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April 27, 2005
In Defense of Pedophiles?
I vividly remember a few years ago when I came across the NAMBLA website. (And I’m talking about the North American Man/Boy Love Association, not the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes) I was sick and depressed for days; I just couldn’t believe that not only did child-molesters exist, but that they had formed an organization where they tried to convince themselves and others that child-molestation was completely OK and children were sexual beings who should have the right to choose to have sex if they wished to.
What was most sickening was the section of their website where they have testimonials from boys as young as 11 with titles like “For The First Time in My Life I Felt Wanted” and “He Listens to Me, Unlike Most People.” Anyone who is not a child-molester can recognize in this the pedophilic tactic of preying on the abused and the lonely. I’m sure you could find some beaten women to praise their abusive husbands, too, and I’m sure that within their writings you could also find the tells of an abusive relationship.
NAMBLA claims that rape and sexual exploitation is grounds for revocation of membership, and I’m sure that there’s members who really believe that claptrap. They’re the same ones who read “For The First Time in My Life I Felt Wanted” and think it’s a beautiful tale of love rather than a story of abuse. NAMBLA puts out a publication called "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships" that explains how to lure children into relationships, how to fool the parents, how to not get caught, and how to escape if caught. Yeah, but, you know, they’re all about freedom for youth. Their capacity for denial is amazing.
Well this morning on Bill O’Reilly’s show, I heard about a 1997 case where two men, Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari lured a 10 year old boy from his home, smothered him with a gasoline-soaked rag, molested the cadaver, and threw the body into a river. Sicari was convicted of first-degree murder and Jaynes was convicted of second-degree muder and kidnapping. In 2000 the murdered boys parents filed a civil lawsuit against NAMBLA, having already won a civil lawsuit against the two perpetrators.
I think this was a wonderful idea. This is what civil lawsuits are for. Let’s put NAMBLA and their members out of business. Unfortunately there’s an organization who disagrees. Three guesses who it is, and the first two don’t count.
That’s right, the ACLU, and they’re doing it for free while the parents are footing the entire side of their bill. They’ve been holding up the case for the past five years; it still hasn’t gone to trial yet.
Information on this can be found here, here, here, and here. I'm suprised I haven't heard more about this case before.
Here’s the ACLU's press release on the subject from 2000.
In the United States Supreme Court over the past few years, the American Civil Liberties Union has taken the side of a fundamentalist Christian church, a Santerian church, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. In celebrated cases, the ACLU has stood up for everyone from Oliver North to the National Socialist Party. In spite of all that, the ACLU has never advocated Christianity, ritual animal sacrifice, trading arms for hostages or genocide. In representing NAMBLA today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children. What the ACLU does advocate is robust freedom of speech for everyone. The lawsuit involved here, were it to succeed, would strike at the heart of freedom of speech.
I’m sorry, but this is completely idiotic. NAMBLA’s content is not free speech anymore than my posting directions of how to build a bomb or exhortations to kill the president would be.
The case is based on a shocking murder. But the lawsuit says the crime is the responsibility not of those who committed the murder, but of someone who posted vile material on the Internet. The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not.
Actually, when this lawsuit was filed, criminal and civil lawsuits had been won against the two men who committed the crime. This is hardly a case of blaming speech instead of people.
In fact, given Jaynes’s diary, I think it is quite easy to see that NAMBLA indeed contributed to his actions.
It was also revealed during the trials that Jaynes was a timid pedophile for years, until he joined NAMBLA in 1996, according to his own diary. Then he became emboldened by the idea that there were others who shared his twisted, sick obsession. He fueled his perversion through the group's Web site and e-mails filled with horrid, pornographic images of children. He read with great interest the NAMBLA publication entitled "The Rape and Escape Manual." [Nickname for “The Survival Manual“ – ed.]
According to the parents’ lawyer, the ACLU is now charging that the lawsuit would violate Jaynes’s freedom of association.
I’m not one of those conservatives who thinks the ACLU is evil incarnate, although they’ve certainly done things I disagree with, such as their seeming vendetta against the Boy Scouts. This case, though, is simply disgusting. My husband says I’m a libertarian except when it comes to protecting children. I agree with that, but I don’t even see how a libertarian could defend this.
