Content warning: Discussion of sexual assault against children
The North American Man/Boy Love Association is often regarded as a joke from the adult cartoon “South Park” but the organization — better known as NAMBLA — is very real and Winthrop University has a portrait of its most famous member hanging up on the second floor of Bancroft Hall.
NAMBLA, which was founded in the late 1970s, exists as an advocacy group for pedophiles and pederasts.
Allen Ginsberg — the aforementioned most famous member — rose to prominence through his affiliation with the Beat Generation of the 1950s which included writers and poets such as Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and Herbert Huncke. Ginsberg’s long poem “Howl” is regarded as a hallmark literary work of the Beat Generation. The poem sparked an obscenity trial upon publication and has remained relevant in pop culture, being quoted by singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey in her 2013 short film “Tropico.”
Ginsberg joined NAMBLA at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s and attempted to frame his association with the group as an issue of free speech. He said that the organization is “a forum for reform of those laws on youthful sexuality which members deem oppressive.” In a short essay titled “Thoughts on NAMBLA,” Ginsberg denied that he “[made] carnal love to hairless boys and girls” but defended people who want to, saying that “such erotic inclinations or fantasies are average.”
In that same essay, Ginsberg compared NAMBLA members to anti-war and civil rights activists. He further wrote that his defense of NAMBLA should not be misconstrued as him being an apologist for “rape and mental or physical violation of children.” He insisted that he was just part of a discussion forum and nothing more. This rationalization tells us everything that we need to know about Ginsberg’s true thoughts on NAMBLA and his role within the organization: as the group’s most visible member, he became the loudest voice running cover for them. He was disingenuously operating off of the assumption that there is ever a context in which sexual relationships between children and adults is acceptable. Effectively, his argument hinges on the idea of a child ‘consenting’ to having a sexual relationship with an adult, which is impossible.
Feminist writer Andrea Dworkin was a one-time friend of Ginsberg’s until their falling out over the issue of child pornography. In her book “Heartbreak,” Dworkin wrote that “in 1982, newspapers reported in huge headlines that the Supreme Court had ruled child pornography illegal. I was thrilled. I knew Allen would not be. I did think he was a civil libertarian. But, in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to the North American Man/Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to [f**k] children and his constant pursuit of underage boys.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, Ginsberg was quoted on NAMBLA’s apparently now-defunct website as saying “Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witch hunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance…I’m a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too—everybody does, who has a little humanity.”
Regardless of how Ginsberg attempted to dress it up, his abhorrent statements fall right in line with the aims of NAMBLA: to abolish age of consent laws and to normalize adults raping children. One can easily determine from the above quote what Ginsberg was saying: if you have a problem with an adult raping a child, you’re ignorant and have no sense of humor. Any attempts to link that type of behavior to the First Amendment are too absurd to even bother addressing.
In the age of ‘Cancel Culture,’ the words and actions of figures in the realms of media and entertainment can come back to haunt them. At risk of stating the obvious, no one is perfect. Everyone says and does stupid or callous or hurtful things. It is part of the human experience. On some level, each person must decide for themselves if the actions and words of a figure that they admire or enjoy the work of reach a threshold where that person should be ‘canceled.’
In any case, there are some things that are so far beyond the threshold that anyone who advocates for or supports them should be discarded into the trash barrel of history and child molestation is one of those things — which should really go without saying. This is hardly a case of someone jumping into an organization without fully understanding what that organization stands for. Ginsberg was not stupid nor was he misinformed — he knew full well what NAMBLA was about.
While there is little-to-no evidence that Ginsberg himself molested children, he was an advocate and apologist for adults who do. That is an undeniable fact.
It’s past time that Winthrop does the right thing and stops forcing its students, staff and faculty to look at the face of a man who was a vocal supporter of one of the most despicable and heinous crimes a person can commit.
Photo: Tate Walden/ The Johnsonian
