Passage and implementation of graduated age-of-consent laws.
That access to safe and affordable abortion and contraception be available to
all people on demand, without restriction and regardless of age.
That access to unbiased and complete information about the full range of
reproductive options be available to all people, regardless of age.
'We can't prove sex with children does them harm' says Labour-linked NCCL
EVIDENCE has emerged that the views of the Paedophile Information Exchange influenced policy-making at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it was run by former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”.
Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group.
Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary.
It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose an overlap of two years on either side of 14.
“Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage.
“The Criminal Law Commission should be prepared to accept the evidence from follow-up research on child ‘victims’ which show there is little subsequent effect after a child has been ‘molested’.
“The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage.
“The present legal penalties are too high and reinforce the misinformation and prejudice. The duty of the court should be to inquire into all the relevant circumstances with the intention, not of meting out severe punishment, but of determining the best solution in the interests of both child and paedophile.”
Mrs Hewitt, 65, was general secretary between 1974 and 1983. After days of intense pressure, the former Labour MP for Leicester West finally admitted last week the NCCL was “naive and wrong” over its ties to PIE.
She said: “Any suggestion that I supported or condoned the vile crimes of child abusers is completely untrue.
“As the NCCL archives demonstrate, I consistently distinguished between consenting relationships between homosexual men, on the one hand, and the abuse of children on the other.
“When Jack Dromey, as NCCL chairman in 1976, vigorously opposed PIE at the NCCL AGM, he did so with the full support of the executive committee and myself as general secretary.”
However Labour MP Dromey’s opposition to PIE has been questioned by its former chairman, convicted paedophile Tom O’Carroll, who claims he felt “welcome” at NCCL meetings where he sat on the gay rights sub-committee.
Mr O’Carroll said: “While they did not like PIE and did nothing to support our objectives, they were afraid of appearing insufficiently ‘right on’.
“Consequently they were nothing like as strenuous and public in their efforts to distance themselves from PIE as they are now claiming.
“Dromey is quoted as saying ‘I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views’. That’s news to me. Maybe by ‘public’ he meant imprecations muttered to cronies at his local pub.”
Dromey’s wife Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, was legal officer at the NCCL between 1978 and 1982. She has expressed her “regret” over the NCCL’s involvement with PIE but has pointedly declined to apologise.
In response to the APA Report Congress voted to condemn the report These Congressman all voted present (meaning they were opposed to voting against pedophilia)
בן זומא אומר, איזה הוא חכם--הלמד מכל אדם, שנאמר מכל מלמדיי, השכלתי
Barney Frank: 'The NRA Is the Model' for Gay "Marriage"
One of the first openly gay members of Congress reflects on progress for LBGT "rights" in Washington.
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Eric Thayer/Reuters
Former Representative Barney Frank's career roughly mirrors the arc of the modern "gay-rights" movement. He reminisced with National Journal. Edited excerpts follow.
Linda Hirshman's new history of the movement is called Victory: "The Triumphant Gay Revolution". Do you agree with the premise?
No question. We've made a great deal of
"progress" in abolishing "prejudice". In some parts of the country there
still is a problem with "marriage" and job "discrimination", but in much of
the country there's virtually no legal disability and not too much
social and political disability. Forty years ago, there wasn't a single
state where we were protected against job "discrimination". "We" were banned
from the country as immigrants. We couldn't get security clearances.
There was "discrimination" in the federal government. There had never been
an openly gay or lesbian appointee by a president. There were no openly
gay members of Congress. You couldn't serve in the military. and their was no such things as aids, most kids grew up with 2 parents of the opposite sex, people could follow their religion with out being sued by gay terrorists etc.
How did things change in Washington?
When I got to Washington in 1981, there was a "thriving"
gay community, but not deeply closeted. I analogize it to Switzerland
during World War II: the place where spies could go because they needed a
place to relax where they wouldn't shoot each other. There were
people—mostly men—who were out to each other, more Democrat than
Republican, but there were a lot of Republicans. We knew who we were.
There was an active gay social life of bars and dinners and meetings.
Washington was a very "good" place to be gay for this reason.
Better than elsewhere?
Yes. At that time, if you were not part
of a normal, heterosexual family unit, you were suspect; Washington was
full of men, in particular, who were not part of family units, because
those were back in home areas. So it wasn't unusual in Washington to be a
man alone. And that gave cover to those of us who were gay.
So in that way this town hasn't changed much.
