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Book reviews<br />
[Home] [<strong>Ipce</strong> Library: Scientific Books] [Newsletter E 14]<br />
Book reviews<br />
MORAL PANIC: CHANGING CONCEPTS OF THE CHILD MOLESTER IN MODERN<br />
AMERICA. Philip Jenkins. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1998. 302 pp., $30.00<br />
PEDOPHILES ON PARADE: VOLUME 1: THE MONSTER IN THE MEDIA; VOLUME 2: THE<br />
POPULAR IMAGERY OF MORAL HYSTERIA. David Sonenschein. San Antonio, Texas: D.<br />
Sonenschein, 1998. 562 pp., $40 institutions, $36 individuals plus $5 S/H; PO Box 15744, San Antonio,<br />
TX 78212<br />
Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 42, Number 4, 2002, pp. 185-192.<br />
Der Kreis … excludes what was self-evident to the Greeks: the “Eros paidikos,” the<br />
pedagogical Eros .... Whoever lives this youth-love… may experience all the<br />
happiness and blessing proper to every love. But these are such subtle things, in<br />
which right and wrong stand on the knife’s edge, that here a community cannot<br />
take over the responsibility and run against a law ….<br />
-- Karl Meier<br />
Der Kreis, December 1948 [i]<br />
Der Kreis’ editorial characterizing sexual relationships between adults and adolescents as on a<br />
knife-edge is telling. In acknowledging the value of Eros paidikos while observing the gay<br />
community cannot go against the law, one of the world’s longest-running and most influential<br />
homosexual magazines [ii] reflected a deep ambivalence to the idea of adults having sex with<br />
those under the age of consent.<br />
In the 50 years since this was written, this ambivalence has become opposition. Today, those<br />
who advocate for a right of adults and minor youth to have sex find themselves outside the<br />
margins of what most of the Western gay and lesbian community considers acceptable, even as<br />
it has included bisexuals, sadomasochists and gender-variant individuals.<br />
Central to this exclusion has been the moral right, which early on linked homosexual rights with<br />
harm to children. Beginning with Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign in 1977, through<br />
the sensational child sex-abuse scandals of the 1980s, gays and lesbians have drawn an<br />
increasingly firmer line against sexual relationships with young people.<br />
These two books help explain why. They examine child-sex scandals in North America, how<br />
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ipce/newsletters/e_14/reviews.htm (1 of 9) [10/16/2002 5:34:25 PM]
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