The mind of a pederast

By Matt C. Abbott

In my August 12 column, I printed an e-mail by homosexual activist David Thorstad, a founding member of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Thorstad took issue with Brian Clowes' essay "Homosexuality and the Church Crisis," reprinted in this column, in which Dr. Clowes referred to Thorstad as a convicted pederast. Thorstad admits to being a pederast, but says he has never been charged with any sex crime.

Dr. Clowes responded to Thorstad and the word "convicted" has been deleted from the essay. Thorstad very recently sent Dr. Clowes and me a follow-up e-mail, much lengthier than his first one. I've decided to print a significant portion of Thorstad's follow-up e-mail below, in order to show that Thorstad, while imbued with a diabolical spirit, is at least intellectually honest in his arguments — akin to the pro-abort who acknowledges that abortion does indeed kill a human being but defends the "right" to kill anyway — unlike many homosexual activists.

I believe Thorstad is evil, yet he, wittingly or unwittingly, unmasks the underbelly of the gay-rights movement — are you listening Ann Coulter? — which many people seem not to recognize. Also, his comments about massive, widespread homosexuality among the clergy are chilling, if debatable.

---

David Thorstad wrote:

I see I am no longer a 'convicted pederast' in your article, but just a 'pederast.' I won't object to that since I sometimes call myself one. I do so somewhat reluctantly, however, because, like all the other monikers, including the most absurd one of all, 'LGBT,' it conveys far too fixed an identity, eliding the fluidity of sexuality and sexual behavior, not to say my own sexual life experiences, which cannot be reduced to pederast or anything else. That is true of most people, I think, and in that sense Kinsey's scale is valid. The correction to your article is welcome, though I doubt it will have much effect overall because of Sobran's 'error,' which other Catholic and 'Christian' writers of various hues repeat ad nauseam.

You [Brian Clowes] asked me to comment on your piece, and I take this as a kind of offer of dialogue. So, here goes.

I share some of your points, such as your pointing to the hypocrisy of gay/lesbian groups in seeking to deny the relevance of man/boy love (a phrase you never use, though it is certainly more accurate than your favored and pejorative 'child sex abuse' and so on) to gay liberation; that pederasty is a form of homosexuality. I would point out, though, that it is not just assimilationist homosexual groups that seek to distance themselves from this link, but also the psychiatric profession and the bourgeois media, such as the New York Times. These all nowadays blur distinctions by lumping everything under the rubric 'pedophilia,' an absurdity apparently intended to criminalize love and force very different behaviors into one negative pigeonhole. The use of 'child' does the same thing. You yourself fall into that distortion by treating a fifteen-year-old, and perhaps even a twenty-year-old, as a 'child.' This is sloppy, but it does serve a purpose, which seems to be to anathematize even consensual and positive relationships as evil. In this, your outlook does not differ at all from the most reactionary hostility to pederasty by both the ruling powers and their media, and the mainstream gay and lesbian movement.

But pederasty is probably historically the most common form of homosexuality in Western culture, as well as many other cultures. It exists in all cultures, and in some is considered the norm, even today (e.g., Iran, among the Pashtuns). To label it 'child abuse' or 'child molestation' is preposterous and stupid.

You give too much credit to pseudoscientific tables and jargon, apparently in your desire to defend the Roman church with statistics of questionable value. You claim that Protestant pastors are more guilty of sex with 'children' than Roman Catholic priests. I doubt that, but who cares? Like many Catholics, you seem intent on downplaying, or minimizing, the evidence of rampant homosexuality and pederasty in the priesthood. The truth, judging from my own experience and what I have learned from others in your church and others, is that without homosexual priests, the Roman Catholic Church would collapse.

One friend of mine, an Episcopal priest and monk who knows many Catholic clergy, both priests and monks, estimates that way over half of Catholic priests are gay, perhaps closer to 75 percent. His own church is not far behind, he believes. A couple of decades ago, PBS did a program on a Catholic monastery in Massachusetts whose name I forget, but my friend said he knew the monks there well, and they are all gay. I know a number of Jesuits, all pederasts, and all very good men, ethical, intelligent, people who would never harm a boy....

An Italian friend of mine once told me that in Italy it was a common practice that if a family had a gay son, he was sent into the priesthood, because that was one profession in which he could thrive and get ahead.

One wonders what is served by focusing on what you call a small minority of priests (no mention of bishops or popes or monsignors!) who diddle boys, but ignoring the pervasive culture of homoeroticism in your church. What is falsely called 'pedophile priests' actually, in the vast majority of cases, involves priests having sex with teenage youths. These are not 'children' (except in the legal sense in which a 'child' is anyone under 18), but young men who often know exactly what they want and may not even be harmed by their relationships. Insofar as the priest-youth relationship is consensual, it is unlikely much harm was done.

