As someone who has written extensively on the life and work of Allen Ginsberg, I find it quite exhausting having to deal with the comments about paedophilia and NAMBLA that often pop up when one mentions his name on social media.

As such, I have written the following essay as a means of addressing the issue. It is, of course, an unpleasant topic and one that I would rather avoid, but it does seem necessary to have it dealt with in full rather than handling comments individually.

It is also a serious issue. As much as I’d like to simply dismiss it, it needs to be discussed properly. Thus, the following investigation explores Ginsberg’s ties to NAMBLA and the claims of paedophilia that are often aimed at him. I have structured it in the following chapters.

  1. Introduction
  2. Allen Ginsberg and NAMBLA: A History
  3. Discussion: Was Allen Ginsberg a Paedophile?
  4. Conclusion

There are a few sub-chapters in order to make it easier to navigate.

Introduction

I will admit my bias upfront, which is that I greatly admire Allen Ginsberg. Although I do not hero-worship the writers whose work I study or enjoy, and will readily criticise their actions where I feel it is appropriate, I do not wish to see someone like Ginsberg smeared with this most vile of labels. Nonetheless, I will try to be as impartial as possible. A serious writer deserves to be studied objectively, their flaws acknowledged alongside their various positive attributes. What I want is to provide a thorough discussion of this topic that will allow us all to better understand Ginsberg’s association with NAMBLA and the accusations of paedophilia that have unfortunately persisted for the last three decades.

Until now, we have had a few statements by people close to Ginsberg flatly stating that he was not a paedophile. On the other hand, many people have heard that he was one and then used the internet to confirm their suspicions. Indeed, a cursory glance at Google finds Ginsberg guilty as charged. One high-ranking result confidently asserts that he was a “founding member” of NAMBLA and others accuse him of being an unrepentant child rapist. None of these pages provides evidence and that is because there is none. Even Ginsberg’s Wikipedia page contains deeply flawed information on this topic, citing shockingly flawed sources, as we shall see later.

As is so often the case nowadays, this proliferation of opinions masquerading as fact has resulted in a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect, wherein people with next to no knowledge of Ginsberg’s life and work spend a few minutes reading about him, then decide with the utmost conviction that he was a paedophile due to his association with NAMBLA. This has had a damning effect on the reputation of one of the most important poets in American literature.

I will explain in the next sections how and why Ginsberg ended up joining and supporting NAMBLA, and explain why that does not necessarily make him a paedophile. After that, I will look into evidence for and against the charge of paedophilia, and then argue that those who accuse him of this are in many cases merely masking their own homophobia.

Although it is my contention that Ginsberg was not a paedophile, I will explore his problematic statements and behaviour. This may be unpleasant for those who – like myself – admire him as a poet, an activist, and a human being, for there is certainly much that he said and did that we can and should criticise. We must always keep in mind that the people we admire were no angels and should not be given a pass for their bad behaviour.

This will be a long (8,000+ words) and challenging essay but there is nothing else I can find online or in print that deals in any depth with this most unpalatable of topics, so I hope you will bear with me and read through to the end.

Allen Ginsberg and NAMBLA: A History

First of all, it is true that Allen Ginsberg was a member of NAMBLA. I wish I could deny that part and many of the people who knew him were dismayed by his choice to support this reprehensible organisation, but it is an incontestable fact that he joined NAMBLA, publicly defended them, and even helped them with fundraising events. Wikipedia is not wrong on this matter. It just frames it poorly, cites unreliable sources, and has given confidence to those with no other knowledge of the subject.

In order to fully understand how and why Ginsberg became associated with NAMBLA, I will give a chronological overview of his interactions with the organisation and then look at some comments from his biographers to provide context.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in 1978. One of its founding members was David Thorstad, a writer and gay rights activist. He was also an admitted paederast and believed in the rights of men and boys to engage in sex, regardless of age or age difference. The aim of the organisation was to advocate for the legality of such relationships and it did so by suggesting that the rights of children were being infringed through the existence of age-of-consent laws. Although Thorstad viewed his organisation as part of the wider gay rights movement and even sought the support of feminists in his bizarre, delusional essays, from the beginning NAMBLA was reviled in almost all political and cultural quarters.

