Sunday, November 8, 2009

October Revolution

Today was a celebration of the October Revolution that was held through the Canadian Friends of the Soviet People Here is their Facebook Page. They distribute the Northstarcompass, an excellent magazine. There was a delightful band of musicians and dancers from Azerbaijan, the Consulate General office of Cuba had a representative there and an Author who wrote a book that serves as an apologia to the Soviet Union for the actions of the United States of America - sadly I am unable to locate the webpage for it -.

Posted by Viamund at 18:33:31 | Permalink | No Comments »

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Ahmadinejad and Stephen Harper: Two sides of the same worthless coin

An amusing story appeared in the newspaper today about Stephen Harper making a statement that Canada would boycott the U.N. speech by Ahmadinejad. This must be some sort of comedy as Stephen Harper is no different from Ahmadinejad. Both are superstitious/religious people, both fear Science and reason, both are intolerant. The only difference seems to be their location on the planet. The fact that Ahmadinejad has a speech to give to the U.N. is proof enough that the United Nations is a joke that has no humour.

Canada must withdraw it’s membership with the United Nations.

Stephen Harper and Ahmadinejad are two sides of the same worthless coin.  No value in anything they say.

Posted by Viamund at 20:28:23 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Court Transcripts

Below are the transcripts. I was unable to obtain standing on behalf of public interest so it is now the Criminal Lawyers Association that has been contacted to aid in this endeavour.

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Court File No. CV-08-00355544-0000


SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE

B E T W E E N:

OCTAEVIUS ALTAIR

Applicant

-and-

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA and A.G. OF ONTARIO

Respondents

**********

M O T I O N

BEFORE THE HONOURABLE, MR. JUSTICE BELOBABA

on Monday, March 30th, 2009, at TORONTO, Ontario

**********

APPEARANCES:

O. Altair, Mr. Applicant (Unrepresented)

R.W.Y. Lee, Esq. Counsel for Respondent

N. Dennison, Ms. Counsel for Respondent

THE COURT: Good morning. Okay, good, so we can now start with the only matter that is before us today. Ms. Dennison, you are here?

MS. DENNISON: Yes.

THE COURT: Mr. Lee, good morning to you.

MR. LEE: Yes.

THE COURT: Mr. Altair?

MR. ALTAIR: Yes.

THE COURT: Good morning to you. And this is, to say the least, an interesting application or proceeding that has been brought by Mr. Altair to challenge the constitutionality of the recent amendment to the Criminal Code that raised the age of consent for having sex from 14 to 16 and Mr. Altair has not been charged with any offence under the new legislation, but you are simply, from your point of view…

MR. ALTAIR: To prevent anyone from being charged.

THE COURT: …to prevent anyone from being charged. You are here to vindicate the public interest, as you see it, and to try to bring this application or action, because it’s not clear what it is…

MR. ALTAIR: We could talk about that later, yes.

THE COURT: …to bring this to see if a Judge would, indeed, agree with you and find that the law is in some way and for some reason unconstitutional, right?

MR. ALTAIR: Sure.

THE COURT: Okay. So, Ms. Dennison, you are bringing the motion to dismiss the proceeding in the altogether, aren’t you?

MS. DENNISON: Yes, that’s correct.

THE COURT: And as an alternative claim, you are also looking to strike it out as non-disclosing a reasonable cause of action?

MS. DENNISON: That is correct.

THE COURT: All right.

MS. DENNISON: I just wanted to ensure that the Court had all the material before them, which would include a copy of the Attorney General’s factum, motion record, three books of authorities. Mr. Altair has also provided written submissions, as well as material in support of his written submissions and I hope you have received all of that.

THE COURT: I am looking for the written submissions of Mr. Altair. I don’t think I have that.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, dear. I delivered it to your secretary last week on the 20th, or 19th, Friday. Oh, do I have to speak into that?

THE COURT: Yes, you really should stand up when you speak to me.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh. It would have been — oh, that’s it. You’ve got it right there. Right, that’s it. Sorry, I didn’t bind it.

THE COURT: Let me just take a few minutes to look at this, okay.

MS. DENNISON: Certainly.

THE COURT: I have your factum here, Mr. Altair.

MR. ALTAIR: There should be the factum, as well as the statement of claim and the notice of constitutional question.

THE COURT: No, I have all of that. Just the factum, though, has a bunch of appendices, right, of various press releases and things of that sort, right. Okay, let me just look at the factum quickly.

Where is the container for this? I don’t want to lose — okay, yes, we will just put this over here.

Okay, Ms. Dennison, I have gone through your factum — your factum, along with your colleague, Mr. Lee’s written argument and I really just need to hear argument on one point. In fact, I need Mr. Altair to respond to just one point.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, all right.

THE COURT: And you have read the factum of the Attorney General of Canada?

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, yes. That’s why I brought it. I thought we would have a chat and follow along. I don’t know how these things…

THE COURT: Sir, you should stand up — stand up when you address the Court.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, dear, I am sorry. Yes.

THE COURT: Okay, this is something that clearly concerns you and I don’t deny you the right, at least as you see it, to be concerned about it. It is something that may end up being litigated by you or by someone else where these constitutional issues and arguments may well be deployed, but the first hurdle you have and the hurdle that you have not cleared is that you don’t have standing to bring this lawsuit.

MR. ALTAIR: I thought that’s what we were here for.

THE COURT: No, I know, but…

MR. ALTAIR: Sorry.

THE COURT: …I am just saying to you — I am saying to you, sir, that the law could not be clearer on this and I want you to look at paragraph 39 of the Attorney General’s factum, because it’s set out in that paragraph.

MR. ALTAIR: Which book would that be in?

THE COURT: That’s called the factum of the Attorney General.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, this one here. Oh, okay. I was under the impression that the reason why they were challenging was because I didn’t have standing.

THE COURT: Yes, you don’t have standing.

MR. ALTAIR: And, yeah, the purpose was to obtain standing. That’s what I thought.

