ARE THERE SOLUTIONS? BY PARKER ROSSMAN
The following is the fifteenth chapter of Dr. Parker Rossman’s Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys, originally published in New York in 1976.
Though part of a general study of pederasty, its title alone implies that it is concerned only with societies that have looked on pederasty as a problem needing solutions, and in fact a number of remarks in it let slip that its concern is with the USA at the time of writing, whence all its ideas are drawn.
Are There Solutions?
Western society considers pederasty to be sinful, sick, and a serious crime.[1] Pederasty would therefore have been eliminated long ago if anyone really knew what to do about it. As with most social problems there is an unfortunate tendency to assume that the solution is to work harder at present ineffective methods, rather than to examine present and past efforts in the light of new evidence and new possibilities. This book began by specifying more precisely what pederasty is, and by presenting more accurate information about a situation in which perhaps only one out of a hundred, or even a thousand, offenders is apprehended, and in which tragedy is compounded by society’s emphasis on revenge rather than prevention. To consider new approaches we will note, on one hand, the present methods for handling pederasty in law, education, family, and religion. On the other hand we will describe several more visionary and radical proposals - which may represent long-range goals or ideas that deserve some scientific experimentation. Our principal aim in this chapter, however, is to propose some simple and more thoughtfully considered middle-range possibilities which realistically involve some compromise between law and order on the right and laissez-faire permissiveness on the left.
THE PRESENT SCENE
Americans are victims of a number of myths about law and law enforcement. The first of these is the notion that crime is somehow prevented by passing a law. Suppose, for example, a law was passed requiring men to wear undershirts during sexual intercourse. The enforcement of such a law would require a million new policemen and a billion dollars in new expenditures - and all this would of course be to no avail unless police were allowed into each bedroom to enforce the law. And in most sex matters, the few men arrested would largely be those whose sex partners had filed charges, accusing them of not wearing undershirts. The passage of such a law, especially without specifying practicable methods for enforcement, would merely give the police and courts directions for handling such cases as came to their attention, with little real possibility of prevention at all. This brings us to a second myth, the popular notion that unpremeditated murders and sex offenses can be prevented by the strict punishment of offenders. Copious research has shown that in crimes of passion the offender is rarely deterred by thoughts of the electric chair, even if he is certain he will be apprehended. Historically, experiment after experiment has been attempted to prevent pederasty by the most horrendous punishments, but with little success. Where sex partners are equally desirous and consenting, and with compelling physical desires, the conviction quickly grows that the law is wrong and must be defied.
If society intends to rely exclusively on law and police to prevent sex offenses, then a police state will be required, wherein everyone can be watched twenty-four hours a day, with all bedrooms supervised. Even then the most spirited young people would take pride in finding ways to escape such surveillance and, as we have seen, most pederasts begin as rebellious teenagers. If all persons guilty of pederast offenses were arrested, our prisons would be full of teenage sex offenders. Ironically, the best means one could devise to manufacture pederasts would be to send more teenagers to correctional institutions, as these seem in many cases to be more effective in turning youngsters into pederasts than in anything else they accomplish.[2] The same holds true for adults. Men come out of prisons more likely to practice pederasty than when they entered, so there should be a serious review of sending pederasts to prison at all, as long as prisons seem designed to re-enforce pederast desires and habits. One may debate the effectiveness of prison in preventing crime, but our evidence makes it clear that it is largely a myth that long prison terms will prevent man-boy sex play. Perhaps prison terms reduce armed robberies or kidnappings, but correctional institutions increase pederasty as is most notable, for example, in the close relationship between reformatories and boy prostitution. Tax-funded juvenile institutions recruit and train the prostitutes, train the pimps, and nurture a central core of customers who consider a severe prison term as a price well worth paying in return for their sexual pleasures. To many persons, sex - like food – is considered a right not to be inhibited by law.