On January 17th, 1983, Ginsberg called Thorstad in response to a TIME Magazine article attacking the group. Thorstad claims this call was “[o]ut of the blue”[i] and Ginsberg claims the article was what first brought NAMBLA to his attention,[ii] but Ginsberg had copies of various NAMBLA letters and press releases going back through 1981, written by Thorstad (though not personally addressed to Allen).[iii] During their call, Ginsberg provided Thorstad with a statement showing his disgust at TIME and his support for NAMBLA.

The quote was used in Thorstad’s book, A Witchhunt Foiled: The FBI vs. NAMBLA (1985) and so Thorstad sent Ginsberg a galley copy to approve his statement. Ginsberg made various small changes, mostly changing his wording to condemn “the mass media” rather than TIME Magazine specifically for what he called an “assault on the American mind.” He was fine, however, with the last line: “I’m a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too—everybody does who has a little humanity.”[iv] It was a sentence that would come back to haunt him many years later.

Whether or not he was a member of NAMBLA prior to this is unclear, but from 1983 onwards he certainly was, and he received their various publications and corresponded with Thorstad and others high up in the organisation. In 1985, he contributed twice to NAMBLA publications, including his poem, “Student Love.” Written the year before, this piece is about his lust for an 18-year-old, whom Ginsberg describes as “a kid / still growing.”

It was in 1988 that Ginsberg’s NAMBLA membership became more widely known. In May of that year, at the National Alumni Reunion at Brooklyn College, he publicly admitted being a member but said he had joined “on principle” and that NAMBLA was a “civil liberties organization.”[v] His membership, he said, was in keeping with his libertarian values, and he stressed that NAMBLA had “a right to exist.” He complicated matters by asking, “Are [NAMBLA’s detractors] against men, are they against boys, are they against love?”[vi]

In 1989, there was much discussion in the local press about Ginsberg and whether or not he should be removed from his position at Brooklyn College, where he was a professor. He was defended by his employers but attacked by many others. An open letter from Avi Goldstein, former editor-in-chief of Night Call, said “Allen Ginsberg has admitted to being a child abuser.”[vii] (This was not in reference to any private conversations; it was an interpretation of Ginsberg’s advocacy of NAMBLA.)

Ginsberg was incensed and sought legal advice. He considered a lawsuit against Goldstein but his lawyer replied that “it would be a nightmare of a libel suit, and I advise you strongly not to bring it.”[viii] His reasoning was that Goldstein could easily argue in court that Ginsberg’s relationships with young men could be perceived as being abusive due to the age gap and therefore whether he was an admitted “child abuser” was a matter of opinion and not something Ginsberg would want brought into the public light. He recommended a letter to the editor instead.

Although Ginsberg was angry at being called a child abuser, it did not stop him from associating publicly with NAMBLA. Just a few weeks after Goldstein’s letter, he did a reading at the NAMBLA General Membership Conference in New York. A letter to members after the event reported that

Ginsberg read and sometimes sang, accompanying himself on a harmonium. Many of the selections spoke about the poet’s relationships with younger men. “I’m happy to be here for the brave, intelligent, distinguished company,” Ginsberg told the capacity crowd […] “It’s really interesting to give a poetry reading to people who understand the references and the shadings’ of thought. Many [straight audiences] don’t.”[ix]

Talking about this some years later, Ginsberg reflected:

I once gave a reading to a Nambla (sic) convention, which was this bedraggled group of 30 or 40 people who couldn’t find a venue because the regular gay lib group disowned them. Probably half the people there were FBI spies – but it was one of the nicest readings I ever gave.[x]

Although there was certainly a degree of controversy over his appearance, it was mostly confined to the local area, the gay press, and the university itself. The wider media would not pick up on Ginsberg’s NAMBLA association for several years. However, the group itself was increasingly struggling due to the contempt it faced in the homosexual community. Correspondence from Thorstad and others suggests they were leaning heavily on their one celebrity supporter as a means of attaining legitimacy.

