‘Gay Rights’ Icon Frank Kameny Spoke at NAMBLA Meeting in 1981

   At left is a photo on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History website announcing that the (taxpayer-funded) museum had acquired “civil rights pioneer” Frank Kameny’s papers. At right is a newsletter of the NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, the notorious pro-man-boy-sex group, whose conference Kameny addressed in 1981.

By Peter LaBarbera

I was going through some of my old files on the “gay” movement and came upon a nugget of “gay” history that I’d forgotten: longtime homosexual activist Frank Kameny — billed as a “gay civil rights pioneer” by the U.S. Government’s National Museum of American History — addressed a meeting of the notorious “man-boy-love” group NAMBLA in 1981. According to the NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) publication “A Way Forward,” Kameny spoke at a NAMBLA membership conference in Baltimore in 1981. 

Now isn’t it interesting that our government — speaking for us as a nation — wants to officially recognize this pro-homosexuality icon as a “civil rights pioneer” when, apparently, Kameny once supported the “civil right” of boys to have sex with men — why else would he attend such a meeting? (NOTE: If you’re opposed to the notion of our Government likening the cause of organized homosexuality to the noble Black civil rights movement, click on AFTAH initial story on Kameny HERE.) The media viciously attack Christian conservative leaders like Jerry Falwell but they give the “gays” a pass. This is why the homosexual “rights” movement has prospered.

Mr. Kameny is an avid letter-writer — and we will be publishing the long interview that Ken Ervin and I did with him several years ago — but maybe he can tell us why he appeared at NAMBLA’s meeting and what he said; Frank, please write me at americansfortruth@comcast.net.

Last year, Americans For Truth alerted you to the U.S. Government’s treatment of Kameny as a civil rights hero by collecting his papers for preservation in the National Museum of American History. Kameny is a brilliant but very confused fellow who, although an atheist, coined the phrase “Gay Is Godly,” and who calls people like me “Christianofascists.”

He also calls us “nutty fundamentalists,” but is there anything more nutty than giving credence to the idea that boys should be able to have sex with men?

By the way, Harry Hay, another “gay rights” “founding father” — if I can use that term — also spoke at a NAMBLA gathering and remained a fervent defender of NAMBLA throughout his long life. (Hay was a “persistent” supporter of NAMBLA’s right to march in “gay pride” parades, according to homosexual writer Michael Bronski.) We know there is a linkage between male homosexuality and pederasty (man-boy sex) in ancient history (see William Armstrong Percy’s book, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece) — but will the nexis between NAMBLA and homosexual “liberation” be part of the “official,” American “gay” history as well?

Here is the NAMBLA booklet’s excerpt mentioning Kameny (emphasis added):

    …NAMBLA launched a daring campaign aimed at rolling back new anti-sex laws introduced by the Model Penal Code in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s as stand-ins for the old laws against homosexuality. Bold initiatives brought NAMBLA a wide membership — and more important, a wide, and sometimes international, audience.

 

      With this, members realized, came a responsibility to show not only how man/boy relationships can be handled humanely, but also how this reconciles with the common interests of societies and the need of all people to be dealt with humanely. A key to NAMBLA’s work had been the tradition of the public community forum — an essential element of democratic governance and stable community life, and a key to developing a principled program with broad appeal. This tradition was continued throughout the 1980’s. In 1981, Mel Boozer, a Democratic Party star, and Frank Kameny, organizer of the world’s first gay rights pickets in Washington, D.C., spoke at a NAMBLA membership conference in Baltimore. In 1982, Frank Kilhefner, co-founder and director of the Gay Community Center in Los Angeles, spoke at a NAMBLA meeting there. In time, virtually all of the pioneers who now serve as icons of the lesbian and gay rights movement spoke at NAMLBA-sponsored forums. Often, these men and women shared the stage with boys speaking about ageism and in defense of youth rights as well as eros — and from their point of view was simple common sense.

 

— NAMBLA booklet, “A Way Forward: Selections from the NAMBLA Bulletin & NAMBLA Journal,” 1983-1987, pp. 7-8. Published in 1997.