"Liberal" and Green Support for Paedophilia? [Part 1]

Peter Tatchell

Pope Benedict XVI

This is the first of a 4 Part series - based on an essay I wrote several years ago. I was inspired by Pope Benedict's observation in 2010 that  "In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children"  - and the furious reaction from "Liberals" some of whom had genuinely forgotten while others were very anxious to cover up their own role in this moral fiasco!

It's relevant to the present controversy involving Peter Tatchell and Ireland's  new Minister for Children (and Equality) Roderic O'Gorman who served as Chairman  of the Green Party from 2011 to 2019

(1) Pope Benedict on “Liberal” Support for Paedophilia in 1970s

In an address to the Vatican diplomatic corps in shortly before Christmas 2010, Pope Benedict stated that:

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained - even within the realm of Catholic theology - that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a "better than" and a "worse than". Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today ………

Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen.”

 ‘This triggered the usual outbursts of rage from liberals who had chosen to forget what their predecessors had been saying and doing during that decade.

 Margaret Kennedy, from the “British Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors” group, complained: 

“He is trying to say that the modern world is corrupt and sexually rampant. It is blaming society for what is actually their responsibility. No one in any age has ever thought that adults having sex with children is right.” [!! My emphasis].

And of course, Barbara Blaine, head of SNAP, the “Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests” which is based in the US:

“It is fundamentally disturbing to watch a brilliant man so conveniently misdiagnose a horrific scandal … Catholics should be embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis … The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context’ he can’t control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context’ he can influence - the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.”

Reading between the lines, it's possible that Barbara Blaine knew what Pope Benedict was talking about but choose to see it as irrelevant. In contrast Margaret Kennedy seems to be an innocent at large! Both are quoted in former IRA-man/ hunger striker Anthony McIntyre’s blog “The Pensive Quill”: article entitled “Papal Bull” dated 26 December 2010  [1]

Sinead O’Connor was – naturally – among the “innocent” ones, although it is difficult to distinguish her kind of ignorance from malice. In an open letter to Pope Benedict she wrote:

… Please deign to respond to this letter directly and personally and put aside all the pomp and titles and so-called ‘proper channels’ all of which belong not in the 21st century but the 12th and are unbecoming of Christ.

Exactly who held the theory that pedophilia was fully in conformity with man and with children? Please give us their names.

Exactly when did they hold this theory? Exactly when if ever did they cease holding the theory?

Why was this information not given to victims? ….   [MY COMMENT: Oh my God!]

(2) ‘Der Spiegel’ on Sex Abuse by German Leftists and Greens

However in an article in the Irish Independent on 24 December 2010 (Pope is Right on Views of Paedophilia in the 1970s), David Quinn pointed out among other things that:

(i) In the 1970s there was a movement to legalise sex between children and adults and it was supported by some of the leading lights of the time who believed that relationships of this sort weren’t evil at all, let alone an absolute evil. 

(ii) Earlier in 2010, the German magazine, ‘Der Spiegel’ (itself on the left) reminded us of this fact in an article entitled ‘The sexual revolution and children: how the left took things too far.’  ***  

(iii) The article describes the kinderladen movement in Germany set up by leftists in the 1970s as a rival to the kindergarten movement. Its intention was to radicalise very young children, and to ‘sexually liberate’ them.

(iv) Der Spiegel described what this involved: ‘The educators’ notes indicate that they placed a very strong emphasis on sex education. Almost every day, the students played games that involved taking off their clothes, reading porno magazines and pantomiming intercourse.’ In addition the children were encouraged to fondle each other and to fondle adults. 

(v) How did the parents who sent their children to these schools justify this? As Der Spiegel makes clear, they believed they were ‘liberating’ children from ‘repressive’ and ‘bourgeois’ notions about child sexuality. …

(vi) The kinderladen movement was not the work of fringe cranks; in fact the far left in Germany, as elsewhere in the 1970s, was fantastically influential. One of the kinderladen leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a great hero of the 1968 student rebellion. Der Spiegel recounts how Cohn-Bendit appeared on French TV in 1982 and had the following to say:

“At nine in the morning, I join my eight little toddlers between the ages of 16 months and two years. I tickle them, they tickle me and we cuddle … you know, a child’s sexuality is fantastic thing ….. when a little five-year-old girl starts undressing, it’s great, because it’s a game. It’s an incredible erotic game.”

