North American Man/Boy Love Association

NAMBLA stands for the North American Man/Boy Love Association, which has to be one of the cringiest organization names ever created. Its agenda is to repeal laws prohibiting adult men from having sex with boys under the age of consent, and to repeal laws regarding age of consent in general. The organization therefore promotes and in some cases practices pedophilia. An investigator reported that NAMBLA had around 1100 members in 1995, but it has been estimated that its membership has dwindled to a handful who run its website as the internet has provided pedophiles with venues perceived to bear less legal risk than a NAMBLA membership.

NAMBLA and gay rights
While it certainly campaigns for legal rights on a same-sex issue, to characterize NAMBLA as a gay rights organization is a little disingenuous, since its most controversial aspect is not that it advocates sexual relationships between people of the same sex but that it advocates sexual relationships between adults and minors.

During the organization's early history (in the late 1970s and early 80s), NAMBLA received some support from a few LGBT groups, but vehement opposition from many others who were understandably concerned to keep homosexuality, which was becoming increasingly tolerated and accepted in the USA, from being associated with pedophilia. The NAMBLA controversy within the gay community divided its more radical, some might say narcissistic, elements, who saw virtually all norms that restricted the behavior of any segment of the gay community as oppressive, and gays seeking mainstream acceptance, equality, and support, with urgency heightened by the onset of the AIDS crisis. While there are still a very small number of people on the fringes of the gay rights movement who accept them, most now ban them from showing up at their rallies.

Controversy erupted among the LGBT community as it came to light that leading organizers of the 1979 Gay March on Washington and the 1980 New York Gay Pride Parade were known NAMBLA members and supporters. In 1981, in what can be charitably described as a tone-deaf move, Gay People At Cornell (GayPAC) invited NAMBLA founder David Thorstad as a keynote speaker at its Gay May Festival. The invitation was rescinded after a storm of protest. The controversy over NAMBLA simmered within the LGBT community through the 1980s into the 1990s, with a NAMBLA presence at gay pride events tolerated but not encouraged. Some saw the distancing from NAMBLA as a sellout to gain mainstream acceptance for gays and marched behind the NAMBLA banner as an act of protest within gay rights events. The poet Allen Ginsberg joined NAMBLA, claiming it was an act of protest, however, his performance of a poem opening with "Sweet boy, give me your ass" at a 1989 NAMBLA conference indicates a more substantial association. The breaking point for NAMBLA's relationship with the larger gay rights movement came in 1994, following their membership in the International Lesbian and Gay Association becoming an issue when ILGA was seeking status as a UN consultative body, and release of the documentary Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys, which publicly exposed the ideas of NAMBLA's leaders. Starting in 1994, NAMBLA has been explicitly disinvited from gay pride events, NAMBLA publications have been purged from gay-oriented bookstores, and NAMBLA-related links have been banned from gay-oriented websites.

Nevertheless, opponents of gay rights often continue to cite NAMBLA as an example of the homosexual agenda to groom children for sexual abuse. This is really an association fallacy, since other gay rights groups do not promote "man/boy love" and the gay community almost unanimously condemns NAMBLA and its aims.

NAMBLA claims that they do not advocate that their members commit child molestation, nor do they claim to engage in conspiracies to actually molest kids. However, they have supported alleged pederasts who have been to trial, and even lent their support to Michael Jackson during his last child molestation trial. Jacko was sane enough to avoid affiliating with them, and instead picked the Nation of Islam.

While NAMBLA is a real, albeit minuscule group, it has become the brunt of jokes, as well as a target frequently named in the context of moral panics over a purported child sexual abuse epidemic. This is so much so that most NAMBLA sightings these days may be parodists, and NAMBLA's remaining function may be as a "honey pot" for monitoring potential child predators.

The website
NAMBLA has a website, and it looks like it was designed in 1997. But can you believe it looked far worse back then? And oh boy, do they have pedophilia apologism in it. It contains a variety of writings ranging from decade old bulletins to press releases they made.

FAQ
NAMBLA has an FAQ, oh goodie. Their view on age of consent:

Oh no, children are being persecuted by age of consent laws. Won't someone think of the children?

Now, it's not untrue that age-of-consent laws have been used to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ population - for instance, the age of consent for gay sex was higher than the age of consent for straight sex, and many LGBTQ+ groups in the modern day still fight to equalize the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual sex. This obviously has no bearing on the fact that abolition of the age of consent would be completely bollocks.

NAMBLA thinks they have science to back them up:

And by show clearly, NAMBLA means they're taking studies out of context and cherry picking studies.

Outcomes: Can Science Shed Some Light?
NAMBLA is in our territory now. NAMBLA asserts nine arguments with studies why pedophilia is okay. There's not much thought process here, they just list a bunch of studies with very little context:

The second study is an interview with adult pedophiles who molested children. No children were actually interviewed. See the description of the book below:

Rind et. al
NAMBLA cited Rind et al, a peer-reviewed meta-analysis on the self-reported harm caused by child sexual abuse, to claim that pedophilia/child sexual abuse doesn't cause any harm. . The Rind et al study downplayed the harm caused by child sexual abuse, claimed that male victims of CSA experienced "more positive" outcomes compared to female victims, and claimed CSA to be a scientifically invalid construct. Rind et al sparked immense controversy both within and outside of psychological circles (see: ). However, the study has been criticized on numerous points, including its definition of harm (which only includes long-term harm and doesn't include short-term harm, medical harm, or amount of time spent in therapy), statistical errors, potential strawmans of claims surrounding child sexual abuse, and several other issues. Numerous studies, both before and after the publication of Rind et al, have confirmed that minors cannot consent to sexual activity with adults and child sexual abuse causes harm,   including in male victims,  and regardless of whether the victim labeled their experience as abuse.

Dolphins Do It
One NAMBLA article by Earl Koenig points out that dolphins can be pedophiles, therefore, it's okay.

Yes, dolphins can be pedophiles, however, they also perform acts of rape too. Just because other animals perform certain actions, does not mean it is okay for humans, or even dolphins, to do them.

Is Fox Gullible?
The text below is a press release, in response to Fox News ... for something...

Sorry NAMBLA, but a 40 year-old man having sex with a 7 year-old cannot be a mutually desired relationship. Pedophiles tend to convince themselves their relationships are somehow mutual, because the alternative is realizing that they are terrible people who should be kept at least 30 yards away from all children at all times.