In 1991, Ginsberg was asked by NAMBLA to attend a “Celebrating Sexual Diversity” event but he said that he had prior commitments with Galek Rinpoche and could not manage. Two years later, he began to receive letters and publications from Spirit of Stonewall (SOS), an organisation affiliated with NAMBLA (Thorstad and other NAMBLA founders were on the organising committee). SOS was the organisation that published Gayme (originally Game), essentially a rebranded version of the NAMBLA Bulletin. Bill Andriette, editor of the Bulletin, wrote to Allen asking if he would consent to an interview for the first issue. He explained the concept:

Game aims to be a cultural magazine that focuses on the beauty of boys and the work of those who have gained creative inspiration from boy-love. It will aim to work in and further this body of experience, knowledge, and sensibility without labeling itself or shouting from the rooftops, We are about pedophilia.[xi]

He explained that it was an attempt to reach out to the wider gay community who had been alienated by NAMBLA’s earlier stances and were more interested in “older boys.” Ginsberg replied that it was “OK in principle” but that he had no time because of his work at Naropa.

When the International Lesbian and Gay Association attempted to remove NAMBLA from its ranks, SOS asked him to sign a petition against this move, which he did, and to join a march and forum called “The Brain and the Crotch,” which he did not.

This was in 1994, the year Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys was released. This film shows Ginsberg at the 1989 NAMBLA event and the editing presents him in an unflattering light. It cuts from a shot of Ginsberg on a pavement holding a mask of a very young boy to the reading where he begins his poem, “Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass” from Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977. It is a very short excerpt of the poem and ends with the admittedly disturbing line, “ever slept with a man before?”[xii] Devoid of context (due to what is rather sneaky, dishonest editing), Ginsberg certainly appears to be advocating sex with young children.

Although he only featured in the documentary for 17 seconds, the release of Chicken Hawk caused such furore that Ginsberg was prompted to write a statement for the media. This was posthumously published (with some edits) as “Thoughts on NAMBLA.” In this short essay, he defended his stance and reiterated that even these pathetic individuals deserved free speech. In an interview some months later, wherein parts of his statement were excerpted, he acknowledged the criticism he had received:

I’ve had more flak about it than anything since the campaign to legalise grass 30 years ago. And I can understand it. A lot of gay people feel they’ve gotten certain civil rights, and that Nambla (sic) is such a lost cause, and it would be hard to progress with gay rights if there was any association with them.[xiii]

It was during this time that Ginsberg began to face criticism in the wider media. He also received a lot of violent hate mail due to his association with the group. Still, he continued receiving NAMBLA and SOS materials until at least 1995 and saved these for his archives. His labelling of documents implies that he continued to view NAMBLA as essentially a gay liberation organisation in spite of their disavowal by the rest of the movement.

In the mid-nineties, Ginsberg was in talks with Stanford University to sell his archives but the NAMBLA controversy threatened to blow the deal. An alumni group attempted to pressure the university into withdrawing from negotiations. In an interview, Ginsberg quipped that if the deal went through, “I’ll have to make sure I have complete copies of my ‘NAMBLA Bulletin’ when I send everything out there!”[xiv] (The deal did go through and he did include many NAMBLA documents in his archive.)

Ginsberg passed away in 1997. He had been the most famous living poet until that point, yet the NAMBLA controversy had badly damaged his public image. Bob Rosenthal wrote:

Allen’s NAMBLA membership hinders the offer of a teaching position at his alma matter Columbia University. Denies him poet laureate titles. Bars him from ever writing an op/ed for the New York Times again.[xv]

In the politically charged 21st century, with the rise of a new strain of political correctness (something Ginsberg abhorred), the poet’s NAMBLA affiliation has continued to plague his reputation. In 2019, for example, his image was removed from a mural in Hermosa Beach, California. The reason was his apparent “penchant for pedophilia.”[xvi] To this day, his name is for many synonymous with paedophilia even though – as we shall soon see – there is no absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he was one.

(One final twist in the Ginsberg-NAMBLA story is that David Thorstad, co-founder of NAMBLA and it seems the person who pushed for Ginsberg’s support over the years, ended up copyediting three volumes of Ginsberg’s journals when they were published by the University of Minnesota Press several years ago. Thorstad passed away in 2021. Just a few months prior to his death, he penned a short memoir about Ginsberg for the NAMBLA website.)