THE COURT: No, you — the point is, you are claiming as a public interest litigant. You are not charged and before the Criminal Courts of our land.

MR. ALTAIR: And we don’t want anyone to be. That’s why I am here.

THE COURT: Right and you are simply someone who is interested in seeing that a certain law be tested constitutionally…

MR. ALTAIR: Correct, yes.

THE COURT: …and ideally, from your point of view, be set aside, all right. The Canadian Law, in fact, most laws in western society, don’t allow a public interest litigant to just come forward and as officious interveners start to challenge laws at whim to clear the public interest standing hurdle and that has been done in a very narrow category of cases. You have to satisfy two or three very critical tests. Failing any one of them means you cannot be a public interest litigant and this is set out in paragraph 39 of the factum — well, actually, it starts sooner than that. It starts on paragraph 33:

“No standing to claim violation of the rights of others.”

And the Attorney General sets out the law on this point and by the time they get to paragraph 39, this is the point that catches my attention, Mr. Altair and this is where it’s clear that this is not a case where any Court would allow you to proceed simply out of the public interest and let me read this out.

“The claim for public standing most clearly fails the third part of the test. Mr. Altair has not shown that there is no other reasonable and effective way for the issue to be brought before the Court.”

In other words, the test says you have got to show to the Judge there is no other effective way for this issue to be brought before the Court, unless I, Mr. Altair, get standing to litigate this on behalf of concerned citizens. Here, you are in the Criminal Code. Here, everyday across our fair land, sadly, people are being charged with criminal offences and sadly, especially under the sexual offence category, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of men and women that are being arrested everyday for various transgressions, various violations of the Criminal Code and that’s why they say in paragraph 39:

“The prosecutions under many of the offences in question occur on a regular basis. The validity of the provisions, as amended in 2008, will no doubt be questioned in the course of future prosecutions and Courts hearing these Charter challenges in future prosecutions will have the benefit of actual factual disputes featuring specific circumstances of actions accused persons and victims.”

MR. ALTAIR: Well, when I mentioned in my factum the violation of Charter — of s.15, I am speaking about what we have almost here, really, is a conflict of values, because there is simply no reason for these laws to be invented. I mean, we’re talking about a portion of the population that have been adults in this country that is currently in Canada for hundreds of years. Raising the age of sexual consent one year, is the same as raising it ten. It’s like raising the voting age.

THE COURT: Right.

MR. ALTAIR: It’s like — it’s like…

THE COURT: But those are Charter arguments. I am not there yet.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh.

THE COURT: I am not even talking about the other arguments that the Attorney General is making about s.15 or the other Charter claims. I am not even at the constitutional issue.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh.

THE COURT: I am simply at the very first, what’s called the threshold, the doorway issue.

MR. ALTAIR: Say, yeah, I thought that’s what we were here for.

THE COURT: Can you — can you be in this courtroom, in any courtroom in Canada, as a public interest litigant challenging these Criminal Code provisions in these circumstances and the answer, I think, is unequivocally, no, you cannot.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, that’s a shame.

THE COURT: Why…

MR. ALTAIR: I was looking forward to it, you know.

THE COURT: Why, Mr. Altair? Because there are other reasonable and effective ways for the issue to be brought before the Court and that’s right from the Supreme Court of Canada, a line of cases that have said, basically, Mr. Altair, if there is no other way, if there is no other way for this matter to be heard by a court of law, then the public interest litigant should be given standing to voice the concerns on behalf of everyone or on behalf of his group of concerned individuals. But here, again, to repeat what I have said, the Criminal Code is active every day, from your point of view, unhappily arresting and prosecuting people in circumstances where they have allegedly violated the age of consent. In this case it would be having sex with boys and girls under the age of 16, if they are not within that five year, I think, age proportionality provision. So, everyday, literally, there are other men and women who are being arrested that will have the opportunity to test the validity of this law in the context…

MR. ALTAIR: Yeah, see, I was hoping I could do that before that happened, before anyone was tried, but no, eh? That’s a shame.

THE COURT: No, not with the Criminal Code where you have such a ready and active avenue of prosecutions where the Court will have the benefit of having John Doe or Jane Smith stand up and say I am in jail, I am charged, my liberty is at stake, I am entitled to bring and mount all these constitutional arguments to prove to you, Your Honour, that the law is unjust, unfair, unconstitutional. Here are — here is the evidence, here is what my lifestyle is like, what my interests are like and the Court then has the ability, with a very strong evidentiary foundation, to look at the person who is charged voicing a constitutional grievance or complaint and test against the Attorney General’s defence of the law whether or not the law is valid or invalid and to that extent, this massive undertaking on your part, which is documented extensively, to say the least, is to no avail. I mean, my advice to you — my advice to you is to be on the lookout for cases where people are charged and then come to their assistance with this additional line of argument…

MR. ALTAIR: I am prepared to do that.

THE COURT: …or, and I am not advising this at all, yourself…

MR. ALTAIR: Well, you know, I don’t…

THE COURT: You know, but there is no other…

MR. ALTAIR: …I don’t break the law.

THE COURT: …choice, sir, and that’s why, frankly, with respect to you, for what I think is still a very much misguided — a misguided action on your part, but that’s your right to bring a lawsuit as you deem appropriate. I found that in reading the materials, once I came across and reviewed the issue of the law on standing, which I did diligently, there was just simply no way in the world that this case could go forward…

MR. ALTAIR: Well, that was quick, then. I thought we would be here a lot longer than that.

THE COURT: …unless — unless you are, in fact, charged with this offence.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh. All right, I guess there is nothing we can do about that.

THE COURT: Now, so, I don’t have to hear from you, Ms. Dennison or you, Mr. Lee. Thank you both for the materials you have submitted. I will endorse the record accordingly. I will not say anything about the Charter issues, Mr. Altair, because I don’t need to get there.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh.

THE COURT: What I am saying is that the threshold has not been crossed…

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, I’m sorry, you are still talking. I am sorry about that.

