Starlight's "No NAMBLA Connection" Thread

[Cow Poke]

Apparently he stood up for NAMBLA's first-amendment rights and opposed attempts to prohibit them expressing their opinions... how terrible...? It doesn't suggest he was ever a member of them, and the Talk page makes quite clear in the extensive discussion of the subject there that there is simply no evidence at all of any connection between him and NAMBLA.

From NAMBLA's website: (bolding mine)

Harry, founder in 1950 of the first American gay group to survive, the Mattachine Society, cofounder of the Gay Liberation Front, Southern California chapter, in 1969, cofounder of the Radical Faeries in 1979, father of the U.S. gay movement, and grandfatherly icon of gay liberation, died on October 24, 2002, at the age of ninety. Harry was a vocal and courageous supporter of NAMBLA and intergenerational sexual relationships, though since his death many of the assimilationists in the gay and lesbian movement, including its most prominent organizations, have already sought to erase that part of his radicalism (not to mention his Communist roots and vocal critiques of their own accommodationist approach to the powers that be). In order to bring truth to the record, I have transcribed these comments.

Yup, no connection whatsoever!

[Teallaura]

[Cow Poke]

And this, at the end of the article cited....

Of course, Harry stood for much more than the comments published here. But these views were also important to him, as his moving expressions of love for Matt, the man in his life as a boy, make clear. Wherever he is, I thank him for them, and offer them to posterity.

Yup, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. No connection whatsoever.

[Cow Poke]

Here, the GayPatriot talks of Hay's association with NAMBLA as a known fact, arguing whether Kevin Jennings was aware of it or not when he publicly praised Hays.

Zomblog presents a very convincing case that Jennings may indeed have known about Hays’ support for NAMBLA when he publically praised the man years ago. Until now I’ve seen most of the criticism directed at Jennings as being sketchy and partisan in nature. While this too may be influenced somewhat by politics, there is persuasive evidence to back up the accusation. I would encourage everyone to read this post for yourselves.

nambla.JPG

[Starlight]

Your credulous belief in, and repetition of, unevidenced claims made by a pro-pedophilia website speaks pretty badly of you.

The wikipedia talk page has a lengthy discussion of the topic by quite a number of people with various different views, and what is clear from that is that there is a grand total of zero evidence that the guy was ever a NAMBLA member or supporter. The most he ever did was advocate for their first-amendment rights to free speech when others were trying to forcibly censor that speech.

Remember, this is a guy who was an outspoken activist. His numerous writings and speeches on his views are a matter of public record. There's no need to second-guess what he believed and advocated. Claiming that the guy 'secretly believed' in something that there is simply no evidence that he ever did, is a pointless conspiracy theory and a slander of a dead man.

The even more fundamental error that you're making is in thinking that this is at all relevant. I would still think slavery was wrong even if you could definitively prove to me that every single historical anti-slavery advocate was a pedophile. The morality of human rights for minority groups is in no way whatsoever contingent upon the historical moral uprightness of those advocating for the rights of minorities. So who cares if some guy who founded a gay rights organisation in 1950 was a pedophile or not? There's no 'gay rights bible' where all gay rights advocates since 1950 have had to follow and agree with the exact teachings of some guy at that time. As a modern gay rights supporter, I could hardly care less about what anyone in the 1950s thought (or more recently, for that matter). My views are my own, not handed down to me from some truth-teacher in the past, and their views are in absolutely no way binding on me or anyone else who supports gay rights in the present day.

Today in most western countries, the rate of support for same-sex marriage rights is about 60% (Ireland, for example, got 62% in its recent referendum)... whereas what's the rate of support for pedophilia? I presume it's less than 1%. That's an awful lot of people supporting gay rights who don't support pedophilia... in fact you could say that nearly absolutely everyone who supports gay rights does not support pedophilia. So why do you guys even bring the subject up? Because you want to slander the majority of gay rights advocates in the present day using your unevidenced conspiracy theories about what some guy in the 1950s believed according to the unevidenced claims of modern-day pedophiles!

GAH! Seriously... Just how retarded can you guys get? Claiming that there is a 'gay agenda' to support pedophilia (as Adrift did) is a simply a massive slander against those of us who support gay rights today, as we clearly and unambiguously do not support pedophilia.

[lilpixieofterror]

Translation: "How dare they disagree with me!"

Sorry Dimbulb, but you're wrong. Just admit it or you could keep digging and exposing that you have no interest in truth. Your choice.

[Cow Poke]

Your credulous belief in, and repetition of, unevidenced claims made by a pro-pedophilia website speaks pretty badly of you.

