15th NAMBLA general membership conference

From Brongersma
Jump to navigation Jump to search

By: Bob Rhodes

The site: The three NAMBLA conferences held in San Francisco have all been in progressive spaces. The first SF conference was in the Pride Center, the second in the Native American Institute and this third one in the Women's Building. As NAMBLA conference organizers must be, the 16th conference organizers were both explicit and candid about the nature and purposes of NAMBLA. After approval of the Women's Building Collective, we entered into a lease for rooms in the building. This building is a three story former school in the Mission District of San Francisco. Although the Women's Building did not cancel our agreement, there were problems.

First, there was publicity. We don't know how news of the conference reached KGO-TV which is to broadcast journalism what the National Enquirer is to print journalism. Probably it was due to wheat-pasted announcements of the Saturday Night Forum which gave the name and address of the Women's Building.

KGO got one of the usual suspects on the Mayor's committee for or against something to denounce us. The Women's Building then had a hissy fit. They wrote a letter trashing NAMBLA [...] which was posted at several places in the building, including the front door. Several women dropped by our rooms glowering a bit. There were brief segments on Friday and Saturday night TV. The Saturday segment was somewhat positive as the film clip was of Tom Reeves reading our statement.

Altogether the atmosphere was somewhat tense though not nearly so much so as the 1982 Philadelphia or the 1987 Baltimore conferences.

The Conference: The black, gay, boy-loving, science fiction writer Samuel R. Delaney [Delany] wrote a story entitled "Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones." I think of our conferences as such stones on the helix of time. This third San Francisco conference stone would be a clear strongly colored stone such as amethyst.

It was larger than usual, having 60-70 attenders (though never that many in one place at one time) and somewhat quirky due to the participation of Revolutionary Workers' League, a Trotskyite group centered in the Detroit area. RWL is supportive of gay rights in general and NAMBLA in particular.

The conference had NAMBLA conferences' usual air of disintegrating agendas and attempting to pour buckets into teaspoons.

Hopefully the conference organizer will give a fuller account of the Saturday presentations. They flowed over me. I love and respect both Dan Tsang and Tom Reeves, but I have heard them often and at length and find it difficult to hear anything new that they say. The United States grows darker, harsher and crueler as it has over each of the 13 years of NAMBLA's existence. Tom and Dan know this and speak the truth about it but that truth is hard to bear and hard to hear.

On Sunday moming, Joan Nelson was a joy and refreshment for the spirit. She is a woman in late middle age who is an intelligent, knowledgeable therapist totally supportive of all sexualities including boy-lovers. Like Alan [Allen] Ginsberg reading poetry at the last NYC conference two years ago, she gave a vision of a nobler, better place that men who love boys who love men so surely need.

Then there was the plenary session - the buckets into teaspoons effort. Dan Tsang distributed a questionnaire for the participants (we voted on whether to answer several of the questions). We sent a response to the Women's Building. The Steering Committee was elected [...]. The safety guidelines were approved but changes were required of certain portions which might be interpreted as telling people how to break the law. The age of consent proposal was rejected, 23-1.

A number of proposals were put forward by the Revolutionary Workers' League. The following were adopted:
1. Abolish all age based curfews.
2. Children shall have the right to "divorce" their parents.
3. Lower the voting age and extend the right to vote and hold office to all politically active youth.
4. Children and youth must be provided non moralistic, explicit, sex-positive - including lesbian/gay positive - sex education that includes safe sex education. Condoms, latex barriers and contraceptives in appropriate smaller sizes must be distributed in all schools. Other proposals were rejected or referred to the Steering Committee.

Chicago was chosen as the site of the 1992 Conference with Chris Malony as organizer. The Bulletin name change was referred to the Steering Committee. A straw poll was 10 for, 18 against a name change.

Finally the plenary mandated that NAMBLA come up with one or more slogans to be optimally used in association with its name on banners and elsewhere. An example is "Consent not Coercion".

Through all of this, Nick Palmer did a marvelous job chairing the meeting. Ted Bernie and Bill Andriette took notes on Bill's new lap-top computer.

Nick promises more conference coverage in the next Bulletin.

source: Article '15th NAMBLA General Membership Conference' by Bob Rhodes; NAMBLA Bulletin, Vol. 12, No. 9-10; November/December 1991