'Conspiracy' frame-up
Socialist Press1979 1979-09-05Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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'Conspiracy to corrupt public morals' is the charge to be brought against four men at Bow Street Magistrates Court this week.
The prosecution is based on an article in the journal 'Understanding Paedophilia' • and contact ads in the newsletter of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
Like the other conspiracy laws, this piece of legislation is masterpiece of broad vengeance.
'Public morals' are not of course defined in any way, while there is no need for the prosecution to prove any intention to 'corrupt, nor to prove the existence of any organised subversive plan of 'conspiracy' As in the similar trial of IT ('International Times') some years ago for its homosexual contact ads, such charges are basically used as an elaborate means to impose censorship.
This case flows from the vicious and widespread witchhunt launched last year through the media against paedophiles who advocate greater freedom for sexual relations between children and adults.
Like the prosecution of Gay News last year for criminal blasphemy, this case represents a clear attack on basic democratic rights. Socialists must defend the right of paedophiles to organise openly and publish literature.
But more is involved here than simply democratic rights. The PIE trials reveal once again the bourgeoisie's twin fears of homosexuality and child sexuality.
So long as coercion and violence are not involved, we must reject absolutely the right of the state to restrict the free expression of human sexuality.
Just as we demand an end to all state legislation and discrimination against homosexuality, so we deny the claims of the bourgeoisie that youth and children are incapable and debarred from voluntary sexual expression.
• An Action and Defence Committee has been set up to advance the case of the four PIE members, and this committee is already organising pickets of the courts which should be supported by all those determined to end bourgeois oppression of sexuality and to defend democratic rights against the State and other torces of reaction.
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