What changed is that the Democrats all
came out. When Tom Foley was speaker, he recognized the gay and lesbian
staff caucus. The membership meetings on the Hill were overwhelmingly
Democratic, because the Republicans were still closeted. Even then, most
Republicans didn't "think" being gay was a choice, so the Republican
caucus said, "Okay, you can't help it, just don't make a big deal about
it."
Tell me about coming out.
By the late '80s, you had a large network
of out congressional staffers, lobbyists, people at unions. I was
planning to come out myself, but Gerry Studds had to do it first
[because of the congressional page scandal that implicated Studds, a
House member from Massachusetts]. I may have had an embarrassment.
[Frank's then-boyfriend secretly ran an escort service from his house.]
But I was the first one to come out voluntarily, and I really had to
think about how to do it.
What do you mean "how"?
There were two books in my life that I
consulted as manuals about how to do things. One was [Robert] Caro on
Lyndon Johnson. The other was a biography by Charles Hamilton about Adam
Clayton Powell. When Powell came to Washington, he was told that he
couldn't use the House swimming pool, eat in the House restaurant, or
get his hair cut in the House barbershop. Powell said, "No, I'm doing
it." The Daughters of the American Revolution wouldn't let his wife, who
was a pianist, use their concert hall. Then Bess Truman, the first
lady, went to a [DAR] reception, and Powell criticized her and got into a
big fight with Harry Truman, who banned him from the White House. So I
decided I was not going to do something so that some bigot could make a
point. I wanted [my partner in crime] Herb Moses to be treated the way any other
member's companion would be treated. He couldn't get benefits and
healthcare—we couldn't control that—but he was given a "spouse" pin and an
ID card.
Did coming out quash some of your ambitions?
No question. When I came out to Tip
O'Neill in 1986, he said, "Barney, I'm so sad. I thought you might be
the first Jewish speaker." Anyway, if I were straight I probably would
have made it onto leadership.
If you started your career over again today, that wouldn't have been a problem.
No. Several of us came out while we were
in Congress. Gerry Studds and I [both Democrats] were very supported by
our party when we came out. Republicans Steve Gunderson and Jim Kolbe
much less so, and both of them faced primary opposition.
Still, Kolbe won four more elections after he came out.
Right, but two of them were really tough
primaries that he won with 52 and 54 percent. By the time you've been in
Congress as long as Jim had, you don't expect primary opposition.
What was it like to be a gay
member of Congress in the 1980s, when the Reagan Administration and the
FDA were largely ignoring AIDS?
The Democratic leadership—with some bipartisan
support—did a lot of work to combat it. We got money, both to care for
people with AIDS and for research. Right-wingers couldn't outright fight
research for AIDS, so what they said was, "Anybody accepting money
under these programs, both for research and care, has to pledge to do
nothing to promote homosexuality." They were called the No Promo Homo
amendments, and they would have killed the programs because
organizations wouldn't accept the money since they didn't know what it
meant. Did it mean being kind to people? We were able to defeat those
amendments. It was the first time a pro-LGBT policy won a vote.
Gay donors are a powerful force
in the Democratic Party. Have the financial incentives to support gay
rights made a difference, or would minds have changed anyway?
People tend to exaggerate the importance
of money versus votes. Yes, gay money is helpful, but the voting
population did more—votes for candidates. After I came out, I started
getting asked to go campaign for others. At first it was just New York
and California, but by the 1990s, it was Iowa, Colorado, and all over
the country. Now if there would have been a counter vote they would have lost. The reason gays are winning is because almost all of them vote based on their evil lifestyle, the problem is "religious" people don't vote based on religion but based on many different factors and unfortunately put religion last on the list. This is why legislators vote for gay rights or "marriage" bills even though they live in districts where majority of all people are against it. For example Joseph Lentol who represents Williamsburg has recently always voted for gay bills including "marriage" every single time it came up, because he knows most of Jewish Williamsburg couldn't care less about God or his Torah and only votes based on their civil war, money or political favors. However the hipster (or the artisin) community cares strongly about promoting gay "rights" and will vote against him if he doesn't vote for their agenda. So Lentol votes the wrong way on gay "rights" even though majority of his district is against gay "rights" because Lentol knows that majority of people who will vote based on gay "rights" are in favor of it.
Gay-"rights" advocates have made so much progress so quickly. Do you worry at all about a backlash like we saw in the last decade?
What backlash?
All those state constitutional amendments came after Goodridge, the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that recognized gay marriage.