THE COURT: You don’t — you have not established standing in this kind of a case where, typically, the argument is and should be made by people who are charged with the offence.

MR. ALTAIR: You see, I was a bit confused. I thought that’s what we were here to do today, to prove standing. I thought that’s what this was about. I guess not.

THE COURT: Well, no, you are, in a sense, to prove standing, but what I am saying to you, sir, is that there is no legal authority that I am aware of or that you could find, nor have you found any, that would provide you, as a public interest litigant, with the ability to challenge this law outside of a reality of being charged with the offence. It’s just not the way the system works. Otherwise — well, no need to explain the policy behind it. I think you understand.

MR. ALTAIR: Hm-hmm. No, I think I understand, yeah. That’s fine.

THE COURT: So…

MS. DENNISON: Your Honour, we took the liberty of drafting a draft order. We would like to…

THE COURT: Okay. Show it to Mr. Altair, though, would you?

MS. DENNISON: Yes, certainly.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh.

MS. DENNISON: It doesn’t say on what basis, so your endorsement would still be…

THE COURT: Yes, the endorsement is simply on the base of standing, not on the basis of the Charter challenge.

MR. ALTAIR: Well, I guess there is nothing we can do about that. I will have to — I agree, you know, if that’s the case.

MS. DENNISON: It says the basis of it is — this just says, “This Court orders that the proceeding be dismissed.”

THE COURT: Yes.

MS. DENNISON: So, I think that’s fair, in the circumstance and you can certainly endorse the record to reflect Your Honour’s opinion that there is no standing in this case. I apologize for it not being stapled.

THE COURT: Okay, so, I have signed one order, Mr. Altair and counsel. I will read the endorsement out to you.

R E A S O N S F O R D E C I S I O N

Belobaba, J. (Orally):

On March 30, 2009, Ms. Dennison and Mr. Lee for the Attorney General of Canada, Mr. Altair in person; motion by AG Canada to dismiss the proceeding brought by Mr. Altair.

The proceeding appears to be a combined application and statement of claim. I will refer to it as an action. The motion is granted. The action is dismissed primarily on the ground that Mr. Altair has no standing to bring this lawsuit. He has not shown that there is no other reasonable and effective way for the issue to be brought before the Court. Indeed, the more appropriate avenue is via a defendant who has been charged with the relevant criminal offence.

Order to go as per the order signed today and the order signed today, again, makes clear that this proceeding is dismissed.

Counsel, anything further?

MS. DENNISON: Thank you, Your Honour. Not that I am aware of.

THE COURT: No?

MS DENNISON: It’s my first civil case, so, thank you.

THE COURT: Okay, there is no request for costs, then?

MS. DENNISON: I don’t think so, in the circumstances.

THE COURT: Very good.

MS. DENNISON: Thank you.

MR. ALTAIR: Do I sign a piece of paper?

THE COURT: No.

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, okay.

THE COURT: No, you will get a copy of the endorsement, sir and a copy of the order…

MR. ALTAIR: Oh, okay.

THE COURT: …and that will be that. Thank you both — all three of you very much.

MS. DENNISON: Thank you.

***Adjourned***

*********

This is to certify that

the foregoing is a true

and accurate transcript

of my recordings to the

best of my ability and

skill.

_________________________

Jacqueline M. Johnston-Fierro

Official Court Monitor

March 30,2009

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We have all documentation ready to restore law and order to Canada. Do feel free to contact the criminal lawyers association and impress upon them the urgency in this matter to obtain standing on behalf on any client charged for this gross violation of the Canadian people by the sick, Federal Government.

Criminal Lawyers Association



Posted by Viamund at 10:47:59 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, September 7, 2009

Relection By Fidel Castro

Recent Comments by Comrade Fidel Castro

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Fidel: The End Does Not Justify the Means                                                                                    fidel-nueva

Reflection by comrade Fidel

The news coming from the United States are sometimes outrageous and sometimes disgusting.

Lately, a good number of them referred to problems related with the grave international economic crisis and its consequences for the empire.  Of course, they are not the only news associated with that powerful country. Any page of the thick volume of news from any continent, region or country in the world is generally connected with the US policies. There is no place on earth where the domineering presence of the empire is not felt.

Obviously, for almost ten years the news on its brutal wars took large space in the press, much more so at times of presidential elections.

However, no one could have thought that in the middle of the ongoing drama of the wars of conquest there would be news on secret jails and torture centers, a shameful and well-kept secret of the US administration.

The author of the grotesque policy leading the world to that point had usurped the US presidency after the November 2000 elections through electoral fraud in the southern state of Florida where the contest was decided.

After seizing power, W. Bush not only dragged the country into a war policy but also left the Kyoto Protocol unsigned thus denying the world for ten years the support of that nation to the struggle for the environment, a nation that consumes 25 percent of the fossil fuel, which can bring irreparable damage to the human species. Climate change can already be felt in the rise of heat in the world, something the executive plane pilots can perceive through the increasingly strong tornadoes formed in the early afternoon at their tropical air routes that can prove hazardous for their modern jet planes. Meanwhile, the causes of the accident of the Air France plane that disintegrated in mid-flight are still unknown.

But nothing would compare to the consequences of the melting of the enormous mass of water accumulated on the Antarctic continent combined with that melting on Greenland. I recently sustained my perception on Bush’s responsibility in a discussion I had with American film maker Oliver Stone on his movie “W” related to the former president of the United States.

I would simply say that after the political errors and horrors made by George W. Bush, former Vicepresident Cheney, who was his advisor, defends the notion that the tortures the CIA was ordered to practice in order to extract information were justified since American lives could be saved thanks to the information thus obtained.

Of course, they did not save the lives of the thousands of Americans who died in Iraq, and the almost one million Iraqis or those who keep dying in Afghanistan in growing numbers. No one knows what the consequences will be of the hatred accumulated by the genocides being committed or that could be committed that way.

