EVERY year at this time the Pope addresses the Vatican
diplomatic corps and wherever possible the media like to misinterpret
what he says.
Two years ago he is supposed to have compared the
destruction of the rainforests with homosexuality, but he didn't even
mention homosexuality in that speech.
This year he is supposed to
have blamed the sex abuse scandals on the 1970s and to have suggested
that we didn't really know child sex abuse was an absolute evil back
then.
The reporting this time was a little closer to the truth,
but not by much because it gave the false impression that what he had to
say was utterly ridiculous and unworthy of consideration.
In
fact, 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 sexual relationships of this sort weren't evil at all,
let alone an absolute evil.
This had been conveniently forgotten
until the German magazine, 'Der Spiegel' (itself on the left) reminded
us of the fact in an article a few months ago entitled 'The sexual
revolution and children: how the left took things too far.'
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.
'Der
Spiegel' describes 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.
Today,
we recognise this as child abuse.
But clearly the parents who sent
their children to these schools did not consider it as such and neither
did the teachers.
How did they justify this?
As 'Der Spiegel'
makes clear, they believed they were 'liberating' children from
'repressive' and 'bourgeois' notions about child sexuality.
This
is what the Pope meant when he told the diplomatic corps: "In the 1970s,
paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and
even with children."
Nor was the kinderladen movement the work of
fringe cranks.
The far left in Germany, as elsewhere in the 1970s, was
fantastically influential.
For example, one of the kinderladen teachers 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 wash their
butts, I tickle them, they tickle me and we cuddle ... you know, a
child's sexuality is a fantastic thing ... when a little five-year-old
girl starts undressing, it's great, because it's a game. It's an
incredibly erotic game."
Today Cohn-Bendit laughs this off and
says he was being merely provocative.
But if that is so, it was some
sick joke.
In any case, he is now co-president of the Greens in the
European Parliament.
And speaking of the Greens, 'Der Spiegel'
also reminds us that, as late as 1985, the Greens' 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".
Are we to dismiss the Greens as fringe lunatics as well?
What
about Jean-Paul Sartre?
Is this doyen of leftist philosophers also to
be dismissed as unrepresentative of intellectual currents in the 1970s?
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.
It doesn't stop there.
In the 1970s a
pro-paedophile organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange
was a member of the British Council for Civil Liberties.
The North
American Man-Boy Love Association was a member of one of the biggest
gay rights movements in the world -- the International Lesbian and Gay
Association -- right up until 1993.
This attitude -- ranging from
ambivalence towards child/adult sex to outright support -- still
continues.
Think of those who defended the film director Roman Polanski,
among them other famous directors, actors as well as French government
ministers.
Earlier this year they demanded Polanski's release from
a Swiss prison even though he admitted to the statutory rape of a
13-year-old in 1978.
Our general policy towards Pope Benedict is
basically, shoot first, ask questions later.
In fact, whenever you see
him attacked over something he has said there are two rules to apply.
First, find out if he actually said what he is supposed to have said.
Second, if he did say it, find out if he was right before he's lynched.
On
this occasion, he was right.
The evidence is before you, and there is a
lot more besides.
There was a push in the 1970s, and later, to both
normalise and legalise sex between children and adults.
Why have we
forgotten this?
SIC: II/IE