If society does not intend to prevent sexual deviance by massive expenditures of public hinds on spies, secret police and reductions of freedom and privacy, then what are the alternatives? It is almost impossible for most teenagers - and adults, for that matter - to understand the complex and inconsistent sex laws now on the books. They are aware that in our present laissez-faire situation, almost anyone with enough money for good lawyers can use the jumble of laws to his own advantage. When we examine the lives of those teenagers now becoming tomorrow’s pederasts it is clear that they do not know at what point they began to break the law. Real prevention will require spending funds on more adequate sex education, as well as on solving the family problems and poverty of life which nurture sexual and emotional sicknesses.
If we knew more precisely what causes pederasty, then intelligent programs of prevention might be devised. It is therefore a further illustration of our laissez-faire approach - an unofficial policy of tolerating and ignoring pederasty - that we spend so little on research to determine cause. A strict law, which was really intended to control or prevent pederasty, would begin with large expenditures on research. But, for purposes of discussion, let us assume that the Gebhart study[3] of pederasts in prison is accurate in its assessment of causes in many cases. This research indicates that pederasty is caused by “something disastrous” which happened between the sex offender’s twelfth and fifteenth birthdays. Before that time the subjects studied tended to have “good socialization with females,” which then suddenly and unexpectedly “deteriorated abruptly and their heterosexuality was nipped in the bud”[4] They turned to enjoy sex with younger boys instead of with girls. Why? The answer is that society inadvertently makes pederasts “by abruptly and powerfully repressing heterosexual behavior” especially in girls, who are no longer freely allowed to play with boys. Cross-cultural studies suggest a close correlation between the development of pederasty and the chaperoning of young adolescent girls. Society expects boys to be able to “wait out this period when he is robbed of girls” and a majority succeed in doing so, if they do not have “a great backlog of homosexual conditioning.” However, the boy who has had a good deal of pleasurable homosexual experience does not and cannot wait, and in this crucial post-pubescent period of his sexual development he develops certain habits and tastes for homosexual pleasures which may come to dominate his life, or which in some cases may be simply repressed to crop up later in life at crucial or vulnerable moments. Our evidence supplements the Gebhart conclusions with the reminder that this young adolescent homosexual experience may largely be fantasy or imaginary, and yet may strongly cultivate or reinforce pederastic interests and later involvements.
VISIONARY PROPOSALS FOR THE FUTURE
The temptation is very real to conclude that society must choose between a) a continuing increase in deviant sex behavior such as pederasty or b) allowing young adolescents to have heterosexual intercourse. It may, however, be too late. Youngsters as well as adults are today strongly influenced by the permissive sexual culture (which now envelops and stimulates them) in which sexual pleasure is glamorized and which leads even 11-year-olds to conclude that the purpose of sex is to have fun and that almost any sort of sex play is fine so long as it is fun. The existence of effective birth control and disease-prevention methods, combined with an emerging minority sexual culture, has great impact upon the young - all this combines to create a new and entirely different sexual climate much more sophisticated than any that has existed previously. At the same time, modern diet and vitamins have made youngsters sexually mature and ready at a much younger age. Many boys of eleven are now sexually where their grandfathers were at the age of fourteen or fifteen. As suggested by the Gebhard study,[5] and illustrated by the boys we found involved with pederasts, a sizable percentage of adolescent boys will not long delay seeking the sex pleasures which the media praise, with a resulting great increase in heterosexual and homosexual promiscuity among junior-high-school-age youngsters even in many rural areas.
“Anyone is a fool,” one pederast said after surveying such teenage behavior, “if he thinks adults can have a sexually permissive culture without youngsters also going along for the ride. The sexual pluralism of our world, which teaches the young that varied experiences are valuable and that no one moral view or style of sex behavior is right for everyone, is beginning to have an impact much as alcohol and drugs have also been passed down to high school, to junior high school, and into the upper levels of some primary schools. It is too late to stop the tide of sex freedom, but perhaps society still can direct it into more wholesome channels.”
