I am no fan of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, NAMBLA, the infamously controversial group which advocates sex between young boys and men.
Despite my guttural dislike and mistrust of this repulsive organization, I believe the American Civil Liberties Union was not only right, but brave to take on a recent court case in the group's defense. Even a group as repugnant as NAMBLA has the right to free speech. As gays and lesbians, we should remember our own long history of repression, and how our opponents have tried to suppress our freedom of speech as a way to undermine our civil rights.
While there is no comparison between the lofty goals of the gay and lesbian civil-rights movement and the unsavory intentions of NAMBLA, the principal of the First Amendment's freedom of speech must apply equally.
The case against NAMBLA arises from the October 1997 murder of Jeffrey Curley, a ten-year-old Cambridge, Mass., boy. Two men—25-year-old Charles Jaynes and 24-year-old Salvatore Sicari—were apparently obsessed with the boy and attempted to lure him into sex by promising him a bike. When the child refused to cooperate with their sexual advances, the men smothered him with a gasoline-soaked rag. Then they put his body in a concrete-filled container and dumped it into a river.
Both men have been convicted of the crime—Sicari on first-degree murder and Jaynes on second-degree murder and kidnapping. Sicari is serving a life sentence without the option of parole. Jaynes can seek parole after another 23 years. The parents of the boy were also recently awarded $328 million in a civil suit against the killers.
One of the killers—Jaynes —reportedly visited NAMBLA's website ( which has now been taken offline ) shortly before the murder. He also carried some of NAMBLA's literature. The boy's family is suing NAMBLA, claiming the group's website and literature incited the attack and murder of their son.
It's easy to understand the parents' anger and hurt at the loss of their innocent child's life to two murderous pedophiles. It's hard to defend a group like NAMBLA, that can hardly be held up as a group that really cares about children.
But none of this changes the fact that NAMBLA deserves the right to freedom of speech just the same as the Kiwanis Club or NAACP—or your local gay and lesbian civil-rights group.
In fact, the First Amendment was designed to protect just the kind of speech that a NAMBLA espouses—the most unpopular kind.
Naturally, anti-gay forces will try, as they always have done, to seize upon this case and NAMBLA's ideas as evidence that gay people represent a threat to young boys, and thus to society. Anti-gay forces have always tried to tie NAMBLA to the gay-rights movement. Through the years, NAMBLA itself has also tried to lay claim to being part of the gay and lesbian civil-rights movement, under the guise of being part of the movement for sexual freedom.
I've never bought NAMBLA's argument. I see the organization as little more than a bunch of dirty old men trying to piggy-back on the hard-fought struggles of a valid civil-rights movement. Worse, I see NAMBLA as an organization that preys on the most vulnerable members of our own tribe: young gay boys and teens.
Kids coming to terms with their sexuality need older gay men to offer them guidance and act as role models, to help them work through self-esteem issues, homophobia, rejection and even violence from their family members, constant taunts and harassment from their peers at school, and a myriad of other obstacles that still face the young who are coming to terms with their sexual orientation in an often unsupportive and downright hostile world.
Just look at a few of the statistics about boys coming to terms with the fact they are gay, and you get a picture of how much these kids need our help: According to a 1993 report by the Massachusetts Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, 97 percent of students in public high schools hear homophobic remarks from other kids at school. Even more alarming, 53 percent of students hear such anti-gay comments from teachers and school administrators.
More than 25 percent of adolescent gay males are forced out of their homes after coming out to their parents. And according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Network ( GLSEN ) , 69 percent of gay kids endure some form of harassment or violence at school. And a study at Columbia University in New York showed that 50 percent of gay teens reported chronic stress from being ridiculed by others about being gay. It's no coincidence that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, gay kids are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers.
The last thing these young kids should have to worry about is being taken advantage of by members of their own community who are masquerading their gay pedophilia as sexual revolution.
Those of us in the gay community must continue to draw clear lines between what we stand for, and what NAMBLA stands for. We mustn't allow our young gay kids, or any kids, to fall victim to NAMBLA's disingenuous claims to sexual freedom.
But the way to combat NAMBLA isn't by silencing the group. Doing that would pose a greater threat to all of us than NAMBLA could ever hope to muster. The free flow of information—including speech as offensive as what might be put out by NAMBLA —is one of the great risks, and great glories, of our free society.
Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com