Let’s be clear about this for it is essentially a question of political ethics: “The end does not justify the means.” Torture does not justify torture like crime does not justify crime.

Such a principle was debated and advocated for years. On this basis, humanity has condemned every war of conquest and every crime committed. It is extremely serious that the most powerful empire and the largest superpower that has ever existed assert such a policy. But more disturbing still is that not only the former vicepresident and advocate of such a perfidious policy is openly defending it but that a high number of people in that country, maybe more than half, support it. If that were the case, it would be proof of the moral abyss that developed capitalism, consumerism and imperialism could lead to; and, it should be openly claimed and then ask the rest of the world how it feels about it.

I think, however, that the Americans with a higher conscience will be capable of waging and winning this moral battle as they grow more aware of the painful reality. No honest person in the world could wish them or any other nation the death of innocent people victims of any form of terror, wherever it may come from.

Fidel Castro Ruz

September 2, 2009

7:34 P.M.

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Posted by Viamund at 10:39:43 | Permalink | No Comments »

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Latest Issue of Modern Boylover Magazine

Check out the latest issue of Modern Boylover Magazine.

HERE

Keep up the great work guys.

Posted by Viamund at 20:36:33 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, August 31, 2009

Centre for Inquiry Videos

Some interesting videos. Larry Beinhart: Salvation Boulevard

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

PART 7

PART 8

PART 9

Watch and enjoy.

Remember my expression, “Why worship an effect when you are the cause?”

Posted by Viamund at 10:18:03 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Northstar Compass

The Northstar Compass is an important organization that is in the midst of a Fund-drive. Please do go to this website

http://www.northstarcompass.org and read this magazine here in order to learn about this great cause. Please become a member/supporter and make a donation.

Posted by Viamund at 12:46:45 | Permalink | No Comments »

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Countdown To Boot The Conservatives

All of Canada is aware of the fact that Stephen Harper is a liar and simply cannot be trusted. He has now begun to appoint stale conservatives to our Canadian Senate. The house stands at 53 for the Liberals and 46 for the Tories. In about one year there will be many Senate positions available as a result of retirement. This is why the time is now to boot the Conservatives from power - many would like to see them booted out of Canada also -. Stop sleeping and defeat this minority government so that it is not permitted to cause more damage than it already has to our beloved Canada.

Posted by Viamund at 23:18:45 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Supreme Court Transcripts

At the beginning of  June, 2009.  I paid a court reporter to prepare my transcripts from my Supreme Court appearance where I was denied standing on behalf of public interest due to a law in Canada. This transcript will be posted here in it’s entirety as soon as I get it. I do not understand the delay as it is soon September. Know that the age of sexual consent increase contained within bill C2 is illegal. It is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to increase the Age of sexual consent. Increasing it 1 year is the same act as increasing it 10 years. It cannot be increased for the same reason that the voting age cannot be suddenly increased. I will soon begin an appeal based on the fact that it is an illegal amendment (one of many made to the criminal code of Canada contained within Bill C2 that will be struck ). It is not feasible to bring a matter before the court based on illegal laws, it is only feasible to bring this matter before the court by granting me standing in order to prevent innocent Canadians from having their lives destroyed based on an illegal act by our Federal Government.

The legal age of sexual consent within Canada is still age 14. I will have standing automatically if any are charged for violating these illegal amendments. All documentation is ready to defeat the Attorney General of Canada. Please do have your legal counsel contact me here viamund@hotmail.com if you or any persons are charged.

Posted by Viamund at 20:59:14 | Permalink | No Comments »

Judith Levine Speaks Her Mind: There is only one truth

Here is a great article about Judith Levine - author of the book ‘Harmful to Minors’ -  from Salon.com by Amy Benfer

It is a lengthy article.

see it below

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What’s so bad about good sex?

Apr 19, 2002 | In the introduction to her new book, “Harmful to Minors,” Judith Levine writes, “In America today, it is nearly impossible to publish a book that says children and teenagers can have sexual pleasure and be safe too.”

And once you publish such a book in America today, she can now add, it is nearly impossible to escape the wrath of those who believe that such a statement is nothing less than dangerous.

Since the publication of her book, which is subtitled “The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex,” Levine has been set upon by a mob of furious critics, many of them of the opinion that the author, in at least one chapter of the book, has endorsed pedophilia. It is a predictable response, coming in the midst of general panic about child molestation by the clergy, and a Supreme Court ruling last week that reverses a ban on virtual kiddie porn. But it is also a groundless and inflammatory claim that Levine, a self-described expert in “the sexual politics of fear,” does not find surprising.

If the process of researching the book — which includes a look at campaigns against sex-positive thinking — didn’t prepare her for the firestorm following its publication, says Levine, certainly the experience of trying to get the book published gave her a hint of what was to come.

“Harmful to Minors” was rejected by many major publishing houses: One editor called the contents “radioactive”; another said that the timing “couldn’t possibly be worse”; another asked her to remove the word “pleasure” from her introduction. And once the book was finally picked up by the University of Minnesota Press, it was the target of a campaign spearheaded by the conservative right to keep it from being published altogether.

Levine’s book reached the shelves just as the sexual abuse scandal was enveloping the Catholic Church, a coincidence that spurred the author’s detractors to focus on a single chapter in the book that questions the motivations behind “age of consent” laws. Levine suggests that the laws — which define a “child” as a person 18 or younger, depending on the state — fail to consider the complexities of adolescent sexual relationships.

Age of consent laws are made, writes Levine, by lawmakers who fail to “balance the subjective experience and the rights of young people against the responsibility and prerogative of adults to look after their best interest.” Also in this chapter, Levine questions why teens continue to be prosecuted for having consensual “adult” sex at the same time that, in the area of violent crime, “children” as young as 11 are being prosecuted as adults.

