending the first meeting in Coventry. Although a women’s caucus was set up in 1979, IGA only changed its name to ILGA to give lesbians more visibility in 1986.” See David Paternotte, “The International (Lesbian and) Gay Association and the Question of Pedophilia: Tracking the Demise of Gay Liberation Ideals,” Sexualities 17, no. 1-2 (2014), 125.

[2] Foundation Document of IGA, International Gay Information Center Ephemera Files – Organizations, Box 10, Folder 1: International Lesbian and Gay Association, New York Public Library, New York City (hereafter NYPL).

[3] For histories of transnational LGBT organizing in the twentieth century, see Laura Belmonte, The International LGBT Rights Movement: A History (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); David S. Churchill, “Transnationalism and Homophile Political Culture in the Postwar Decades,” GLQ 15, no. 1 (2009): 31–66; Leila J. Rupp, “The Persistence of Transnational Organizing: The Case of the Homophile Movement,” American Historical Review 116, no. 4 (2011): 1014–1039.

[4] ILGA Resolutions and Positions, Box 49, Folder 15: Material Related to ILGA, David Thorstad Papers, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis (hereafter shortened to DTP).

[5] Press Release, “NAMBLA Affirms Membership in ILGA,” Nov. 15, 1993, Box 49, Folder 15: Material Related to ILGA, DTP.

[6] Bill Andriette, “A Report to the ILGA on Gay Pedophilia,” Pedophilia Workshop, June 30, 1987; Bill Andriette, “Report on Gay Inter-age Sex to ILGA: Another Installment” Pedophilia Workshop, June 8, 1988; Jens Ryström, “Paedophilia and Age of Consent,” Pedophilia Workshop, May 9 1988; “NAMBLA Responds to the Advocacy of Children’s Rights by FHO and DNF-48,” Apr. 10, 1990, Box 49, Folder 15: Material Related to ILGA, DTP.

[7] Letter to Micha Ramaker, ILGA Information Secretariat from the United States Mission to the United Nations, Oct. 15, 1993, Box 1 Folder 4, Harold Kooden Papers, National History Archive, The LGBT Community Center, New York City (hereafter shortened to HKP).

[8] Statement on Protection of Children, ILGA Secretariat’s Committee, New York, Nov. 7, 1993, Box 50, Folder 18: ILGA and NAMBLA’s Ejection, DTP.

[9] Aras van Hertum, “U.S. Gay Leaders Urging ILGA to Oust NAMBLA,” Washington Blade, Nov. 5, 1993.

[10] Statement on Protection of Children, ILGA Secretariat’s Committee, New York, Nov. 7, 1993, Box 50, Folder 18: ILGA and NAMBLA’s Ejection, DTP.

[11] Aras van Hertum, “U.S. Gay Leaders Urging ILGA to Oust NAMBLA.”

[12] Explanatory Note on Secretariat’s Position Regarding NAMBLA and other Pedophile Groups Membership in ILGA, Nov. 15, 1993, Box 49, Folder 15: Material Related to ILGA, DTP.

[13] Ibid, 2.

[14] “N.G.O. Status with the United Nations,” ILGA Bulletin no. 2 (Jan. 1994): 16-17, Box 1: Folder 23, HKP.

[15] Senator Helms, speaking on Amendment No. 1248, on January 25, 1994, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 140, S 26.

[16] Doug Sanders “ILGA and the United Nations,” ILGA Bulletin no. 3 (Mar. 1995): 6.