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** Leader or leper?

October 2000

Leader or leper?
A potted history of NAMBLA

By Tom Fuller

NAMBLA, among the most closely monitored and deeply infiltrated groups in American history, has a core membership of perhaps 300 people worldwide. At its peak in the 1980s, NAMBLA had about 1400 dues-paying members. In recent years, the group has amounted to little more than a website, an answering machine, occasional publications, and a mailing list. It has not held a meeting in over three years.

The all-volunteer association grew out of a perceived need to lend support to men being prosecuted for consensual involvement with teenaged boys. It was founded in the aftermath of a 1977-'78 Boston-area witchhunt, the "Revere sex ring" scandal, in which 80-year old Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne portrayed several men who had sex dates with teenaged hustlers in a friend's apartment as conspirators in a plot to molest children.

Boston-area gay activists, led by the staff of the radical Fag Rag, dealt with the crisis by forming the Boston Boise Committee. Out of that effort grew two enduring organizations: Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) and the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). The most lucid and detailed account of these events can be found in The Boston Sex Scandal, published in 1980 by Guide columnist Mitzel.

NAMBLA's first major public event was the 1979 Lesbian and Gay March on Washington. From the beginning, some gay activists had reservations about the group. While many agreed with portions of NAMBLA's agenda, including its efforts to deal with the whimsicalities age of consent laws, a considerable number of gay men and lesbians became alienated over NAMBLA's refusal to condemn or otherwise disavow sexual relations with prepubescent children.

NAMBLA instantly became a staple of right-wing homophobic propaganda, from Father Enrique Rueda's 1982 Homosexual Network through '90s issues of Peter LaBarbera's anti-gay Lambda Report. A popular mythos has grown up around NAMBLA's alleged policies and attitudes. Statements like "Sex before eight, or then it's too late" often attributed to NAMBLA, actually emanated from the submarginal, now defunct Rene Guyon Society, which government investigators say was an organization of one.

In 1982, an alleged NAMBLA "sex den," a summer home where two men from New York were entertaining a ragtag assortment of teenaged boys, was raided in Wareham, Massachusetts. When a photograph of a young boy resembling Etan Patz, a New Jersey six-year old whose disappearance had been hyped by the tabloid press, police interpreted the photo as evidence that Patz was snatched by NAMBLA. More raids ensued. The photo was later shown to have come from a calendar published in 1968, before Patz was born.

NAMBLA was a familiar participant in gay marches and demonstrations throughout the '80s. Gay activists who disliked NAMBLA usually conceded its right to assemble and be heard. Tolerance of NAMBLA was facilitated by the knowledge that repeated investigations of the group by law enforcement agencies had failed to unearth any criminal wrongdoing. In 1986, the Gay Community News reported that the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had scrutinized NAMBLA and found no criminal conspiracy. FBI records confirm that government agents kept delving into NAMBLA and coming up empty-handed.

The position of NAMBLA in the gay community took a downward plunge in 1992, when the election of Bill Clinton wedded the gay political leadership to the establishment. In 1993, the International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA), a gay-rights consortium seeking observer status at the United Nations, was targeted by Senator Jesse Helms, Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for harboring pedophile groups. In 1994, the membership of ILGA voted overwhelmingly to expel NAMBLA, but it never gained the UN status it sought.

When NAMBLA and other dissident elements were excluded from New York's Stonewall 25 parade in '94, free speech activists banded together to form "Spirit of Stonewall," a march contingent that would serve as a catchall for NAMBLA and other excluded and marginalized groups. Eventually, Stonewall 25's organizers agreed to allow Spirit of Stonewall into the main march. NAMBLA's unofficial presence on the periphery of Stonewall 25 events was eagerly documented and publicized by the ad hoc anti-NAMBLA group Straight Kids USA. This was the end of NAMBLA's visibility at a national gay event.

It is now de rigueur for gay activists to state, in so many words, "I am not now and never have been a member of NAMBLA." Ostentatious public condemnations of NAMBLA have become a ritual of mainstream gay politics. In response, NAMBLA has cut back its activities and kept a lower profile. Sources within NAMBLA suggest that its surviving founders, whose political engagement dates back to the Civil Rights movement of the early '60s, have an uneasy relationship with newer, less politically seasoned members. In a 1996 article, Jesse Green describes NAMBLA as "a hodgepodge of individuals whose orientations, ideations, and affiliations lie all over the map."

The relegation of NAMBLA to the outer darkness means that at a time when the problems of gay youth are receiving special scrutiny, no meaningful discussion of age of consent is taking place. In her 1994 essay "No Law in the Arena," Camille Paglia wrote, "I protest the thought-blocking and context-blind value judgments inherent in referring to every adult-juvenile physical encounter as `abuse,' `molestation,' or `assault....' There are certainly atrocious incidents of genuine rape, which we must condemn. But in some instances the contact is actually initiated by the youth; in others, the relationship may be a positive one.... Loaded terminology is self-defeating, since it coarsens distinctions and prevents us from recognizing authentic abuse when it occurs."