Blinded by politics and morality

My less noticed article that year (Rind, 1998) is of special relevance for present purposes. I was a content-analysis of eighteen top-selling human sexuality textbooks, assessing their use or misuse of cross-cultural and historical examples of male homosexual behavior for perspective on the same in the contemporary West. All the textbooks condemned pederastic relations with males under age 18 as abusive and harmful, but endorsed gay relations between men aged 18 or older as normal and healthy, consistent with socially liberal values, morality, and politics that consolidated after the 1960s. Given these starting assumptions, then, it would clearly be inappropriate to use cross-cultural examples of institutionalized pederasty to argue that androphile gay relations in our society are normal and should be tolerated, while ignoring these same examples when considering pederasty in our society, using instead for perspective the incest model of crime and pathology. Yet almost every single textbook did exactly this. [...]

I was attacked within my department at Temple University as conducting research "beyond the pale," and courses that I had taught previously were taken away from me (e.g., a scheduled course in meta-analysis was canceled, lest I "corrupt" the graduate students taking it). More realistic than discussing one's own or others' positive pederastic experiences as a means to acquiring "fortune and fame" is to characterize it as risking penury and infamy. [...]

Trachtenberg (2005) [Book: When I knew] compiled coming-of-age stories from named American contributors, typically notables. [...] [M]ovie star makeup artist Jeff Judd remembered watching Tarzan on TV at age seven: "I kept sliding closer to the TV, sort of looking under it, trying to see under Tarzan's loincloth" (p. 20). Television writer Jon Kinnally recalled: "As a kid, I became obsessed with the man on the Doan's Pills Box. His back was so sexy. When my mom's supply ran out and she threw the box away, I went to the drug store stole another" (p. 32). Fashion designer John Bartlett recalled: "I knew at seven. My favorite pastime was shutting my eyes during The Dating Game and listening to the guys' voices to see if my pick would match that of the female contestant" (p. 58). Award-winning designer, theater and opera director, and accomplished painter Eugenio Zanetti recalled at age 11 seeing the Marlon Brando movie Sayonara: "when Brando leaned over to kiss Miyoshi Umeki, I realized that I was leaning over in my seat at the exact same angle Miyoshi was to receive Brando's kiss" (p. 83). Actor Chad Allen remembered as the "greatest job {he} had ever gotten" his role as an injured 9-year-old boy being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from a doctor played by a highly attractive adult male actor (Alec Baldwin) (p. 112). [...]

C.A. Tripp (1919-2003) was a gay clinician, scholar, sexologist, and expert on the Kinsey data (he began his career in sexology working for Kinsey and his own story is part of the Kinsey archives, because he was one of the thousands or so gay men interviewed). Because of my meta-analysis, Tripp became interested in communicating with me. [...] When he was 5 years old, growing up in Oklahoma, one day his mother called a repairman to go under the house, which was raised up on stilts, to fix a leak. Tripp followed the man, whom he later referred to as Gandhi (his "liberator"), and could see his penis through a crack in his pants. Within one minute, Tripp reported, he "seduced" the man, performing oral sex on him "before he knew it." How did a 5-year-old know to do this? He answered that it emerged out of nowhere but just felt right; he had no prior sexual experience or knowledge. The man began pushing the boy away, but with "curiosity," in Tripp's perception, so the boy did not believe the rebuff and continued the sex act. He remembered that the man was "floored," but reported that hem himself "loved it all."

source: Article 'Blinded by Politics and Morality - A Reply to McAnulty and Wright' by Bruce Rind; From the book 'Censoring Sex Research - The Debate over Male Intergenerational Relations' edited by Thomas K. Hubbard & Beert Verstraete; Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA; 2013