You said:
"it can discuss anything it wants but to pretend it doesn't want to legalise adults having sex with children, ie adults abusing children, adults preying on children, is naive."
I am no expert on NAMBLA, and I realize that the mere mention of the acronym is enough to sicken most. Perhaps the majority of its members are in fact abusers or potential abusers. I honestly don't know, although I always believed that abusers tended not to publicize their abuse. But I do think that in a free society it is valid to discuss a paradigm that has existed in many cultures, even if the culture we now live in rejects it. I also believe, for example, that consensual sex between an adult and, say, a 16 or 17 year old is not necessarily a horrible thing, although it is considered to be statutory rape in the US. So there may be some validity to an organization that questions sex laws in the US. However, I admit that I may simply be naive.
I said:
I can tell you now that all of you on this list who consider yourselves gay owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ginsberg,
You replied:
"really? I wonder about the children abused by people he gave support to? Not saying here he told these people to abuse but he seems to be arguing(or you do) that he gave support to the idea."
Ginsberg was explicit in his condemnation not only of abuse of children, but abuse of any kind. Yes, really, as a free gay man, you DO owe a debt of gratitude to Ginsberg. The freedoms you now enjoy would not exist without people like him, who took the blows for speaking his mind, and whose work was key to the sexual revolution and gay rights movement.
His decision to join NAMBLA was, according to him, a response to what he perceived as a witch-hunt by the Reagan administration. I suspect he saw in this a reflection of the ruination of the lives of many who were members of the Communist party. As a youth, he witnessed this destruction first-hand and I think it greatly informed his political decisions.
That being said, he may simply have been wrong. In his later life he freely admitted that some of his advocacy was wrong-headed, misguided, or simply stupid. He was consistently honest, even about his own mistakes. Your points are certainly well-taken, and I believe that if Ginsberg had discovered that his political advocacy had brought harm to a child, he would have been horrified.
Best,
David
