1/26/01 9:20 a.m.
The Problem with Equivalence
“Pedophilia Chic” defended.

By Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute

fierce new battle over pedophilia has broken out among the intellectuals. But that may only be the run-up to an emerging national war over children and homosexuality. "'Pedophilia Chic' Reconsidered," Mary Eberstadt's recent cover story in The Weekly Standard, is what got the brawl rolling. Four years ago, Eberstadt wrote a piece called "Pedophilia Chic," which observed the slow erosion of the taboo against "man-boy love" (better known as child abuse). Eberstadt called attention to small but significant signs of mainstream cultural support for NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association), praise from the literary establishment for gay authors who depict scenes of man-boy sex, and Calvin Klein's infamous ad campaign. Eberstadt's just-published follow-up piece, "'Pedophilia Chic' Reconsidered," argues that four years later, the taboo against man-boy sex — at least among the cultural elite — is eroding rapidly. Literary and political works sympathetic to homosexual pedophilia are proliferating. Such books receive praise in places like the New York Times, and regularly appear on the gay-interest shelves of chain bookstores. Eberstadt wants to see this sort of thing more vigorously condemned, but instead now finds herself at the center of a cultural firestorm.

Eberstadt and The Weekly Standard are both being bitterly attacked for attempting to tar gays with the charge of pedophilia. After all, say the critics, most pedophiles are heterosexuals. Why focus on a few obscure homosexual publications when Britney Spears has done more than all of them put together to sexualize America's teenagers? In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, Eberstadt ably answers her critics. Like many conservatives before her, Eberstadt deplores the premature sexualization of children represented by people like Britney Spears (even though Spears is now of age). But Eberstadt points out that in the case of homosexual pedophilia we're talking about parts of an organized movement that advocate a change in the age of consent, as well as numerous works that not only depict, but actually glorify, the sexual molestation of boys. Nothing on a comparable scale exists in the case of heterosexual girls. In her article, Eberstadt is very careful not to charge the gay community as a whole with sponsorship of pedophilia. Instead she points to a serious problem, and calls for action. Eberstadt's right, but the important point is that the jousting between Eberstadt and her critics is only the beginning. The war over children and homosexuality will soon be going national.

To a remarkable extent, it's already happened. Remember the Boy Scouts. And although it received little national coverage, a bitterly contested referendum battle in Oregon over homosexuality and the curriculum is a harbinger of things to come. Only days ago, in fact, a coalition of family groups in California began to push for a parental right to exempt a child from any classes that depict homosexuality as just another lifestyle. These groups were reacting to the passage last year of California laws mandating the teaching of sexual "tolerance" in the public schools.

Perhaps even more than the coming national debate over gay marriage, the emerging conflict over how homosexuality is presented to school children is going to divide and preoccupy the nation. "Right-thinking" liberal opinionmakers sympathetic to the gay-rights movement haven't begun to understand the potential problems. Few yet realize what gay marriage — and the resultant equivalence between homosexuality and heterosexuality — will do to our schools.

I first encountered this question of homosexuality and schools when I was up in Vermont covering the dispute over civil unions. There I found growing alarm among the opponents of civil unions about "Outright Vermont," a program of AIDS prevention and tolerance-education sponsored by Democratic Governor, and civil union proponent, Howard Dean. I'd come to cover the civil-unions battle, so at first I paid little attention to all the talk about schools. Then one day, waiting for a candidates' debate to begin at a high school in Windsor County, I noticed that the bulletin boards were peppered with signs put up by the school's gay-straight alliance. All of the signs had a huge logo in the center for a website. I went to check out the site, assuming it would contain information meant to keep young teens who thought they were gay from despair and suicide. I expected to be torn between suspicion of such programs and sympathy for kids in so tough a position. Instead, I was amazed to find that the site is an entry portal to an adult gay male porn site. In effect, this gay-straight alliance had turned its high school into an advertising outlet for homosexual pornography. Nothing similar could have been expected, even from the most liberal of sex-education programs directed at heterosexual children.

Was this an aberration? The case may be extreme, but there is good reason to believe that it is by no means isolated. Consider the scandal that broke out last year when an organization of parents concerned about a Massachusetts state program much like Outright Vermont tape-recorded a workshop directed at students aged 14-21. The workshop leaders answered questions about "fisting" (inserting the hand and forearm into a partner's rectum) by praising the practice and showing students the proper hand position. The students were told that lesbians could experience sexual bliss by rubbing their clitorises together, and one of the workshop leaders advised the students that semen tastes sweeter if people eat celery. While the scandal forced the firing of the workshop leaders, the program itself was continued, and the parents who had recorded the session were threatened with lawsuits by gay-rights groups. The liberal Boston press corps was stone silent on the scandal, although prominent civil libertarians and supporters of gay rights, Alan Dershowitz and Harvey Silverglate, were appalled at the attempt to punish the parents with a lawsuit.

In "'Pedophilia Chic Reconsidered," Eberstadt raises questions about the mixed messages on appropriate sexual behavior for minors given out by the youth websites of many gay organizations. Eberstadt is concerned that these sites are encouraging young boys and girls to think sexually at ever younger ages. The parents disturbed by the Outright Vermont program agree. During the campaign, these parental groups complained loudly about graphic pictorial illustrations of, and instructions for, gay oral sex, fisting, and "rimming" ("mouth to ass," as the pamphlet describes it) made available to young people by Outright Vermont. Interestingly, supporters of Outright Vermont were, by their own account, "visibly shaken" by these attacks. What so shocked the partisans of Outright Vermont was that anyone could be horrified by the act of distributing to youngsters the sort of "safe sex" material gay organizations now ignore as commonplace.

The cultural fault line here is profound, and no aberration. The gay adults who operate gay-straight alliances and organizations like Outright Vermont seem to have a very different view than most heterosexual parents on the extent to which sexually explicit material ought to be made available to young people. And to be sure, explicit material about homosexual sex is even more disturbing to most parents than explicit material about heterosexual sex. With good reason. The most disquieting thing of all is that programs like Outright Vermont are now targeted at GLBTQ's. That's an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Questioning youth. A "questioning" youth, of course, is uncertain about his or her sexual orientation. But it's entirely commonplace for children who end up heterosexual to go through a youthful phase in which they question their own sexual orientation. Will these children now be told they have a gay gene, be handed a dental dam, and directed to an adult gay porn site?

Maybe this is an unfair portrayal of the programs on homosexuality now being instituted in schools across the country. But in view of what's already happened, this issue needs to be carefully addressed and investigated, not swept under the rug. Yet as of now, even to question such programs draws charges of homophobic bias. No matter. Parental organizations are already rising up, as the Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon, and California cases show. Many a parent now inclined to support gay marriage or civil unions will think twice when they see the effects of full public equivalence between homosexuality and heterosexuality on their children's education. In the next few years, this issue is bound to break open nationally. Hold on to your hats when it does.