The permissive society
Sir: It is good to see Mary Kenny (12 February) standing
up against the mindless aspects of trendy Permissiveness. But she had better be warned. There is still a lot of it about.
For example a year ago I wrote a piece in London Letter attacking a nasty little semisecret group, the Paedophile Information Exchange, whose aim it is to remove the age of consent from the statute book completely, thus legalising adult sex with 'consenting' children, however young. (In what sense does, say, a five-year-old consent to be buggered?) The PIE also defends members 'in legal difficulties
concerning sexual acts with consenting under-age partners' (some may think the judges are now doing the job for them).
Wisely perhaps PIE will give no age below which it thinks sex with children is wrong. The best guide is a picture of two distinctly pre-pubertal kids probably well under ten which adorns their pamphlets. So we are not talking about sex-crazed teenagers. We are talking about adult sex with infants.
I commented that paedophiles were 'poor sad perverted adults in need of treatment rather than persecution.' Hardly a controversial point ? In return I received the biggest flood of offensive and abusive letters I have had in two years editing this column. Many came from respectable public figures, some with children. But with one exception they attacked my article with phrases like 'a relic of mediaeval barbarism.'
One pointed out consolingly that it was 'virtually certain' that paedophiles are 'no more likely to use force than are other adults' (the chap who wrote that was a gay activist from a college of education, which is pretty distressing in itself if you have children). Another said that adult sex with young children is 'often confined to mutual masturbation.' How reassuring.
Only Peter Hain, a vice-chairman of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality which encourages PIE, supported my suggestion that child molesters need treatment not encouragement. It almost cost him his position inCHE.
I don't give a damn about a small and unpleasant group like PIE. I am worried at a society in which knee-jerk trendies feel impelled to egg them on.
John Torode London Letter, Guardian, London EC1
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