From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 12:45:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Declan speaks out on NAMBLA and TIME
Message-ID: <3451767E.3100@dev.null>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



~~~~~~~
SECONDS: Is there any activity that should be forbidden?

DECLAN: I'm not in the business of making laws like that. I don't know
exactly how to define what's underage and what's intimidation. Kids have
to be protected and I sympathize with those who want to write a law. I'm
just saying you have to control the bureaucracy and be extremely careful
about demagoguery. At the moment, there's too much demagogic hysteria 
for people to be thinking sensibly about it.

SECONDS: Does it help the government get further into people's houses?

DECLAN: Another pretext for extension of police apparatuses. Another 
excuse for the government desire to be able to snoop in on any 
electronic conversation. It's a useful thing to get votes. I would say 
where force and violence are involved, where mental violence is 
involved, there's a fine line. What about some thirteen-year-old kid 
whose parents have beat him up and rejected him and is out on the street 
looking for love, hungry, taken in by some pederast who treats him 
nicely, gives him an education, sleeps with him - what are you gonna do? 
What humanely should be done? How are you going to make the distinction? 
The cops don't make the distinction. The law doesn't make the 
distinction. NAMBLA's good for making public discussion on this issue, 
discussing what should be the right laws. People want to scapegoat the 
discussion. They're willing to talk about it publicly all the time and 
bust people but sensible discussion seems to be out of the question. 
I've been accused of being a child rapist simply because I went on the 
air and said I was a member of NAMBLA. Ten years ago, I saw in Time 
Magazine an attack on NAMBLA saying it was a group involved in "the 
systematic exploitation of the weak and immature by the powerful and 
disturbed."
At first reading, it struck me as a precise characterization of Time's 
own assault on the American mind. 
~~~~~~~~~

  OK, so it was really Alan Ginsberg who said the above. I'll try and
put the universe back in balance, later, by attributing some of Declan's
comments to Ginsberg.