Pedophile party blames 'far right' for campaign collapse

A Dutch political party that failed to qualify to participate in the country's general election Wednesday has blamed harassment from "far right" elements that took issue with its pro-pedophilia platform. The PNVD was forced to end its campaign recently after it was unable to obtain the signatures required for it to contest the election. Although the party only needed 570 signatures - 30 from each of the Netherlands' 19 regions - and had failed to reach even that modest target, a conservative family organization in the U.S. warned that the episode should be taken seriously despite the fringe nature of the group. "I think we should take it as warning here in America," said Janice Crouse, senior fellow at Concerned Women for America. "Certainly this is coming here and there are people already in America who want to say that children enjoy sex and that children ought to be taught sex by adults," she said. PNVD party secretary Norbert de Jonge told Cybercast News Service in a telephone interview that people who wanted to sign in support of the party's candidacy had been threatened and intimidated. People who were willing to sign had been afraid that opponents - "especially right-wing parties and their fans" - would gather the names and addresses of signatories and harass them, he said. [...]

PNVD's Dutch acronym transliterates to Party for Neighborly Love, Freedom, and Diversity. It bears the Latin motto "sapere aude" which means "Dare to know" or "Dare to be wise." The party is known for lobbying to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12 in the Netherlands and having the eventual goal of eliminating the age of consent entirely among other controversial issues. De Jonge said the failure to gain enough signatures to run in the 2006 election was a setback but by no means a failure: The party would keep on trying and believed Dutch society's views on sex with children may shift by the next election. "We're just not the kind of people to give up so we're going to continue, and maybe if we do not succeed in four years maybe we will succeed in eight years," he said. De Jonge said the party had been encouraged by developments in recent years. "We think that things are changing, because in the last 10 years or so, the whole aspect of pedophilia could not be discussed by anyone, especially not in the media," he asserted. [...]

Crouse said the situation in the Netherlands should trigger an alarm in the U.S. She told Cybercast News Service that although the U.S. does not have a formal political party advocating pedophilia, the attitudes exist. "The same arguments that they are using in the Netherlands are being used here in the United States. They just have not gained public attention in quite the same way and have not moved to launch a political campaign in quite the same way," she said. "There's no question that this is the logical next step," continued Crouse.

source: Article 'Pedophile Party Blames 'Far Right' for Campaign Collapse' by Kate Monaghan; www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200611/INT20061122c.html; CNSNews.com; 22 November 2006