12/18/1995



Washington Times


By Arnold Beichman


    Changes in morality do not occur overnight. They seep into society, often silently, like flood waters into a basement. Once abominated personal behavior somehow over time becomes acceptable, tolerable and even praiseworthy. It certainly would not have been possible in 1960 for a man to be elected President of the United States had it been known that he was an adulterer. In 1992 it did become possible: Bill Clinton entered the White House even though his long-term affair with Gennifer Flowers was documented beyond contradiction. Are wounding amendments to Judeo-Christian values inevitable in this *fin de siecle*?

    I am thinking of the quiet campaign to make pedophilia acceptable if not respectable. A few years ago, the New York Times editorial page defended the right of a tenured teacher in a Bronx high school to his job even though he was an open and avowed pedophile and a leader of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). The organization's magazine, which this pedophile edited, included articles on how to seduce young boys and listed those foreign countries, primarily in Asia, where a pedophile is safe from arrest and prosecution unlike the United States.

    Last spring, the New Republic endorsed NAMBLA and "Chickenhawk," a film about pedophiliacs. The New Republic reviewer regarded these monsters as harmless eccentrics. In fact, she praised their "bravery" since "it is still heresy even to consider the possibility of the legitimacy of their feelings." For the New Republic little boys have a right to the "love" of

chickenhawks in the name of "children's legal autonomy."

    And now we come to Canada where we have another pedophile scandal. This time the man who is peddling the NAMBLA line, Gerald Hannon, 51, is an academic, a part-time instructor at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Ontario. He has a cunning euphemism for pedophilia, "inter-generational sex." Mr. Cannon's career includes not only teaching journalism at Ryerson but also propagandizing for pedophilia and homosexuality and, by his own confession, working as a male prostitute. In 1977, he wrote an article for a gay magazine titled, "Men loving boys loving men." Last year he wrote an article for a gay biweekly in which he compared child sex rings to hockey for children.

    The issue as to whether Mr. Hannon is fit to teach is now a burning issue in Canada, where it has received full-page treatment in Maclean's and in the Toronto Sun. He has been suspended with(ok) pay and a university investigation into his conduct is underway.

    The university's action has set off a furore, led by Mr. Hannon who says the treatment accorded him is a violation of academic freedom. You might think it rather garish of Mr. Hannon when in his defense, he said: "A university is not a European health spa. Students do not go there to bathe in the waters of received wisdom. They go there to debate ideas." He did not indicate what ideas were to be debated.

    As might be expected, Mr. Hannon cry of academic freedom has found sympathy among many Ryerson students, the two student newspapers, fellow academics and the Writers Union of Canada. One academic described the university's suspension of Hannon in this fashion: "The university has capitulated. They've rolled over in the face of a smear campaign."

    As for Mr. Hannon's eight-year career as a male prostitute, he told the Toronto Sun, he did it because he needed the money:

    "I had friends who were hustlers and they told me there were markets for older guys with good bodies. I thought I'd give it a try, and to my surprise it worked."

    Does such a man merit a university teaching job? Would his defenders defend him if he were espousing racist doctrines? Under the U.S. Supreme Court's doctrine of "protected speech," Mr. Hannon has the right to espouse his psychopathic views freely. Does the Canadian or U.S. Bill of Rights give him a constitutional right to teach at a university?

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Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution Research Fellow, is a Washington Times columnist.