A neuropsychologist, reporting his research on the origins and causes of violence - which he says is “fast becoming a global epidemic” - finds little violence in cultures that allow sexual pleasures. In other words: “As either violence or pleasure goes up, the other goes down.” He notes the irony in America of a culture that prefers sexual violence over sexual pleasure, often censoring, for example, those films that show people enjoying sex, while permitting those which show rape - almost as if “sex with pleasure is immoral and unacceptable, but sex with violence and pain is moral and acceptable.” As a result, for example, many families are more tolerant of destructive drugs and alcohol than of sex pleasure. He concludes that America will continue to have a violent, sick society until “we recognize that sexuality is not only natural for teenagers, but desirable.” He suggests that families should allow youngsters to use the family home for sexual pleasure.[6]
Some would go even farther, advocating the repeal of all anti-sex laws. Laws against sexually deviant acts would be replaced with legislation of two types: on one hand, programs and experiments would be funded to develop a general climate of sexual health, including much more open debate on society’s aims and policies on sex education. On the other hand, the emphasis in the law would be upon preventing force and violence. The crime of rape, for example, would be considered a crime of violence. A girl would no longer be humiliated with medical examinations and interrogation about her previous sex life - the issue would simply be whether or not she was forced to do something against her will. If she was forced into a car or was taken into a dark alley, she was kidnapped, which actually is more seriously punished under the law. Advocates of this land of law reform say that if the sex taboos were removed from consideration as far as possible, youngsters would then not need to be emotionally damaged in interrogations and by the interpretations given by police and court.
Such a view suggests, on the basis of experience in other cultures, that if society’s goal is to prevent pederast acts, the money now spent on court trials and prisons could better be spent supervising and chaperoning the young. Second, there does seem to be less pederasty in those societies which tolerate or ignore man-boy sex play. When not against the law, such play is often a passing phase, ending when a young man gets married or has access to women. In Western society, along with the other undergrounds, homosexual play presents a tempting and exciting realm for the young to explore, with all the excitement of forbidden fruit. Advocates of lowering the “age of consent” for legal homosexual activity assert that society creates the problem by making it a problem. “One does not create an appetite for healthy food by passing laws against candy,” one observer said. “And certainly not in the context of forbidding youngsters to eat at all.”
SOME PRACTICAL STEPS WHICH CAN BE TAKEN
Between visionary proposals which are far from obtaining general acceptance, and the present ineffective ways of handling pederasty, there are some middle-of-the-road, common-sense proposals which the majority of citizens might support. We begin with the assumption, right or wrong, that the majority of Americans do not in the near or foreseeable future intend to liberalize the sex laws, at least beyond tolerance for deviant sexual activity among consenting adults. The majority of American adults still support the legal prohibition of homosexual activity with boys under the age of sixteen, which suggests that society will continue to face recurring pederast arrests. Presented here are a series of proposals that would do much to alleviate the present chaotic and indefensible situation.
1. Therapy. A first proposal would be for more medical resources to be channeled into therapy, both for research and for treatment - especially of first offenders. These resources should be made more available for young adolescents. Medical insurance must be expanded to provide payment for treatment of persons who voluntarily seek therapy or who are assigned by courts. American society’s lack of serious interest in preventing sex offenses is perhaps best illustrated by the shortage of centers and personnel for such therapy, such centers being almost nonexistent in some parts of the country. Since there is an onus and some shame involved in admitting pederastic tendencies, and because the roots of pederasty lie in the very early years, an adequate therapy program must make more medical resources available to young families and to schoolchildren. Also, the program should include a more adequate policy and definition of sexual health. There is no point in talking about preventing sex offenses until more therapy is provided and the necessary research is funded to make this therapy more effective in changing offenders. Certainly some of the radical substitute proposals which would replace prison with torture (aversion therapy) or medication and operations to remove sections of the brain or body, physically or functionally, are not yet validated as providing any humane solution or guarantee against future offenses. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the new-style therapy centers is being demonstrated in the handling of drug addicts, other ex-prisoners and several different group therapy projects.