Further Thoughts on Ginsberg and NAMBLA

Now that I have established the timeline and basic facts of Ginsberg’s involvement with NAMBLA, I would like to add some further information, mostly citing biographers and those who knew Allen, and also to use his own comments. I hope it adds some context to the above, essentially explaining why he was willing to risk his reputation by publicly supporting “a cause that is completely indefensible.”[xvii]

Most biographers and friends of the poet have argued, as Ginsberg himself did, that his membership was a matter of free speech. In his biography, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg, Bill Morgan wrote:

He was adamant in his conviction that this was merely another free speech issue. To him, NAMBLA members should be free to speak their minds, like other fringe groups such as the American Nazi Party or the Flat World Society.[xviii]

Indeed, this was Ginsberg’s stance and it is one shared by the ACLU. As I mentioned above, he wrote a short essay called “Thoughts on NAMBLA” in 1994 in order to distribute to the media in response to his appearance in Chicken Hawk. This was published in Deliberate Prose some years after his death. In it, Ginsberg explains his position vis-à-vis the organisation. He begins:

I became a member of NAMBLA a decade ago as a matter of civil liberties. In the early 1980s, the FBI had conducted a campaign of entrapment and “dirty tricks” against NAMBLA members just as they had against black and anti-war leaders in previous decades. […] NAMBLA’s a forum for reform of those laws on youthful sexuality which members deem oppressive, a discussion society not a sex club. I joined NAMBLA in defense of free speech.[xix]

He goes on to explain that “people like myself do not make carnal love to hairless boys and girls. Yet such erotic inclinations or fantasies are average and are commonly sublimated into courtly sociability.”[xx] He cites various examples of child nudes in classical art as evidence of this. He appears convinced of the notion that NAMBLA has nothing to do with actual sex with children:

These considerations shouldn’t be distorted to apologize for rape and mental or physical violation of children. […] It is NAMBLA’s mission to raise the subject, explore it, and provide a platform for debate.[xxi]

The final paragraph makes an unfortunate reference to “consensual intergenerational affections and affairs” and implies that age-of-consent laws are in place by authorities interested in committing their own “mind rape” of youths.[xxii]

I will admit that, even though my own position is quite clearly in defence of Ginsberg and that he was not a paedophile, one could read between the lines here and suggest that “intergenerational” refers to relations between adult men and children. Indeed, the phrase “consensual intergenerational” could very well be argued as oxymoronic. There’s also that comment about “hairless boys,” which perhaps implies that he views puberty as the dividing line and that any person who has gone through or even entered that developmental stage is, regardless of actual age, ready for sexual activity. (We will return to these issues in the following sections.)

However, if we are to label someone with perhaps the most awful of terms – paedophile – we need more than merely reading between the lines. To accuse someone of the most despicable of crimes, we must have actual evidence. I realise that in the politically charged contemporary era, that notion seems to have been suspended, particularly in relation to sexual crimes, but inferences and suggestions do not constitute hard evidence. Ginsberg was candid enough to admit doing things that others considered illegal, immoral, and unjustifiable, so had he really been attracted to children, this essay would almost certainly have confessed such an attraction.

Let’s now explore the matter in greater depth.

Was Allen Ginsberg a Paedophile?

If Allen Ginsberg was openly a member of a pro-paedophilia organisation, then it stands to reason that he was himself a paedophile, right?

Well, as we saw above, he claimed to have been involved purely as a free speech issue. He believed that all human beings – regardless of the stupidity of their views – deserved certain fundamental rights. This included the right to freedom of expression. There can be little doubt that Ginsberg was interested in NAMBLA’s cause at least in part due to a belief that they deserved this fundamental right. He even filed documents about NAMBLA alongside ones pertaining to censorship of “Howl,” showing that he viewed these issues as inextricably linked.

Bill Morgan noted in the abovementioned biography that Ginsberg felt it may be healthy for these men to be allowed to speak openly about their sexual proclivities rather than repressing those feelings.[1] Marc Olmsted told me, echoing others who knew Ginsberg, that the poet was “naïve” about NAMBLA and genuinely believed it to be a ”discussion group,” ignorant of the “meeting-after-the-meeting” exchanges that took place later. “I can be fairly certain this would not have met his approval, and possibly was hidden from him at first,” Olmsted said.[xxiii]

Indeed, having read the various NAMBLA publications in his archives, I can attest that Ginsberg’s “Thoughts on NAMBLA” essay shows that he believed many of their claims to being an oppressed minority group whose interests lay in protecting children rather than harming them. His own public statements also tended to echo Thorstad’s rhetoric about “boy-lovers” being a minority group facing “extreme oppression” and deserving of a place in the wider civil rights movement.[xxiv] Thorstad repeatedly stated that NAMBLA was a support and advocacy group and that it was not a place for men to meet young boys. Given that Ginsberg’s knowledge of NAMBLA came primarily from these publications, and given how closely his own statements mirrored Thorstad’s, it is quite possible that he was naïve about their paedophilic proclivities.

