In testimony before the United States Senate, NAMBLA was exonerated from criminal activities it said, "It is the pedophile with no organized affiliations who is the real threat to children". NAMBLA published a book A Witchhunt Foiled: The FBI vs. Although the accusation was groundless, the negative publicity was disastrous to the organization.
In 1982, a NAMBLA member was falsely linked to the disappearance of Etan Patz. It was co-founded by historian David Thorstad. There is strength in unity and openness." NAMBLA's founding was inspired by this organization. The "Boston-Boise Committee", a gay rights organization, was formed in response to these events (which they termed the "Boston witch-hunt"), allegedly in order to promote solidarity amongst gay men, saying in an official leaflet that: "The closet is weak. Commenting on this issue, Boston magazine described NAMBLA as "the most despised group of men in America", which was "founded mostly by eccentric, boy-loving leftists". The men were members of a "sex ring" Byrne said the arrest was "the tip of the iceberg". Byrne found the men had used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Suffolk County district attorney Garrett H. Twenty-four men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts of the statutory rape of boys aged eight to fifteen.
In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb Revere. Įvents such as Anita Bryant's 1977 " Save Our Children" campaign and a police raid of a Toronto-area newspaper, The Body Politic, for publishing "Men Loving Boys Loving Men" set the stage for the founding of NAMBLA. As of 2005, a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco. Since then, the organization has dwindled to only a handful of people, with many members joining online pedophile networks, according to Xavier Von Erck, director of operations at the anti-pedophile organization Perverted-Justice. NAMBLA was the largest group in IPCE, an international pro-pedophile activist organization. Around 1995, an undercover detective discovered there were 1,100 people on the organization's rolls. The group no longer holds regular national meetings, and as of the late 1990s-to avoid local police infiltration-the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve what it considers coercion. Note: “McInturff, Steve Book, Delaware O.The North American Man/Boy Love Association ( NAMBLA) is a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States. Photo strip, undated, 35 x 27 mm, provenance: US, (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, 1951, 121 x 83 mm, note: “1951” “Davis & J.C.” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Photograph, Undated, 96 x 67 mm (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions) Cabinet card, circa 1880, 167 x 109 mm, provenance: US, The book, Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s (5 Continents Editions), is available online. When we see them as connected, we feel more whole, and that’s what love is about for many of us anyway.
Seeing ourselves in the past is as much about being certain of our present and, dare I say, our future. What do images of men in love during a time when it was illegal tell us? What are we looking for in the faces of these people who dared to challenge the mores of their time to seek solace together? Flipping through the book, it wasn’t that I felt that I learned a great deal about being LGBTQ, but what gave me comfort was the feeling that we’re not going anywhere. While the majority of the images hail from the United States and are of predominantly white men, there are images from Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, and the United Kingdom among the cache. The collection belongs to Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, a married couple who has accumulated over 2,800 photographs of “men in love” during the course of two decades. In Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s–1950s, hundreds of images tell the story of love and affection between men, with some clearly in love and others hinting at more than just friendship. Hunter” (image courtesy of the Nini-Treadwell Collection © “Loving” by 5 Continents Editions)Ī beautiful group of photographs that spans a century (1850–1950) is part of a new book that offers a visual glimpse of what life may have been like for those men, who went against the law to find love in one another’s arms. Postcard, circa 1910, 90 x 141 mm, note on front: “E.