2. Equipping Teenagers to Cope. Existing programs for lecturing and warning youngsters against sex offenders frequently fail, for they serve to inform many boys that there are men who will give them money, sexual pleasure, and other adventures. On the other hand it is almost impossible for pederasts to get far in a situation where adolescents close ranks against them. The most effective anti-pederast program exists where youngsters protect themselves from abuse and exploitation, as in some rough slum areas where boys immediately recognize pederasts and run them out. For example, the fatherless, impoverished street boy who is theoretically most vulnerable to pederasts, is in fact for more often better prepared by a rather brutal type of sex education in the streets than he would be by warnings and moral lectures. A stranger who merely smiles at a boy in such a neighborhood may come under verbal attack loud enough to be heard and serve notice for three blocks in every direction. Such street boys usually have much less tolerance for homosexuality than do middle- or upper-class boys, and if they get involved in sex play with a man or older teenager it is strictly on their own terms. Such boys may organize themselves to profit from pederasty by prostitution, blackmail, or mugging. Younger boys who are well protected against outsiders may be sexually exploited by members of their own gang. Their built-in defenses, however, provide clues for how all adolescents could be organized to protect themselves more effectively than is now possible by police or social agencies. Parents can shelter children up to a point, but finally neither society nor parents can protect them unless they are willing to be protected - which is what a lot of adolescent rebellion is all about. No youngster is as safe from sexual molesting as when he is with a group of self-disciplined, well-informed peers, who as a group are in control of their own situation. Youngsters can and will protect each other from strangers and outsiders, although they may not support behavior standards higher than those of the adults they respect. Nothing is so likely to push them into rebellious sex play as punishing them for sexual behavior common to their friends and parents.
As long as sexual morality is handed to them as law, however, without any chance for youngsters to think it through and make their own responsible decisions, they are not likely to do much to protect themselves or to accept the protection of the law. Note how two different upper-middle-class boys reacted to a prep-school coach who made sexual overtures. One said: “Get your hands off me and keep them off. If you touch me again without my permission I’m first going to kick you in the shins and then yell for the headmaster.” The other one whispered to the coach: “Are you going to let me begin the game Friday night?” The first boy was raised with self-respect, not moral lecturing. When he was small his father never let anyone touch him without his permission, for he was taught that not even a parent, teacher, or doctor should violate his dignity without his permission.
3. Changing the Supporting Structures. Pederasty in the forms society most wants to eliminate rests upon the twin foundations of adolescent secrecy and rebellion. Perhaps there must be a major upheaval and radical change in society to end the alienation of the young who become involved with pederasts. But there are helpful and constructive steps which can be taken to reduce the support which adolescent society provides.
First, youngsters not only need sex education, values, self-respect, and the right to sexual privacy but they also most of all need money and jobs in an urban society. Burglary cannot be ended by courtroom lectures, imprisonment, or even therapy so long as the jobless youngster returns to a street where the fence who buys stolen goods provides him with his most constructive activities. So, also, man-boy sex play is - to many boys - related to the need for money and the desire for adventure. At present too many young boys from deprived sections of the community receive adult friendship, affection, and life-enriching experiences only from pederasts. A questionnaire to young adolescents asked, among other things, how they spent their time. Did they hike? hunt? fish? play music? look at TV?[7] A majority of them in a deprived community reported that they spent their free time just “hanging around.” They were emotionally and culturally starved, their streets and neighborhood were drab and dull, their schools were failing them. The only fun and adventure open to them seemed to be through furtive delinquencies, drugs, and sex.
Second, a constructive change is under way in the enlargement of coeducational activities - with girls at the YMCA, in the Little League, in Scouting and other programs. Even those Little League managers who complain that a boy might accidentally touch a girl’s breast if boys and girls were allowed in the sport together are aware of the value of providing healthy group activities for all youngsters and not merely for those who are financially privileged and athletically talented.
