Mitzel - The Boston sex scandal

The notion of equality before the law can be an inspired one (except to anarchists for whom the law is the crime). In cases involving youth sexuality, it invariably becomes a matter of repression.

It is a pity that the feminist movement has lately seen the surge forward in its ranks of women wildly hostile to all forms of male sexuality. Their message to men is simple. They want to instill guilt about sexuality, hoping to cripple the males. Faggots in particular and the sex radicals among them are targetted for blame thereby avoiding the more obvious and compelling need to explore the dynamics of their own hetero relations and their secret sex phantasies. The goal of this anti-sex anti-porno contingent was written by a male live-in companion to one of the foremost female anti-porners. He suggested, in a gay periodical, that gay liberation must be subsumed to the womens struggle and that the only great achievement faggots could offer women would be to teach straight men how to ejaculate without erection. He claimed hard-ons hurt and were a nuisance.

What is clear is that there is much need for discussion between gay male radicals and activist women, both straight and lesbian. From our work with the Boston/Boise Committee (the Committee, though dominated by males, did have female members), we learned that women who touched on the issue of man-boy love could be divided into the same categories as men. A politician like Elaine Noble used the witchhunt for her own political ends without taking into regard the needs of the community at large. Child Saver types (like Bryant and Densen-Gerber) were part of the reactionary vanguard. But most importantly, local women working with the Daughters of Bilitis, the National Jury Project, and the Metropolitan Community Church, were able to sit down and discuss with the men the facts of man-boy love. All attitudes and positions got aired. And after thorough discussion and understanding of the states use of sexual ignorance of sexuality to get gay men, many women actively supported the goals of the B/BC.

A candid discourse on male and female sexuality, and a criticism of sexism and sexual repression in both the gay and lesbian communities, is badly needed. We could all benefit. I suspect, too, that many straight women regard faggot sexuality as similar to straight straight men's aggression, even though faggot and straight male sexuality are widely disparate. Some antipathy toward boy-lovers (and kiddie pornographers) is perhaps provoked by womens perception of the freedom of male sexuality. I suspect some of the attacks on male promiscuity and boy-loving are founded on this perceived freedom.

Sexuality in adolescent males differs dramatically from that of their teen sisters. This is generally ignored. To be Politically Correct these days, boys and girls must be regarded as equals and their needs treated as similar. This of course denies important distinctions in sexual biology. It is interesting to note how ignorant anti-porners and professional kiddie Savers are of the history of sex science and sex research. Det. Lloyd Martin, who teaches a college-level course on sexuality and child abuse told me he has never read either of the Kinsey volumes on sexual behavior. Martin felt he didnt have to read Kinsey, much less any other revolutionary writer on sexual behavior. He already knew all he cared to know: Sex Is Rape.

The bomb in Kinseys revelations about male sexual behavior is still waiting to go off. Its a pity reactionary forces have been powerful enough over the years to prevent bringing social institutions more into line with our expressive behavior. But they have, and, of course, one periodic tactic has been to launch these panics over drugs, promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, and pedophilia. Each panic gives them more laws and greater powers to fend off the forces of sexual liberation.

Kinsey, in his volume on male sexual behavior, spent considerable energies examining adolescent sexual histories. He concluded that it is common for the male to reach the summit of his sexual capacity at age 16 or 17, not any later. Yet this is the age when many states still deny youth any legal sexual contact with others. As far as the state is concerned, the years of growing male sexual activity, 13 through 16, must remain years of sexual denial and frustration. This must make the Pope happy. But certainly not the kids. Det. Martin and other Christian fundamentalists would raise the age of sexual consent to 18 (which it is in California) and restrict all sexual activity to heterosexual copulation in the missionary position between lawfully-wedded (to each other, that is) man and wife.

Age of consent statutes are whimsical and change with the fashions in state repression. They are a perfect tool for terrorizing a specific sexual minority. In an age like ours which fancies itself rational and human-needs oriented, no clearer demonstration of societys repressive function could be had than that of the masses of male pedophiles (mostly boy-lovers) currently in prisons and treatment centers for non-violent sex offenses.

It seems just idiotic to advocate the retention of any age of consent laws. Similarly, it is ridiculous to maintain the pretense that existing laws are equitably applied on both males and females, homosexual and heterosexual, when all kinds of diverse relationships fall under the punitive jurisdiction of age of consent laws. We have become stupid and dogmatic in our cosmetic efforts to appear sex-democratic.

The Canadian gay movement has had as a national position the abolition of all age of consent statutes. The North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) has similarly called for an end to all age of consent laws. NAMBLA also demands the immediate release from prisons and treatment centers of all those convicted for statutory sex offenses.

Apologists for the state and existing legal repressions know full well the proprietary interest of The Family in children. The concepts of Family (het nuclear variety) and of childhood are fairly recent bourgeois constructions. The current ideal concept of The Family and its pattern of authority are proto-fascist, which is one reason why the proto-fascist state is so eager to prop up The Family with every benefit the state can bestow. As the institution of The Family collapses, the sole resort of the state and its agencies will be outright terror upon those who do not conform.

Some gay people may deceive themselves into believing that we are increasingly accepted among those who have the power in this society. It is clear that this false notion of acceptance has a price to it, and the price is an escalating and highly coordinated official attack on the fringes of our community.

The dialectic of liberation is not always an easily discerned thing. There are certainly strong progressive movements among homosexuals. With each thrust forward comes reaction. Yet it is impossible to foresee what reactionary horror will be unleashed by the heterosexual tyrants to penalize us for acts of liberation. The het tyrants have plenty to choose from: social proscription, indictment, enforced poverty through stigmatization, medical experimentation, castration, and execution. All we can be certain of from past experience is that each action we take as a movement, each step for homosexual liberation, will at some point be twinned with a quite literal attack upon homosexuals in an attempt to decimate our community and to scare those who would take the next step forward into retreating.

There is one clear indication of progress toward homosexual liberation, and, contrary as it seems, that is the growing number of arrests of boy-lovers and other pedophiles. What the police may see as a state license to clean-up the sexual non-conformers is in fact an act of desperation for a social order based on sex repression. To be armed only with the terror of the law is to have small power indeed. Resort to the brutality of the state is usually the line of last defense. There also appears to be a greater willingness, on the part of those accused of statutory sex offenses, to challenge the states authority in matters of sexuality. This is new, and a direct outgrowth of the gay liberation movement. The spirit of resistance is contagious. Thats why police and D.A.s want to snuff it out. That so many boy-love cases are going to courts for trials is a sign that more subtle and traditional ways of repression have broken down. Social pressure alone no longer completely inhibits people.