The furor about “Harmful to Minors” began when conservative radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger denounced the book on the air. An associate of Schlessinger’s, Judith Reisman, had brought the book to Schlessinger’s attention, claiming that Levine was another in a long line of “academic pedophiles,” who were trying to make pedophilia more acceptable. Reisman also alerted Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America, who called the book “very evil,” and launched a campaign on the CWFA Web site, asking Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura to halt publication of the book because it had been published under the auspices of the University of Minnesota.

In fact, nothing in Levine’s book suggests that the author condones pedophilia. (“No sane person would advocate pedophilia,” she said in her interview with Salon.) And, as it turns out, Reisman and Knight have admitted that they hadn’t actually read much of Levine’s book before they decided to campaign against it. (Reisman told the New York Times, “It doesn’t take a great deal to understand the position of the writer. I didn’t read ‘Mein Kampf’ for many years, but I knew the position of the author,” while Knight told the same reporter that he had “thumbed through” the book.)

Of course, had they read the whole book, Reisman and Knight probably would have found ample reason to raise the conservative alarm. Levine takes abstinence-only sex education to task, arguing that it limits crucial discussions of contraception and abortion, while depriving teenagers of information they need to have safe sex. Indeed, says Levine, the programs, which are enthusiastically endorsed by conservatives as well as the Bush administration, frequently put teens at greater risk of harm. If abstinence is presented as the only “surefire way” to prevent pregnancy and STDs, she says, students get the impression that “birth control and STD prevention methods don’t work.” The result, says Levine, is that students in abstinence-only programs are 70 to 80 percent less likely to protect themselves when they do have sex, compared to students who were given accurate information on birth control and condoms.

Pressure from conservative groups has reached past Levine to the publisher, prompting the Minnesota Legislature to ask the University of Minnesota Press to submit to a process in which it must disclose how books are acquired, and the details of each book’s peer review. (Levine’s book was reviewed by five outside scholars, instead of the usual two.) Lining up to defend the book are a number of civil liberties organizations and book publishers, including the American Association of University Presses, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, PEN American Center, the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Office of Freedom of Information at ALA and the Freedom to Read Foundation. All have signed a petition condemning censorship and supporting Levine and the University of Minnesota. Regardless of the outcome of these debates, publicity surrounding the book seems likely to boost sales. The first print run of 3,500 copies has sold out, and the University of Minnesota Press has decided to print an additional 10,000 copies. And the book hit No. 27 on Amazon rankings before its official publication date; as of today, it was No. 54.

Levine, who says in retrospect that she’s glad she didn’t include an author photo on her book jacket, spoke to Salon from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y., about the book’s critics, Britney Spears, virginity pledges, what really helps in stemming teen pregnancy and AIDS and the inevitability that each generation will believe its children are being corrupted more than ever before.

You’ve been accused by the conservative right of advocating pedophilia. How do you respond to that?

The first thing I have to say is that no sane person would advocate pedophilia. It seems ridiculous to me that I have to say that: It’s a “When did you stop beating your wife?” kind of question.

Your readers might be interested to know what else the Concerned Women for America are campaigning against, besides me. They are against teaching what they call the “lie” of evolution in the schools; they’re worried about the “homosexual agenda” of the Bush administration evidenced by the appointment of members of the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay Republican delegation. They are really incensed about the United Nations’ Sustained Development Conference, which they said was promoting the “special agendas” of a number of things, including preservation of the world’s ecosystems and human rights. So that’s all I’d say about my detractors.

Their critique of your work seems to be based in a reading — perhaps a misreading — of the part in your book that deals with age of consent laws. I’d be interested to know how you arrived at the arguments you make for abolishing age of consent laws, and how that would apply to the pedophilia controversy plaguing the Catholic Church.

What age of consent laws are about is criminalizing consensual relationships. Statutory rape is the prosecution of a consensual sexual relationship; if it were non-consensual, it would be prosecuted under regular rape laws, which, I am here to say, are the greatest thing in the world.

What I say is that it is possible for teens to tell the difference between coercion and consent, and that most statutory rape prosecutions have to do with conflict within the family over the sexual lives of their children, most often their teen girls or gay boys. Trying to adjudicate or deal with those conflicts in the context of criminal law — which only recognizes a perpetrator and a victim, guilt and innocence — is really a primitive instrument for trying to figure out how young people can have relationships of true consent.

The priest situation is a perfect example of how sexuality always exists inside a culture. It can be a local culture like the Roman Catholic Church, or it can be a national culture, like Afghanistan. In that culture, you have secrecy about sex, you have prohibitions against homosexuality, and, most important, you have the requirement of complete obedience to authority. Those would be among the worst conditions under which any person, young or old, could be involved in a truly consensual relationship. The most important thing to look at is the conditions under which a person — whether adult or teenager — engages in sexual behavior that may be harmful to that person. It’s not sexuality itself that is the problem.

That’s also true when we return to the question of statutory rape law: What conditions would allow, say, a teenage girl to negotiate equally in a relationship, any relationship? I think she needs to feel good about her own desires, and also to be able to stand up for her own limits. She needs to have a life that’s rich in other things — like friends, and community and school. In general, young teenagers who have sexual relationships with adults also have other troubles going on in their lives, though it’s not necessarily true 100 percent of the time.

The Dutch law has been brought up a number of times, and I’ve been attacked for saying that I support something like it. This law covers the ages 12 to 16: Anything under age 12 is considered sexual abuse, and above 16 is considered the age of sexual consent. [Under the Dutch law, children between the ages of 12 to 16 have "conditional" sexual consent; i.e. sexual intercourse is legal, but they or their parents can press charges if they feel they are being coerced.]

In the United States, if we were to have such a law, it might not begin as young as 12; we may not say 16 is the age of consent. But the really important principles underlying that law are the two most important principles, in my opinion, that one must consider in dealing with childhood sexuality: On the one hand, it respects that teenagers and young people have sexual desires, and that they can make autonomous decisions about their own sexual expression; on the other hand, it recognizes that children and teens are weaker than adults and are therefore vulnerable to exploitation by adults, so the law also protects them from that exploitation. And of course, that balance will shift depending upon the age of the child.