Expanding coeducational activities and making more jobs for deprived and rebellious youngsters are but first steps, however, toward helping the young people develop creative new structures for their own adolescent society. Adults who wish to oppose pederasty must volunteer their own time and money to assist the social agencies, and not merely rely upon passing laws to punish the victims of their previous neglect.
4. Openly Facing Up to Pederasty. How shall the schools, boy’s clubs, and other youth-serving agencies handle the problem of pederasty among the men who are employed or who serve as volunteers on their staffs? At an organizational meeting for a new Big Brothers program, one man asked if thought had been given to psychological tests for volunteers in order to weed out sexual deviants. Considering the professional education and competence of many of the persons present, he was surprised to see how many were embarrassed by the question, getting off the subject as quickly as possible by announcing their intention to follow the guidelines laid down by the national Big Brothers organization. Also, a staff member of a boy-serving agency reported: “The volunteers in our agency who turn out to be pederasts are ordinarily not the shy, timid, sissy or feminine-looking types. Rather, they are more often the tough, cigar-smoking guys who love football, boxing, hunting, sex jokes, bragging, and put-downs. They are frequently the ones who make the most fun of ‘fags’ and ‘queers,’ or whatever label they may be using for the less athletic males. Often they are the most emotionally anti-homosexual, suggesting perhaps the thought that people are more likely to get uptight about their own temptations than about things that trouble other people. There’s a vast emotional gulf between the gay who puzzles over his masculine identity and that sports enthusiast whose sex involvements are largely with women, and indeed whose sexual relationship with boys may most of the time go to abnormal lengths in his refusing to touch a boy, and in repressing and sublimating his pederast desires. We’ve had some rather sophisticated and well-educated staff members of this type, who have had nervous breakdowns, especially when they have found themselves unable to cope with cruel, sophisticated kids, who saw through them before they were conscious of their own problem.”
There are constructive policy statements hidden in the middle of many staff manuals, and in booklets for lay persons who wish to develop programs for boys, to remind them that “good, well-intentioned men sometimes succumb to sexual temptation with boys without intending it.” Some agencies take the leper approach, immediately discharging any man whom they suspect may be sexually interested in boys. Others have had success with the opposite tack. One pastor said, for example: “We know our Scoutmaster is a pederast, and so do the boys and their parents. The fact that everyone knows, and we have faced the problem openly and frankly, has created a very healthy situation. The boys in the troop are fond of him, and he does an excellent job. I am sure there is much less sexual hanky-panky among the boys than in the best typical situation. I know of one occasion in which the whole troop descended upon one younger member in force, scolding him severely for a minor bit of sex misbehavior far from any Scout activity. They said: ‘Don’t you know that someone might say it was our Scoutmaster’s fault that you did that? All around, it is a much healthier situation than I had once before when a pederast warned me against our Scoutmaster who later did get into hot water because he just couldn’t admit his pederasty to himself or to anyone else.”
NEW-DAY POLICY STATEMENT
The following policy statement, which has been approved and adopted by the board of a youth-serving agency but which, for various reasons, is not yet ready for official public release, suggests a sensible basis for an enlightened method of handling any pederast problem that may arise in the future:
a) Every new staff member will, at the time of his employment and periodically thereafter, be informed that many men are not aware of their own capacity to be sexually aroused by young boys, and that while such arousal is not necessarily an indication of abnormal homosexuality, this agency will not tolerate sexual contact between staff members and boys. New staff will be informed that if they find themselves so tempted we have counselling resources available to them at no cost, and with confidence respected, to help them understand and handle any problem which might arise.
b) Senior and more experienced staff are directed to educate themselves to be able to recognize warning signs and types of behavior which indicate that an adult is sexually interested in a boy. Such person should be called in for a friendly and confidential warning, along with the offer of counsel and help. Men who are seriously and sincerely interested in the welfare of boys will appreciate the opportunity to be forewarned and to anticipate any potential problem in their relationships.