That said, let me state my own position: I consider it unethical for a priest to ever have sex with a youth, even if the youth wants it. One reason is that, especially in the Catholic church, a priest is an intermediary with God (unlike, say, Protestant churches, where no intermediary is necessary), hence carries near-godlike authority. That alone is reason for an ethical priest to never get involved in such a relationship. I do not believe such relationships are always harmful, but I do regard them as unethical.

Your focus on statistics and 'offenders' distorts the reality of consensual relationships. I note that you don't even consider that consent is involved, let alone that such relationships can be beneficial to both parties, as they often are. And 'molestation' has nothing whatever to do with them. You slap 'molestation' onto all such relationships. That is wrong and unfair and untrue, but it pervades your article, so presumably your mind is made up and I won't try to argue any further about it.

Your attention is directed against assimilationist homosexual groups, but not all gays fit into that box, as surely you know. These groups have their head in the sand when it comes to man/boy love, not because they do not know the truth about it, but because they are determined to assimilate into the hetero dictatorship without challenging social inequities in any but the most approved and acceptable ways, such as wearing their patriotism on their sleeves (by seeking to be open in the imperialist military and participate in its crimes), and aping the failed institution of hetero marriage.

You cite some pretty questionable, even idiotic, research by Journal of Sex Research, claiming that homosexual 'offenders against male children' are far more numerous than those involving girls. You may think such assertions carry 'scientific' weight, but they are ludicrous in a society where heterosexuality reigns supreme, and where the whole culture is permeated by adult hetero males lusting after young girls. Can you deny that this desire characterizes much adult male heterosexuality?

You confuse two things: pedophilia and ephebophilia ('homosexual pedophiles are usually classified as 'ephebophiles''). But the John Jay study is correct, and you do cite it, to define pedophilia as involving prepubescents. I would add that a mother nursing her baby is also a kind of pedophile. Erotic pleasure is involved, but does anyone argue that the child gave consent, or that erotic pleasure is involved?

One of your tables purports to who 'alleged victims of sexual abuse,' and shows a very high number of male 'victims' aged 15 to 17. One wonders if you know boys in that age category, or if the social 'scientists' who drew it up know any. They simply use the label 'victim' even where no victimization may have been involved.

I had to laugh at your statement: 'If we use the more reasonable assumption that five percent of all priests are homosexual...' Huh? It's more like 75 percent. That assumption strikes me as completely unreasonable. The statements by gays and lesbians you quote supporting man/boy love show mostly that the official, sanitized, antipederast dogma of the assimilationist groups has not managed to squelch all discussion of this ubiquitous form of homosexual love.

You define pederasty as 'adult male sexual molestation of boys.' This is a lie. Pederasty is a consensual phenomenon and has nothing to do with 'molestation,' a word you use as if it were a mantra of some sort. You say 'the modern-day concept that adults can legitimately have sex with children originated with the Alfred Kinsey team.' Oh? How can that be, since such relationships have been going on throughout human history.

You say 'homosexuals have infiltrated the ranks of the clergy to an astonishing degree.' I would say your clergy couldn't continue without homosexuals, and that infiltration has nothing to do with it. You are right, I believe, to reject the idea that lifting the celibacy requirement would rid the Catholic church of its problems with wayward gay clergy. This is a subject on which I take no personal stance, of course, being an atheist.

I was taken aback that you brought up the ridiculous assertion that 'some experts believe that, in many cases, homosexuality is an acquired condition due to the lack of an effective male role model.' Dream on. The psychiatrists and psychologists never tire of coming up with foolish theories to keep people trudging to their offices for their overpaid services.

I wonder what gay groups you had in mind when you asserted that 'Many of these groups vocally supported 'man-boy love' in the 1960s and 1970s. Now the same groups are attacking the Church because pedophile priests [there that misnomer comes again] followed their advice and became 'boy-lovers.'' This is absurd beyond words.

One of your studies appended makes the ridiculous claim that 'Recent surveys estimate the prevalence of homosexuality, among men attracted to adults, in the neighborhood of 2%.' This is pseudoscientific baloney. Instead of this, a more accurate understanding of the role of homosexuality in society could be learned from cross-cultural studies, anthropology, history, art, psychology. Males are attracted to each other, and this is manifest in many aspects of society, even a homoerotophobic society. Many societies institutionalize this attraction, and even sexual expression, between males, of varying ages, as surely you know. Even societies like the American one that try to suppress and repress homoeroticism in favor of an enshrined heterosexuality have always failed to prevent same-sex love from being expressed. The same could be said of the Roman Catholic Church.

© Matt C. Abbott