A lot of the examples you raised in your book of consensual sexual relationships between teens under the age of consent and persons who were considered to be adults, dealt with couples who were not that far apart in age. In one couple, the girl was 13 and her boyfriend was 21; another example you raised was of a 16-year-old girl and her 18-year-old boyfriend. Is there any case in which you would feel that the age difference alone would be indicative of a coercive relationship? Perhaps if the couple is, say, a 13-year-old and a 35-year-old? Or a 16-year-old and a 45-year-old?

There is a social worker named Allie Kilpatrick at the University of Georgia who did very nuanced and in-depth interviews with several hundred adult women about their childhood and teenage sexual experiences. When I asked her this exact question — “Does age have any effect on their actual experience?” — she said, “No.” Having said that, I would reiterate that if a 13-year-old is having a relationship with a 35-year-old, I would say that that sexual relationship is probably symptomatic of other things going on in that person’s life, which is the thing that would be most important to me.

So at that point, would you say that, rather than criminalizing the relationship, you intervene in other ways to break off the relationship, such as by talking to the child, or sending them to counseling?

If I were that 13-year-old’s mother, I would intervene, yes. I would be worried about it. Would I be able to stop her if she were intent on doing it? Other than locking her in her room, I wouldn’t be able to. But I would hope that I would be able to offer her something of what she is looking for from that 35-year-old. And if not me, perhaps it would come from some other adult in her life.

I think it’s obvious that if a young teenager is having an affair with a much older adult, he or she is looking for some sort of a parental relationship more than a sexual relationship. You see this a lot with homeless kids, who have what they call “survival sex,” where they trade sex for a shower, or a night in a bed instead of sleeping under a bridge. What they need is that bed, that adult companionship, and that shower.

One of the things I noticed in looking at the comments put out by your detractors is how “dirty” they made your book out to be. Do you see that as symptomatic of how any honest talk about sex is trivialized as being simply prurient?

A good example of that is the cover of my book, which shows the bare torso of a child. People have reacted to this book by saying that it is either prurient or pornographic on the one hand, or, on the other, that it is completely innocent. That to me shows that there is no image of a child, or any way of talking about childhood sexuality that doesn’t fall into either one camp or the other. The idea that childhood sexuality could be anything but a problem, unless it is altogether expurgated, is something that I frequently come up against.

Another example would be the judges who look at images of a baby in a bathtub and see pornography. My judgment of that guy is that he has a dirty mind!

One of the arguments that we hear quite frequently is that childhood has been “sexualized” by the mass media — Calvin Klein ads, TV, etc. — in a different way than it ever was before. Do you think there is any truth to that?

I don’t like the word “sexualize” so much. It implies that children wouldn’t otherwise be sexual if we didn’t subject them to propaganda. We might be comforted by the fact that there has never been a generation that hasn’t looked to the media as corrupting its youth. Before there was pornography, there was MTV, and before MTV, there was rock ‘n’ roll, before rock ‘n’ roll, there was comic books, before comic books, there was dime novels, before dime novels, there was burlesque. And yet each generation of youth somehow managed to grow up and be morally upstanding enough to decry whatever they felt was happening to the next generation.

As you pointed out in your book, many childhood development experts, such as Dr. Spock, and to some extent, Penelope Leach, were very adamant in labeling sex play as a normal part of childhood. I’ve noticed lately that people have become more and more fraught over the issue of what constitutes childhood sex play. Some experts even say that sex play itself is a sign that a child has been sexually abused.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that this generation of children is engaging in any more “sexual rehearsal play” than previous generations. And, as I point out in the book, sexual rehearsal play is so normative throughout the world that anthropologists call it “sexual rehearsal play.” They see it as a part of children’s sexual development at every age, in every culture, as far back as they’ve ever studied.

This generation of kids seems to have absorbed a lot of sexual conservatism, even down to their pop heroes, like Britney Spears. Teen pregnancy and teen sex rates both dropped slightly during the ’90s, at the same time we’re seeing the rise of so-called virginity pledges. Do you think this generation is rebelling by being less sexual than their parents’ generation?

The girls who idolize Britney Spears are in the age group the marketers call “tweens.” Once they actually become old enough to have sexual desire, I don’t think that their idolizing Britney Spears is going to stop them from acting on those desires. In fact, it apparently doesn’t even stop Britney.

The drop in teen pregnancy, I would attribute to the use of condoms, and that seems to be what the Alan Guttmacher Institute and everyone else says.

I think that if kids are abstaining, it’s mostly out of fear. And it’s not simply fear of AIDS and pregnancy. What a lot of kids tell me is that they have this sense, like we did in the early ’60s, that any misstep could really mess them up for a long time. It’s a sense of huge consequence to anything you might do sexually — it may do damage to your reputation, or you may have an abortion that you will regret for your entire life. I do think that kids have absorbed, if not so much conservative values, the overall message of conservative teachings, which is fear about sexuality.

Most of the daughters of feminist mothers that I know are not signing abstinence pledges. The people who are signing abstinence pledges are Christian kids. The conservative message is definitely working with young people on the issue of abortion. And I think that pro-choice people have unwittingly aided that by saying that abortion is always a tragedy, that it is really terrible, and difficult to go through.

But it’s all just a guess. We really need some data on what kids are doing and feeling and thinking. That would help them, in perhaps educating them better, would help us in perhaps helping to prevent the spread of HIV. But the right has succeeded in shutting down all state funding of such research.

Before the decade in which birth control and abortion on demand were widely available, sex was dangerous; you could irrevocably change your life, or even die from sex, whether from a botched abortion, or an untreated STD, or even in childbirth. And then immediately, within a generation after sexual liberation, in the ’80s, with the advent of AIDS, we were returned to a situation in which sex could be lethal.