Why would they lie? And that's not the only source. And Media Matters tries to debunk the fact that Jennings KNEW about this obvious association of Hay with NAMBLA. Media Matters is obviously NOT an anti-gay organization.

[Starlight]

Why would they lie?

Why would a widely-hated group try to claim that some famous people supported them? Obviously because they want the validation and credibility they think they can get from name-dropping.

PS. Let me be very clear that as far as I'm concerned they can name-drop until the cows come home and it wouldn't affect my negative views on pedophilia. I think their strategy is doomed to utter failure, because modern gay rights supporters simply don't care what any previous gay rights advocates happened to think, because the movement is a personal and grass-roots movement, not a top-down believe-what-some-famous-guy-said movement. The vast majority of people who support gay rights do so primarily because they know a gay friend or family member or because they believe in equal rights for minorities. They haven't gone out and read books by gay rights activists, or heard a famous gay rights activist speak - their views on the subject are entirely their own. There's simply no top-down authority within the overall movement, and consequently simply no way to promote any hidden 'gay agenda'.

[lilpixieofterror]

Why would a widely-hated group try to claim that some famous people supported them? Obviously because they want the validation and credibility they think they can get from name-dropping.

PS. Let me be very clear that as far as I'm concerned they can name-drop until the cows come home and it wouldn't affect my negative views on pedophilia. I think their strategy is doomed to utter failure, because modern gay rights supporters simply don't care what any previous gay rights advocates happened to think, because the movement is a personal and grass-roots movement, not a top-down believe-what-some-famous-guy-said movement. The vast majority of people who support gay rights do so primarily because they know a gay friend or family member or because they believe in equal rights for minorities. They haven't gone out and read books by gay rights activists, or heard a famous gay rights activist speak - their views on the subject are entirely their own. There's simply no top-down authority within the overall movement, and consequently simply no way to promote any hidden 'gay agenda'.

So let me guess, they photoshopped that picture together and went around the web and wrote a bunch of articles, making those claims, and nobody has bothered to change the articles or challenge the record. Yet you know the truth, despite having absolutely no evidence to back up your claims (and making up conspiracy theories to explain away evidence you dislike). Yeah, that makes perfect sense if you don't think about it.

BTW it is very dishonest to cut out the quoted material, of CP's post, that refutes all of your claims. Guess when you can't refute the evidence, just pull a Stalin and erase anything against your claims. Nice! Yet you wonder why I call you a communist, when you keep taking pages from their playbook.

[rogue06]

Why would a widely-hated group try to claim that some famous people supported them? Obviously because they want the validation and credibility they think they can get from name-dropping.

You skipped over the part that Media Matters discusses Hay's association with NAMBLA as a given.

[Cow Poke]

BTW it is very dishonest to cut out the quoted material, of CP's post, that refutes all of your claims. Guess when you can't refute the evidence, just pull a Stalin and erase anything against your claims. Nice! Yet you wonder why I call you a communist, when you keep taking pages from their playbook.

And the goofus calls ME dishonest.

[Cow Poke]

You skipped over the part that Media Matters discusses Hay's association with NAMBLA as a given.

An inconvenient truth, no doubt.

[Cow Poke]

So, Starlight, in this post....

No one denies that. The issue I have is when people misinterpret and misconstrue the existence of NAMBLA decades ago as a way to say poisonous things against gay rights in the present, painting those supportive of the gay rights movement with broad brush strokes that imply we have an 'agenda' to support pedophiles...

That bolded part ---- is that why you're taking this so personally?

[Cow Poke]

If you are interested in the topic of pedophiles getting into positions of power, you're much better looking into the Catholic church ....

Funny you should mention the Catholic Church.

Actually, the problem in the American Catholic Church had to do with homosexuality, as much as pedophilia. How many cases have you read where a Priest molests a little girl?

Source: Catholic League

The conventional wisdom maintains there is a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church. Popular as this position is, it is empirically wrong: the data show it has been a homosexual crisis all along. The evidence is not ambiguous, though there is a reluctance to let the data drive the conclusion. But that is a function of politics, not scholarship.

Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify a correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years old. More recently, in organs such as the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and Pediatrics, it has been established that homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters.

Correlation is not causation; it is an association. So to say that there is a correlation between homosexual orientation and the sexual abuse of minors is not to say that being a homosexual makes one a molester. On the other hand, it makes no sense to pretend that there is no relationship between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors.

© Copyright Original Source

[lilpixieofterror]

And the goofus calls ME dishonest.

He's just taking a page from the book of Stalin:

stalin.jpg

Inconvenient truths must be erased by all means possible.