Update: The current lawsuit can be found here. Here's some of the allegations.
28. Prior to joining NAMBLA Charles Jaynes was heterosexual.29. After joining NAMBLA Charles Jaynes received and read the NAMBLA Bulletin, accessed and read the NAMBLA website which is provided by John Doe Inc. and by said means of communication began to collect child pornography and various pedophile material.
30. As a direct and proximate result of the urging, advocacy conspiring and promoting of pedophile activity by John Doe Inc., NAMBLA Radow, Powers, Thorstad, Miller, Herman, Hunter and Schoen, Charles Jaynes became obsessed with having sex with and raping young male children.
31. As a direct and proximate result of the urging, advocacy and promoting of pedophile activity by John Doe Inc., NAMBLA, Radow, Powers, Thorstad, Miller, Herman, Hunter and Schoen, Charles Jaynes stalked Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, Massachusetts who was ten years old and tortured, murdered and mutilated Jeffrey Curley's body on or about October 1, 1997. Upon information and belief immediately prior to said acts Charles Jaynes accessed NAMBLA's website at the Boston Public Library.
Linked at Outside the Beltway's open post.
Update: Today there's been a rumor going around (started by the LA Times) that pedophiles are almost always Trekkies. Turns out it's not quite totally true, but close enough. Right Thinking from the West Coast has a suggestion as to the reason.
I don’t think for a second that there is anything in Star Trek that particularly appeals to pedophiles. But pedophilia requires a high degree of imagination, such as imagining that little children can and will be receptive to sexual advances, that sort of thing. Nobody gets the idea in their head to molest a child and then immeidately runs out and does it. The action comes after years of fantasizing and imagining various scenarios involving children. So it seems to be to be completely reasonable that a large number of these type of criminals would have a passing to strong interest in Star Trek, a show which has always appealed to the imaginative.
Pedophiles definitly need a good sense of the imagination.
Posted by illuminaria at April 27, 2005 12:32 PM
Comments
The ACLU is an absurd parody of itself, and it's doesn't surprise me in the least that they'd defend NAMBLA. You may remember that they chose not to defend the creators of the so-called abortion hit-list website, despite very similar free speech issues. Here's a link to some of my of posts on child pornography. I think it's pretty much impossible to allow every adult sexual behavior and attempt to restrict the sexualization of children. If adults are unwilling to restrain themselves, how can they create a coherent morality regarding children?
Posted by: Michael Williams at April 27, 2005 08:57 PM
I have to differ somewhat on this. There ARE books on how to build bombs (such as The Anarchist's Cookbook) and they are protected. I reject the idea that a website can make someone commit a crime - that's the ultimate denial of personal responsibility.
What about the pro-life website containing wanted posters with pictures and addresses of abortion providers, some of whom were subsequently murdered? The question that makes me differ only somewhat is, why didn't the ACLU come running to the defense of the pro-life websites?
Websites don't kill; people do.
Taxi Driver didn't shoot Reagan, Hinckley did.
The White Album didn't make Manson, Manson did.
Posted by: dweeb at April 28, 2005 11:26 AM
Their position to make the distribution and possession of child porn, and positions like this, make it quite obvious that the ACLU sees the rights of perverts trumping the rights of our children.
Posted by: Jay at April 29, 2005 06:21 PM
I think you have to defer to the idea that screaming "fire" in a crowded moviehouse (or is that "movie" in a crowded firehouse?) is not protected free speech. Molestation of children should be taken completely off the table, no "ifs, ands or buts", regardless of how the ACLU perceives free speech. A wolfpack drives away or kills individual wolves that prey on the young... I really don't want human society to be so "enlightened" that we don't act swiftly and harshly against those who prey on our young.
Posted by: mistercalm at April 30, 2005 08:19 AM
Seems there are a lot of us in this fight.
Some, like me, who have finally decided to try and actually do something about it.
I have a thread called 'Florida and the ACLU'
I wrote it because I am waiting for the ACLU to take on the State of Florida in the name of pedophiles and their rights because of the new laws they have passed.
Posted by: dawn at April 30, 2005 09:58 PM