c) Where there is reliable evidence that a man has sought, or has been involved in, any type of sexual activity with a boy, he is to be warned by the senior staff that a repetition of such behavior could lead to his arrest, and that he must either resign or enter into a program of counseling and therapy under the supervision of the staff. It will not be our policy to discharge able and competent men at the time of a first offense if they are responsive to direction, because every man makes mistakes, and some of the best men available for our type of work are especially sensitive to, and tempted by, boys. It is the judgment of this board that in many cases the man who has such temptations and is aware of them is a better risk than the man who has such temptations and is not yet conscious of them - if he is willing to be open and honest with himself and us about the subject.
d) We take it for granted that all boys will be delinquent on occasion, as in matters of sex, and that it is better if a boy is caught with his hands in the cookie jar by someone with the skill and point of view to be able to use the opportunity for growth and maturing. Therefore all members of this staff must participate in a workshop on “homosexuality and counseling,” which shall have these objectives: (1) to prepare them to interpret to boys the point of view that they should avoid homosexual play because it is disapproved of by our society and can therefore lead them to unhappiness; (2) that they should not be surprised or let it be interpreted to them as an indication that they are homosexual, if they find they are aroused by male contacts or find some pleasure in homosexual acts, and (3) that homosexual tendencies are normal and can be discussed with our counselors without embarrassment. The staff cannot communicate these policies and attitudes to boys unless each staff member is personally convinced that these facts are true, for what we say by tone of voice and facial expression often communicates more than our words.
e) It is our intention by word and action to teach boys that sex is a personal and private matter. While sex play is to be discouraged among boys, especially at times when we are responsible for them, our style of handling sex play should be one which seeks to divert boys to more constructive activities, rather than scolding or lecturing them. Staff attitudes should make it clear that:
- we know all about such things and consider such sex play inappropriate at our activities,
- we will tolerate no sexual molesting of one boy by another,
- we consider it unimportant that all boys are sexually curious and experimental,
- the staff counselors are always available to talk with boys on sex problems or questions,
- just as we disapprove of staff members having sexual contact with boys, so we also feel it normal and natural for our staff to have some warm and reassuring physical contact with boys they work with.
We consider it equally inappropriate for adults in our program to be so uptight about homosexuality as to be unable to handle normal roughhouse or other natural physical contact with boys. A friendly pat, an arm around the shoulder, some playful wrestling is not taboo for homosexual reasons. If a man finds that he or a boy is aroused by such a contact, the energy should be channeled into empathy, appreciation, and affection of a type that will seek to guide the boy into healthy and wholesome sex attitudes. Such sexual arousal should be no occasion for shame, embarrassment or teasing, but, if necessary and noticed, can be dismissed with a remark like: “That’s the way males are sometimes.” In this way, the man who may be aroused or sexually attracted to a boy can perhaps be of more help to the boy who is aroused and sexually attracted to the man or the other boys, than the man who has not had the experience and has not learned to handle it in this way.
f) When a staff member or volunteer faces a special problem - such as a boy with a crush on him, or even explicit sexual overtures from a boy – he should bring the problem to a staff meeting for discussion, so that we can all offer counsel on what should be done both to avoid hurting and to make the experience a growing, maturing one for the boy. Since several members of the board and staff acknowledge that they are sexually attracted to boys sometimes, the subject can be discussed openly and naturally in staff meetings.
g) It is the policy of this agency to turn sex offenders over to medical authorities, rather than to the police, until such time as it appears that some adult who has violated the laws of the state and policies of this agency is not willing to undergo therapy. It is our conviction that teenagers and adults can be helped with insights and strengthening therapy to adjust to the expectations of the community and to hold sexual impulses in necessary control. Therapy for adolescents is crucial if they are observed developing sexual interests in younger boys.