To take just one of many possible examples, in 1995 Ginsberg was asked by Tom McIntyre whether NAMBLA was in fact as bad as the media said – i.e. a club for paedophiles. He responded:

NAMBLA has nothing to do with that. NAMBLA is just a talking organization of people who like young boys. That’s all. It is not a sex club. They’re like a self-empowerment group. In 1984, I read an article in Time magazine that said NAMBLA was a group of predatory authoritarians who preyed on unsuspecting, less powerful individuals. It sounded like a perfect description of Time magazine. So I joined NAMBLA as a civil liberties matter because the F.B.I. had set out to entrap them. I get a lot of flack (sic) for it, but they have the right to talk about what they’re interested in.[xxv]

It is clear from documents in Ginsberg’s archives that this was not just media posturing. Naïve or not, this was his position. His biographers and those who worked closely with him can attest to that. Bill Morgan, for example, in an interview with Leon Horton, explained:

Allen did think of the issue as one of freedom of speech. As he said, he felt NAMBLA was a “discussion group, not a sex club.” I’m not certain why you think [“Thoughts on NAMBLA”] was uncomfortable reading though; I don’t see it that way. The uncomfortable are people who force pre-pubescent kids into sex by force, rape, and so on, but that certainly wasn’t Ginsberg. Some other writers around him may have been interested in children sexually, but don’t confuse them with Allen.[xxvi]

Morgan of course knew Ginsberg personally as well as being extremely well-versed in his work. He is familiar with countless people who knew Ginsberg and it stands to reason that he would have been keenly aware of any complaints about the poet’s sexual conduct.

The same is true of Bob Rosenthal, who is quoted in various places as flatly denying that Ginsberg was a paedophile. However, let’s go to Straight Around Allen, his memoir of the twenty-plus years he spent working closely alongside the poet, for more detail. Here, Rosenthal (whose book is written in the present tense) begins:

He likes to read the NAMBLA Journal. The stories about boys are idyllic and classically erotic. All the contributors use pseudonyms. Allen enjoys it in a rarified conspiratorial air that has no physical expression.[xxvii]

Rosenthal cites an example of a high-school teacher who lusts after his students but never becomes sexually or romantically involved with them. Ginsberg feels sympathy for this man, whose identity and sexual leanings are uncovered, leading to the loss of his job.

I realise how this sounds. To say that Ginsberg enjoyed NAMBLA’s journal without “physical expression” does sound rather like a teenage boy claiming to have a copy of Playboy “for the articles.” However, it does fit with Ginsberg’s character and the NAMBLA materials in his possession were political and not remotely pornographic.

Rosenthal naturally remonstrated with Ginsberg about his affiliation with NAMBLA, attempting to dissuade him from joining, regardless of free speech issues, and after Ginsberg went ahead and joined, and was later filmed at a NAMBLA event, resulting in the media hysteria of 1994, Rosenthal was devastated when the poet’s reputation was damaged:

He is now thought to be a pedophile. It saddens me deeply to witness Allen sully his reputation. He potentially devalues all the important social good he has accomplished. Allen senses my greedy protective attitude towards his reputation. He comically muses to me about NAMBLA. “You know I think I finally found a cause that is completely indefensible!”[xxviii]

He explains how tarnished Ginsberg’s reputation became and how many opportunities were lost because of this decision. Several biographers have similarly noted the fact that the NAMBLA incident was a godsend to his numerous critics, who were able to use it to further smear him.

Putting it as succinctly as possible, Rosenthal says:

Allen is not a pedophile. I work closely with him for his last twenty years and not once do I see, or become aware of, any act of pedophilia. I trust him around my young sons and he never touches them. Allen does believe that the legal age should be made more flexible. And he supports freedom of speech for those who idealize youthful men. His support of NAMBLA Newsletter is to support its right to publish. You can deplore his support but it is not a personal act of sexual deviancy.[xxix]

This is, for me, one of the main arguments in favour of Ginsberg on this matter. No loving father would ever put his children in such a position of danger. If there were any question whatsoever of Ginsberg being a paedophile, Rosenthal would not have allowed his children near the man. It amazes me that people whose only knowledge of Ginsberg comes from a cursory glance at Wikipedia somehow think that they know more than a man who worked alongside him for decades and who trusted the poet alongside his young children.