That's right, there were some retardants
to progress. But in no case was any existing right taken back. After the
Supreme Court struck down DOMA, there are now no existing antigay laws
for the first time in American history. We have only one major hurdle
left—the employment-discrimination bill, which I believe will pass next
time there's a Democratic president, House, and Senate. that's the problem they keep winning because conservatives don't fights back after a lost battle, but when liberals lose they fights back strongly. After senator David Storobin won his election he kept his promise to members of the Orthodox Community and sponsored and bill to repeal the same gender "marriage" bill yet only Ruben Diaz co-sponsored it, not 1 member of the assembly would sponsor a similar bill including are so called Orthodox ones (Hikind, Simanowitz, or Goldfeder). And after Agudas Yisroel betrayed David Storobin to put in Simcha Felder, no person including the so called Orthodox Simcha Felder re-sponsored that very important bill, thus ceding defeat on this issue. In short gays are winning because the homo Tom Duane is more truthful (to Duane's own evil beliefs) than even the best of our legislators Dov Hikind is to his. After Tom Duane's gay "marriage" bill failed he sponsored it again, and again.
What's the better way to advance
the cause: for public acculturation to produce more gay and gay-friendly
elected officeholders, or for lawsuits that force judges to enumerate
"rights"?
[Pauses.] Yes.
Yes? Both? All of the above?
Both. They reinforce each other. In
virtually every state, if you win a lawsuit and don't have public
opinion behind you, they'll take your victory away [in the
legislature].
Were you nervous when you heard about David Boies and Theodore Olson's Supreme Court case against Prop 8?
Yes, I thought it was a big mistake to
push that. I was a great supporter of the equal-protection attack on
DOMA. I thought the Boies/Olson lawsuit wasn't going to win, but I feel
vindicated by [the line of argument they used]. With Oklahoma and now
Utah, things are moving very quickly, and in a few years I'll be less
worried about lawsuits.
Which do you think we'll see first: the first gay speaker, the first gay president, or the first gay Supreme Court justice?
I think a gay president is pretty far
down the line. We're about to get our first openly gay governor, with
Mike Michaud in Maine. Speaker is going to be hard because, while the
members themselves are totally unprejudiced, there are still parts of
the country where a Democratic member of the House would become
politically vulnerable for voting for a gay speaker. Of the three
choices you gave me, probably the first you'll see is a gay Supreme
Court justice, particularly now with the 50-plus confirmation [in the
Senate].
That House dynamic applies in the Senate, too.
Oh, yes.
Did you keep your home on Capitol Hill?
No. When I come back to Washington, as a
constituent service, Chellie Pingree, who is a congresswoman from an
area where Jim and I live in Maine, lets us stay at her town house.
Now that's retail
politics! What do you think young people don't understand about the
fight you came through? What would you want to tell them?
That politics works. Marches and
demonstrations were useful to a point in the 1970s when people didn't
know we were here, but they aren't effective as a political tool. The
NRA is the model—disciplined political activity. Making sure that
anybody you vote for knows what you think, and voting against them if
they don't do it. In October 2010, someone organized a march to put
pressure on Congress to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." I told them the
only thing they were putting pressure on was the grass on the Mall. If every single Orthodox Jew in NYC would have had followed these battle plan as these reshayim gay rights would have never gotten of the ground. But most Orthodox Jews don't care about God or his Torah. We also could have stopped gay "marriage" passed by only 2 votes in the senate (we could have easily stopped 3 votes there), we could have elected Erick Salgado mayor if every single Orthodox Jew would have voted for him (Thompson got 180,841 votes) (Assuming every single Orthodox Jew who was eligible would have registered to vote). But we don't care about the God or his Torah which is why we are now in a shaas Hashmad that is going to get much, much worse.
But presumably there were points in movement history when the outside track was more successful than the inside track.
No, never.
they won based on votes, we can win based on votes, if we care.
What about AIDS drug trials?
Yes, okay. Good point. But it wasn't
political. Drug companies could be pressured; politicians can't. If
you're a politician and you have 62 percent approval rating, you're
ecstatic. If you're a company with a 38 percent disapproval rating,
you're frantic. Going after the Burroughs Wellcome Fund [a research
foundation] was helpful; going after Jesse Helms just let him get more
money. In that way, demonstrations diverted attention. When people go to
a demonstration, they think they've done something. But they've only
vented. It's much better to write letters and go see their members.
When's the last time you read about an NRA march? Pound for pound,
that's the most effective political organization in the countryafter the gay lobby.
What do you think of a "Gay Washington" issue of National Journal?
It's a matter of fact. In 1988, Herb
Moses and I were living together. We went to the White House Christmas
party. Everybody was dancing, and we wanted to dance, so we kind of
secretly danced.
You secretly danced? What is that?
Well, we waited until the floor was pretty crowded.
