~~~~~~~ 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.