Complicating the Issue: Arguments for Ginsberg as a Paedophile

If this is to be a serious discussion, then we need to look at the opposing viewpoint and give it due consideration. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that Ginsberg may have – at some points in his life – had sex with persons below what is presently considered the legal age of consent in certain jurisdictions, and these do need to be mentioned and scrutinised before we make a final judgment. Below, I will discuss some of the claims against Ginsberg.

First of all, let’s look at the Wikipedia page, which I have noted as problematic several times. Although it has thankfully been edited, just a few months ago, it used to cite Andrea Dworkin as saying:

[I]n 1982, newspapers reported in huge headlines that the Supreme Court had ruled child pornography illegal. I was thrilled. I knew Allen would not be. I did think he was a civil libertarian. But, in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to the North American Man/Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it.[xxx]

If one were to suffer through Dworkin’s book, one would find this accusation expanded over two pages to include more detail but no real evidence. Dworkin claims that, at an event for a mutual friend’s child’s bar mitzvah, Ginsberg followed her relentlessly and aggressively, like some deranged stalker, an image utterly inconsistent with his personality. “He photographed me constantly with a vicious little camera he wore around his neck,” she writes, somewhat bizarrely.[xxxi] Apparently, Ginsberg repeatedly told her at this party about “his right to fuck children” and that he openly advocated rape.[xxxii]

Of course, one must keep in mind Dworkin’s reputation and the fact that this book is subtitled, “The Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist.” Were this to be “The Political Memoir of an Unabashed Anti-Semite,” would we take for granted their claims about a Jewish poet? What about the memoirs of a proud homophobe making bold and evil claims about a homosexual poet? Hopefully, no one would take these seriously, and we should not give much credence to Dworkin either. To cite her is foolish and I am happy to see that the above quote has been removed from Wikipedia, for it is not even remotely credible.[2] Whilst we cannot say conclusively that her claims are wrong, they read like bad fiction and her bias is undeniable. This sort of nonsense is exactly what someone would say if they wanted to smear the object of their irrational hatred.

Next, we have a strange comment from Graham Caveney in his book, Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg. He begins by quoting the poet, who said in 1981:

I believe the best teaching is done in bed, and I am informed that’s the classical tradition. That the present prohibitive and unnatural separation between student and teacher may be some twentieth-century Wowser, Moral Majority, un-American obsession. The great example of teaching was Socrates… It’s healthy and appropriate for the student and the teacher to have a love relationship whenever possible… I think it should be institutionally encouraged… My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.[xxxiii]

Although Ginsberg’s students were in university, Caveney moves from this quote to the NAMBLA discussion. It is a slightly strange connection, but at least he admits that “[t]here is certainly no evidence that Ginsberg abused or bribed any of his boy-students.”[xxxiv] Ginsberg’s comments (taken from a Washington Post interview) are certainly problematic; however, the power dynamics between a teacher and an adult student are quite different to those between a grown man and a child.[3] Caveney not only pointed out that there was no evidence for Ginsberg’s alleged paedophilia but cited Rosenthal (as others have done) in firmly attesting to the fact that Ginsberg had no sexual interest in children. Bizarrely and irritatingly, however, he goes on to say, “Ginsberg’s brazen acknowledgement of his fondness for pubescent boys still casts a shadow…”[xxxv] Indeed it would… except there had been no such acknowledgement. Either he meant that Ginsberg’s endorsement of NAMBLA was a “brazen acknowledgement” or his editors had removed some other quotation from the text and not fixed this connection.

Perhaps Caveney is referring to comments made elsewhere but not cited in his book. There are, of course, many instances of Ginsberg admitting an attraction to “boys” or young males of unstated ages. The abovementioned poem, “Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass” is a particularly disturbing example, in which he appears to be engaged in various sexual acts with a “boy” whom at the very least Ginsberg views as not yet an adult. His comments in interviews were often troubling, too. In 1994, asked by the San Francisco Examiner about “the current state of the gay movement,” he admitted having joined NAMBLA as a matter of principle, but then said:

If you go into the Vatican museum, there’s thousands of statues of adolescent and prepubescent boys. They’ve been a major erotic, aesthetic, classic subject for thousands of years. All of the (sic) sudden you’re not supposed to feel tender towards youthful bodies. Imposing on them, forcing violence on them is another matter.[xxxvi]

