Gay Left

Gay Left tackled many controversial issues in its ten issues, including BDSM, pornography and paedophilia, opening itself up to varied views. The contributions on paedophilia were the most controversial. Gay Left did not endorse paedophilia but believed it was important that issues like the age of consent and teenage sexuality should be open to rational debate.

These articles were published between 1975 and 1980 it is not safe to assume that the views expressed in them still represent the opinions of the authors or the men who were members of the Gay Left Collective at the time.

• Issue 1 - contained a contained a book review in which Jeffrey Weeks took issue with the Sunday People's description of PIE as the 'vilest men in Britain', citing it as an example of how "The oppression of sexual minorities still sells newspapers."[6]
• Issue 2 - Angus Suttie, in an account of his life entitled 'From Latent to Blatant', writes sympathetically of a scoutmaster who molested him when 10, and also of a local man in his home town who was rumoured to be a paedophile and jeered by local schoolchildren.[7] The issue also contained a letter from self-professed paedophile Roger Moody, of London, who was seeking to create a political paedophile movement.[8]
• Issue 3 - featured an advert for the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).[9]
• Issue 6 - the introductory article expressed concern that "Lesbian mothers and paedophiles have recently been attacked and pilloried in the press" due to "an increase in public hostility towards those whose lifestyles pose any threat to the traditional values of the family."[10]
• Issue 7 - the front cover headline and lead article of this issue was 'Happy Families? Paedophilia Examined', jointly written by the Gay Left Collective. The article, though not explicitly pro-paedophilia, was broadly sympathetic: "It is striking that over the past two or three years conservative moral anxiety throughout the advance capitalist countries has switched from homosexuality in general to sexual relationships between adults and young people...in Britain this has led to the rapid passage through Parliament of a restrictive Child Pornography Bill which received no proper scrutiny and very little principled libertarian opposition from MPs."[11] This was followed by a short response to the piece by Tom O'Carroll of PIE,[12] as well a longer article by O'Carroll protesting the use of chemical castration on paedophiles.[13] This article had been due to be published by the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL; now Liberty), but had been vetoed due to the controversy within the organisation over support for PIE.[14]
• Issue 8 - contained a much longer piece by O'Carroll outlining his philosophy on paedophilia.[15] The issue also featured an article by Jamie Gough,[16] in which he envisages the liberation of children and child-adult relationships in a future socialist society: "Relations between adults and children, including sexual ones, could then [under socialism] be on a much more equal basis" and later "The intertwined process of children's and women's liberation would therefore inevitably mean a widening of sexual relationships between adults and children." The article concluded, "Seen in this way, it is evident that the questions of child sexuality and paedophilia cannot be solved except by a massive social and political struggle...the oppression of children and young people, and in a secondary way that of paedophiles, is a cruel oppression, and the struggle against it cannot be 'managed' or postponed."[17]
• Issue 10 - the final issue contained a piece by David Landau of the Campaign Against Public Morals (CAPM) examining the potential impact of the recent election of Margaret Thatcher and the rise of what he sees as a right-wing backlash against the sexual liberation movement. Landau protested the recent arrest of several PIE members and, talking of the upcoming trial (in which Tom O'Carroll was sentenced to two years imprisonment for conspiracy to corrupt public morals),[18] he states that "it is a paramount necessity for the gay community to educate itself on the issues of child sexuality and paedophilia and to initiate a debate in the sexual politics movements, the left and ultimately the labour movement on these questions."[19]