What would you say to the argument that perhaps the attitudes boomers were raised with, that sex is healthy, that sex can be purely for pleasure, that sex shouldn’t be feared, is itself a historical aberration?

I think there is some truth to that, but certain of the changes that happened in the ’60s and the ’70s through various sexual liberation movements mostly benefited women and gays. What people like Gloria Jacobs, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English said about the sexual revolution was that it was a revolution for women. Men had always done what they wanted to do, and they continued to do what they wanted to do, and I think that is still true for boys.

We’re still looking at women and girls. Some of what I consider to be advances of that time — such as women being recognized as having desire — have stuck. The right is doing a rear-guard effort to turn that back, but I think it’s very hard.

When we look, for instance, at the rate of sexual intercourse for teenage girls, it’s now about at the level where it was in 1984, which is right around half — 54 percent or so. But also history is a little more complicated. For example, in the 1950s, America had the highest rate of teen marriages in the industrialized world.

I love the joke in your book that defines a “conservative” as a “liberal with a teenage daughter.” But a lot of boomer parents that I know, while they may realize that they are perpetuating a double standard by expecting their children to practice more conservative sexual behaviors than they themselves did, justify that expectation because they still feel very strongly that sex has changed because of AIDS.

Well, sex has changed because of AIDS. But the question is: What are we going to do about that? A good example is to look at the gay, middle-class urban communities during the height of the AIDS epidemic during the ’80s. Their strategy was to use a sexually open culture, a culture of enormous sexual creativity, and lots of public discussion about sex (and even public sex!) [to combat AIDS].

A sexually open community was able, through that very openness, to stem the tide of the infection. Now when we see who is getting HIV, it’s people who live in communities that are often repressive about sex, certainly repressive about homosexuality, where people are outside of the institutions where they might be able to get good sexual information.

You point out in your book that a lot of the kind of sexuality education that you advocate — emphasis on pleasure, open knowledge — was fairly prevalent throughout the ’80s. I found it strange to notice that sex ed seemed to be more informative and open during the Reagan years than it was during the ’90s.

There is always a lag between political activism and results. In 1981, the American Family Life Act [which advocated abstinence -- called chastity at the time -- as the basis of sex education in public schools] was put on the docket in the House of Representatives. It was from then on that the religious right began — in Washington and in local communities — its very successful campaign against sexuality education. The Reagan administration gave these people a platform that they had never had before, and all of these agencies — health, education, welfare — were headed by people who were against sex education.

You had more influence from the religious right in Washington, and a very sophisticated and smart grassroots movement, which often consisted of a tiny minority of people in a community. But many people were complacent, in the same way that I think many people in the pro-choice movement were complacent about abortion rights, and they didn’t stand up for sexuality education.

It’s a hard thing for anyone in the legislature to, say, stand up for talking about masturbation in school. So you had no defense, and a very strong offense against sex ed. We began to see the results of that later in the ’80s, and certainly in the ’90s.

Should we even try to continue to keep open sexual education in the public schools, given the near-impossibility of reconciling everyone’s politics? Why not send children to outside programs in their community, like Planned Parenthood, who aren’t censored by the politics of the community and the school board?

Among mainstream sexuality educators, there has been the suggestion that maybe we should give up on the public schools. I think that’s very ill-conceived. Most people will go to public school. It’s hard enough for community organizations to fund anything. At least, if there is good education in the schools, every kid will get a little bit of information. But it’s also very important to have other sources of information for kids that they can access by themselves — in the library, on the Internet, etc. And you also have to take care of the vast number of kids who are not in school — who have dropped out, or are not living at home, or whatever.

There’s a big difference between the sexuality education that goes on in mainstream public schools and the education that one would get at a community organization like Planned Parenthood. It’s not only because people outside of school have more freedom; it’s also because the kind of people who enter those jobs tend to come from an activist, rather than a professional background. Many of them are gay or lesbian, or youth activists. They have a different attitude right from the get-go about sexuality education.

Sex education has a conservative history. It’s main goal has always been to stop kids from having sex. Even progressive sex education has often had that as a goal.

In your book, it seems to come out that sex education directed at gay kids might be even better than that which is directed at straight kids, in that gay kids who look to community organizations have adults who are extremely concerned that they have the best resources available.

Yes, well, if only the gay kids weren’t getting beaten up in school.

But it is true. One of the things I say in my book is that at least a gay kid comes out as having a sexuality, and thus you have to deal with them as a sexual person. I think the best sexuality education, and the best attention to the whole child and the teen, has often come from the gay and lesbian community.

You can say to straight kids, “Don’t have sex until you get married,” but if you tell gay kids that they can’t get married, there is not much they can do. Actually, I suppose the right is still saying to them, “Don’t ever have gay sex until you die.” But for those mainstream educators in the middle, to deny the existence of those who might be gay in your classroom is certainly not serving every student’s need.

What do you make of the great oral sex scandals of the late ’90s? Suddenly every newspaper seemed to have a headline story about oral sex, or sex parties, or how kids today look at oral sex differently than their parents’ generation did. I’m sure a lot of this had to do with Clinton, given that they all came out around the same time.

Do you see evidence that children’s sexual behavior is shifting toward having more oral — and some reports even say anal — sex than previous generations? And if so, is this a response to a fear of sexual intercourse?

The little research that we have shows that kids are doing oral sex, and sometimes anal sex, more. It’s still a tiny statistical minority of kids who have claimed to have anal sex, but in the case of oral sex, not only do they do it more than intercourse, and maybe more than previous generations, but to me the interesting part is that they assign a different meaning to it than their parents’ generation did.

In my generation, oral sex was something you did with someone you were intimate with. For them, it’s less intimate, and vaginal intercourse means more. I remember even in the ’70s, in cultures that valued vaginal intercourse very highly, you would hear anecdotes about young women who had anal intercourse and believed that they were still virgins. I think those rumors were highly exaggerated. They didn’t come from any real data.

