Вредно для несовершеннолетних

In a petition for the suppression of Harmful to Minors to Minnesota’s then-governor, Jesse Ventura, Jim Hughes of Survivors And Victims Empowered (SAVE) wrote: “Levine’s previous work provides us a clue to her pro-pedophile thinking...She describes men this way: Men’s sexuality is mean and violent, and men so powerful that they can ‘reach WITHIN women to...construct us from the in­side out.’ Satan-like, men possess women, making their wicked fan­tasies and desires women’s own. A woman who has sex with a man therefore, does so against her will, ‘even if she does not feel forced.’ ”

Actually, this passage, from my first book, My Enemy, My Love,

is a quotation from someone else too. The characterization of men’s sexuality comes from the propaganda of a group called Women Against Sex, which I describe as representing “the most extreme edge of an already marginal politics.” I also call them “nutty.”

Selective quotation, exaggeration, and outright lies are time-hon­ored tactics of the Right. Judith Reisman has long circulated the calumny that Alfred Kinsey conducted sexual experiments on in­fants at his institute; she offers no substantiation. Focus on the Family routinely refers to sex-ed curricula as “pornography.” For decades, sex-ed opponents have broadcast rumors of teachers dis­robing in the classroom and children molding genitals out of clay. In Talk About Sex, sociologist Janice M. Irvine calls these “depravity narratives,” tales that strain credibility one by one, but in great enough numbers stir suspicion that something like them must be true. Would I actually molest my niece and nephew? A listener might dismiss that insinuation as too extreme. But a person like me

who wrote a book like that might do something almost as bad—such as condoning molestation.

In the past, such stories were reproduced in right-wing publica­tions and at public meetings, on radio and television. The Internet only multiplies the speed and reach of this dissemination. By June, 2002, a Google search for the term “Judith Levine abuse” yielded more than 7,400 matches, most resembling the second one on the screen: “BOUNDLESS — EXCUSING CHILD ABUSE...One of the apostles of this movement, Judith Levine...”

In an already combustible atmosphere of sexual panic, distor­tions and lies raise the temperature and throw in the match. Voilà, a “firestorm of controversy.”

Guilt by Association, or Sexual McCarthyism

The charge against me was not only that I am an advocate of pe­dophilia, but that I am part of an organized and increasingly influ­ential “pro-pedophile lobby,” whose aim is “normalizing” child abuse. One clue to my membership was that citation of Bruce Rind. Another was the author of the book’s foreword, Joycelyn Elders. You may remember Elders’ pro-pedophilic crime. She told an audience of sex educators that masturbation would be an appropriate topic of sex-ed classroom discussion; this inspired the Republican House of Representatives in 1994 to demand her resignation. Knight, on Concerned Women’s Web site, described the events this way: “Elders was fired by Bill Clinton shortly after she began a campaign to teach children to masturbate.”

The pro-pedophile lobby allegedly has been around for a long time. In a U.S. News & World Report

column rebuking me, John Leo recalled his own prescience in uncovering the conspiracy. “Back in 1981, an astute writer at Time magazine (that would be me) no­ticed that pro-pedophilia arguments were catching on among some sex researchers and counselors, [psychologist] Larry Constantine, [sex researchers] Wardell Pomeroy, and Alfred Kinsey,” he wrote, leading up to my own connections to the lobby. “Harmful to Minors has a foreword by former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, so don’t say you weren’t warned.” Washington Times writer Robert Stacy McCain contributed a catalogue of my “pedophile sources” to the Web site of Concerned Women. “Yes, Virginia,” he wrote. “There is a pedophile movement, and Judith Levine’s book is part of it.”