LAW AND COURT PROCEDURES
Even in advance of law reform there can be clarity and realism about what the law accomplishes. Laws do not prevent sex offenses, but provide structures for apprehending and dealing with offenders when a complaint is filed. Since many pederast first offenses are nearly unintentional or are unthinking careless continuations of adolescent habits, some courts provide suspended sentences with the requirement of therapy. Presumably more courts would prefer to handle first offenses in this way if such therapy were available. These efforts are frustrated, however, by the inadequacy of therapy resources in most places and by the tendency of the newspapers to punish in advance of trial. It would be a constructive step if publicity could be restrained in all first offenses, as with juvenile cases, so that everyone could have a second chance. At any rate, court sentencing, our evidence suggests, should take account of a much wider variety of motivations and behaviours than present procedure makes possible. Such a relaxed procedure - with the kindred recognition that pederastic offenses are in a different category from theft or rape - could make it unnecessary for youngsters to be threatened and hurt by police interrogations and court procedures. The court should, in many situations, recommend therapy for consenting youngsters also.
SOME CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
- There is no reason to expect any significant decline in the amount of pederasty in the foreseeable future. At present neither law, religion, nor community morals and pressures are effective in redirecting pederastic impulses and activities.
- New approaches are needed to enlist the cooperation of the adolescents themselves, but this will be a difficult job, especially among those adolescents who are rebellious on sexual matters. The world scene includes varied sexual customs and Western society itself is increasingly pluralist and permissive. Although there is considerable difference from one state or city or neighborhood to another, the taboo against homosexual play is declining, and there is a noticeable increase of acceptance of the “sex for pleasure” principle. This represents a major moral shift, the full impact of which has not yet been felt.
- Perhaps more blame is being placed on religious institutions than is really deserved for their lack of creativity in sexual morality, for their failure to stress the quality of loving relationships instead of moralism, and for their perpetuation of sexual myths rather than helping to bring about the higher standards that are demanded. It would seem that religious leaders must take initiative, however, in admitting that some of the present failure to deal with sexual deviance and sex offenders is rooted in what Richard Niebuhr called the “mistaken myth” of the human will when, in fact, human beings like those we have seen in the pederast underground are largely unable to rescue themselves. Punishing individuals makes little sense, unless they can be placed in a new supporting environment instead of being shoved back either onto a street which is organized to support delinquency or into an underground. Religious leaders can throw light into that underground so all can see that most pederasts are not vicious criminals, but that, indeed, many are teenagers who desperately need help.
- As with alcoholics, drug addicts and others, no middle-of-the-ground solution to the problem is possible that does not begin with enlisting the cooperation of the pederasts themselves.
- We have examined only certain visible aspects of the pederast problem, much as one tentatively studies an iceberg by first noting what is visible. It seems quite clear, however, that all the authorities - in law, religion, and other concerned areas - should stop pretending to know the truth on sexual matters, and should begin to approach the subject of pederasty in the spirit of Isaac Newton, who said there is a great ocean of truth to be discovered, and all we know now may be compared to a pebble on the beach.
[1] This is at best contentious depending on what Rossman meant by the hopelessly woolly term “western”, but there is little point in going into that here, since this chapter is in any case really only about the USA in the 1970s, even if some if it has possible application to some other countries.
[2] See, for example, A. Palau de Lopez et al., En la Calle Estabas (San Juan: Univ. of Puerto Rico Press, 1970), Martin (1953) [no such book listed in the author’s bibliography], Otto Shaw, Prisons of the Mind (London: Geo. Allen and Unwin,1969), Gresham Sykes, Society of Captives (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1958), Tannenbaum (1938) [no such book listed in the author’s bibliography], C. Jackson, Manuel (New York: Knopf, 1964), etc.
[3] See Paul Gebhard et al., Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (New York: Bantam Books, 1965), pp. 318 ff.
[4] See Paul Gebhard et al., Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (New York: Bantam Books, 1965), pp. 314-15.
[5] See Paul Gebhard et al., Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types (New York: Bantam Books, 1965), pp. 301-304.
[6] J. W. Prescott, “Body Pleasure and Origins of Violence,” The Futurist, April 1975, pp. 64 ff.
[7] Rossman, Jean, “Remedial Readers”, Journal of Reading, May 1974, p. 623.
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