As for the idea that younger and younger teens are engaging in oral sex, there doesn’t seem to be any research that shows it’s actually happening. It’s usually presented in the context of this “one private school” where one 13-year-old girl said that this other girl had oral sex.

Sexual behaviors do change throughout history, and AIDS has had an impact on sexual behavior. It makes sense. If teens are engaging in oral sex mutually, that is, boys doing it to girls, as well as girls doing it to boys, and they were using a latex condom, then it’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. My concern is more whether people are doing things that they really want to do, and are not doing it because somebody else said they should. If teens want to have pleasure in sex, it’s crucial that they have a repetoire of safe sex behavior.

Of course, girls have a much higher risk of AIDS transmission through oral sex than boys do.

Yes. At the very least, they should use a condom.

Recently, I ran across a story on the wires about a group of 9-year-old boys who were performing oral sex on one another in a public school classroom. Does that test the limits of what you would consider to be normative sex play?

Well, I don’t think kids should be having sex in class. Yes, I would say that I am definitely against oral sex in the classroom.

Fair enough. I suppose the more nuanced question, which you deal with in your book, is how do you deal with that? Do you criminalize it? Do you treat them as deviant?

The word “deviant” just means different from the norm. I would say that, in general, criminalizing sexual behavior that is consensual is a bad idea. The thing that I say in my book is that it makes perfect sense to me that if a person is going to act violently in our culture, that sex might be the means with which they do it. We live in a culture in which sex is the lingua franca of just about everything — of the market, of love, of hate, of everything.

Futhermore, it’s very important for kids to learn not to push anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. To me, sex is not a separate category of that: You don’t hit people, you don’t take their toys, you don’t force them to give you a dollar, and you don’t force them to touch your penis.

If we are trying to teach kids to respect each other, to get along in their community, those are values that we need to inculcate in them in every realm of their lives. I would hope that the sexual would just naturally flow from those values of how you live with, and how you treat, other people.

Some critics have called your book “not parent-friendly.” How do you respond to that?

Parents understand that their job is to be able to send their kids out into the world. While they want to protect their children, they are also thrilled with their children’s independence. There’s no more exciting moment than when your child toddles off on his tricycle for the first time and doesn’t look back. It’s sad, but it’s also exciting. If they feel that they can’t do that in the realm of sexuality, I think that’s a sad and difficult thing.

I would hope that I’m being helpful to parents, not only in sorting out the real perils from the exaggerated ones, but also in giving them some ideas of the ways in which they, and other people in their community, can help to guide their kids into a happy and safe sexuality.

I did notice that most of the parents quoted in your book sounded like pretty progressive types. There were several gay parents, feminists, academic families. Do you feel a sense of preaching to the choir in that regard?

I don’t actually talk only to progressive parents. One mother I talked to, a working-class woman, was the one who was quoted as being appalled when her daughter came home from school [after a "good touch/bad touch" workshop] and said, “Don’t touch my vagina, Daddy.” But I think you’re right that a lot of the parents I talked to were mostly progressive parents. I was using them as examples of parents who had been relaxed about sex, and their kids were OK.

But even those parents had their fears. One very progressive woman I quoted towards the beginning of the book said that she was turning into an “ironclad conservative” about her son and sex, and not about anything else. I also had a conversation with about 12 other parents from her synagogue, which was pretty conservative.

I don’t want to minimize the very real dangers that young people face from sex, but I also would like to try to move the discussion of child and teen sexuality out of the realm of “problem.” That, to me, is really the crux of it. Progressives do the same thing. They get a grant, for example, to deal with teen prostitutes. And they can’t get a grant just to deal with teens.

You seem to advocate a position of open discussion on demand, balanced with a tolerance for children’s privacy, even closed doors.

I talk a lot about respecting the sexual privacy of even very young kids. I’m not sure that barging into their room and seeing them masturbate, then sitting down and saying, “Oh honey, let’s talk about masturbation,” is necessarily the best thing for that kid.

One early childhood educator that I talked to said, “Children need room for sexual transgression outside of adult eyes and outside of adult commentary.” I thought that was a smart thing to say. Sexuality is something that is often private. As long as kids know that if something is hurting them, they can talk to you, or to some other adult, I think we need to respect their privacy.

My mother worked at a birth control clinic, and she would leave out books. And I always felt that was intrusive too; there was nothing she could do that was right.

Does that right to privacy extend into the teen years? Should parents still respect the privacy of their children behind closed doors, even with their lovers or potential lovers?

My parents did. During the sexual revolution, I did a story talking to parents about how they felt about their kids’ sexuality. A woman told me a story about her 15-year-old daughter, who said, “Mom, I want my boyfriend to sleep over at home.” The mother said that she felt that if the daughter was asking for her permission, she was also in a way asking for her participation. She said it almost made her feel as if her daughter was not ready to have sex, if she needed her mom there. That sounded wise to me. Sexuality is a way of moving away from your family, it’s about forming intimacies outside the family; it really is not about the family, it’s about the not-family.

This woman said to me, “Would I rather she were out under a bridge having sex than on the Upper West Side in my apartment? No, I wouldn’t.” But by the same token, in France it’s very common for a teen’s boyfriend or girlfriend to sleep over. I do think that teens are much more likely not to want to do it in the house when their parents are home, just as parents don’t like to do it when their kids are listening. These are issues in which a hard and fast rule is not adequate. The aim of the right is to try to simplify what are very complicated issues.

When I gave my book to my mother, I inscribed it: “Thanks for teaching me the difference between right and wrong.” And I feel my mother did that. But she also left me room to explore my sexuality. And as a result, I made some mistakes, and I recovered from them. But I do think what she and my father gave me were the tools to make good decisions and to be a moral person in the world, and that stood me well.

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Hopefully common sense will prevail soon. The fact is that recreational sex is a harmless activity with no morality apart from whatever individuals decide to impart it. Orgasms are fun for all Human Beings of all ages. There is only one truth.

Posted by Viamund at 08:15:32 | Permalink | No Comments »