Today Cohn-Bendit laughs this off and says he was being merely provocative! He is now co-president of the Greens in the European Parliament. 

(vii) The Der Spiegel article also reminds us that, as late as 1985, the Green’s state organisation in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia argued that: “nonviolent sexuality between children and adults should generally be allowed without any age restrictions”. 

(viii) The doyen of leftist philosophers Jean Paul Sartre had similar views at the time.  In 1977, he and 69 other French leading lights wrote a letter to newspaper Le Monde in which they demanded the release of three men accused of having sex with minors. [2]

(ix) This attitude – ranging from ambivalence towards child/adult sex to outright support – still continues in France and elsewhere. In 2010 many people defended the film director Roman Polanski, among them other famous directors, actors as well as French government ministers. They demanded Polanski’s release from a Swiss prison even though he admitted to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old in 1973.

(x) In the 1970s a pro-paedophile organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange was a member of the British Council of Civil Liberties. The North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was a member of one of the biggest gay rights movements in the world – the International Lesbian and gay Association – right up until 1993.

*** The Spiegel article by Jan Fleischhauer and Wiebke Hollersen  is dated 2^nd July 2010 and an English version is available online at the Spiegel International website:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-sexual-revolution-and-children-how-the-left-took-things-too-far-a-702679.html

It begins:
“Germany's left has its own tales of abuse. One of the goals of the German 1968 movement was the sexual liberation of children. For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive.”

It was good of the Irish Independent to publish David Quinn’s article but nobody – either journalist or letter writers to the editor - seems to have followed it up and it doesn’t appear to be available on the Indo website either. [3] In fact there appears to be a pattern where such non-PC facts are occasionally published and then quickly buried.

Derek Scally had an article in the Irish Times on 10 August 2010 based on the Der Spiegel article. It is now behind the Irish Times firewall but contains the following gem about the “Kommune 2” group:

“On a typical day, April 4th, 1968, communard Eberhard Schultz reported in graphic detail how Grischa (a three year old girl) got into bed with him and began stroking him intimately, which he reciprocated.

“Unknowingly, the two children [Grischa and four year old Nessim, a boy] became stars of the progressive educational scene. A leading left-wing magazine printed a double-page photo spread of Grischa and Nessim romping naked in the commune.

“The sexualisation of children and child-rearing spread to the “Red Freedom” kindergarten in the Kreuzberg district.

“Teaching plans from 1969 include the “development of socialist personalities” and “Agitprop” about the Vietnam War. Playtime was devoted to “street battles”, in which the infants were divided into groups of students and police or “pigs”. The sexual education of the toddlers was promoted through group study of pornographic magazines and sexual pantomime.”

Scally also points out that this culture had become such an integral part of left wing culture that in the interests of “open debate” “the left-wing Tageszeitung newspaper regularly published articles on child sexuality”.

In one 1979 series, Scally says, “a male author praised the 'liberating feeling' of sex with children. A motion at the 1980 Green Party conference sought to “liberalise sex between children and adults”. [4]

The German Green Party seems to have recovered rather well from that potential scandal – in fact “potential” is the key-word as their journalist sympathisers never had any intention of calling them to account on this issue. There was no follow up to the publication of the Irish Times article and most people in this country have completely forgotten about the basic facts. In this respect – if in few others - Sinead O’Connor is perfectly normal!

NOTES: 

[1] The article is at http://thepensivequill.am/2010/12/papal-bull.html

For a former terrorist and hunger striker who has broken with the IRA, Anthony McIntyre exhibits extra-ordinary naivety. Has he replaced the British with the Catholic Church, as the supposed fountain-head of all evil? 

[2] According to a post on “The Pensive Quill” 

Take for example the 1977 petition in France to remove ‘age of consent’ laws and the decriminalization of all consented relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen.

“This was signed by such luminaries as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and André Glucksmann, Roland Barthes, by the novelist/gay activist Guy Hocquenghem, the actor/play-writer/jurist Jean Danet, writer and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, writer Philippe Sollers, pediatrician and child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto and also by people belonging to a wide range of political positions.”

[3] David Quinn’s article is available on the Alliance Support site at

http://www.alliancesupport.org/news/archives/003972.html

[4] Quoted on “The Iona Blog” by Tom O’Gorman – article entitled “How Radicals Tried to Sexually ‘Liberate’ Children”

http://www.ionainstitute.ie/index.php?id=988