It echoes the “Thoughts on NAMBLA” essay he wrote that year by pointing out nude male children in art, but whether he’s right or not, he was not helping his cause. (And of course, the wisdom of citing the Vatican as an example of innocent appreciation of young male nudes is questionable at best…)

Up until this point, the accusations have been unfounded and the admissions have been poetic, but regrettably there is indeed some evidence to suggest that Ginsberg may have believed in the right to have sex with people below what we generally consider now to be a reasonable age for consent. In fact, one of these sources was edited and published by yours truly, so I cannot overlook it even if it seems to contradict my own views here.

In Marc Olmsted’s memoir of his time with Ginsberg, Don’t Hesitate, he addresses the NAMBLA issue. He recalls Ginsberg telling him that he had joined the organisation but that he assumed NAMBLA was defending sex with willing teenagers rather than young children. He recalls a line from “Kraj Majales”:

And I am the King of May that sleeps with teenagers laughing.

Olmsted notes that the words “sleeps with teenagers” appear just above his head on the cover of his 1990 album, The Lion For Real, and that Allen found this amusing.

One hopes this refers to persons in their late teens and that Ginsberg mostly engaged in this as a younger man, but unfortunately there is more:

Once I asked the age of the youngest kid he ever slept with. “14,” he said. Later, in print I saw he said “18.” For once, he played it safe, though it was the only time I recalled him not telling the truth about his sex life.[xxxvii]

In my own book on Ginsberg’s life, I cited his journals from a trip to Africa, wherein he claimed to have deliberately sought out fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds for sex but did not end up having sexual relations of any sort. Ginsberg himself admitted to sleeping with people aged sixteen to eighteen in a defence of his NAMBLA position,[xxxviii] and in a 1995 interview with George Petros, he said “I’ve never made it with anyone under fifteen.”[xxxix]

Clearly, he was of the opinion that these people were old enough to be making informed decisions – i.e. giving consent to participate in sexual activity. In the Petros interview, he said that the legal age of consent in New Mexico was fourteen and that in his youth it was perfectly normal for girls of thirteen to marry older men in Tennessee.[xl] His comments here largely echo the original version of his “Thoughts on NAMBLA” essay, highlighting the fact that people mature at different ages and so a single law for everyone is illogical. When asked about his NAMBLA association by The Rocky Mountain News, Ginsberg replied that “anyone above puberty is okay as long as it’s consensual and nobody complains.”[xli] (His position vis-à-vis LSD was that anyone aged fourteen or over should be allowed to try it, suggesting that he viewed this as a reasonable age for making adult decisions.[xlii])

Stevan M. Weine, in Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness, noted that Ginsberg slept with young men in their late teens and explained that “Allen felt that he was giving a gift of experience and intimacy to consenting teens, as has been done by other men throughout history.”[xliii]

Further Thoughts on Ginsberg and Paedophilia

Much of this seems like damning evidence and indeed it should not be overlooked or downplayed. However, is it proof of paedophilia?

The first thing to consider, pedantic as it may seem to some, is the very definition of paedophilia. This is defined as an attraction towards prepubescent children rather than teenagers. Thus, if he really had had sex with a fourteen-year-old, as awful as that is, it would make him a hebephile or ephebophile. This may seem like semantics, but it is an important distinction. Not that any of these are justifiable, but paedophilia is certainly far worse than the others and so to label him with this term would simply be incorrect. It certainly seems as though he was an ephebophile but this, whilst morally dubious given the age gap, is usually not illegal.

Beyond that, we do not know what age he was when he allegedly had sex with a fourteen-year-old or indeed that he wasn’t merely trying to shock Olmsted. If he had been a teenager himself, for example, that would be quite different than had he engaged in this act as a much older man. In the United States today, for example, the age of consent may vary depending on the age gap between partners. This is of course to address the problem of older men taking advantage of children and young adults.

This brings us to the tricky topic of age of consent, which I mentioned at the end of the last section. It is something so controversial, in fact, that I am reluctant to write about it, but it is important in the context of this discussion, so here goes…

Ginsberg understood the fact that an age of consent law is by its very nature arbitrary. To suggest that there is a certain date, before which every person is incapable of giving consent and after which they are is of course absurd, no matter how well-intentioned it may be. Bob Rosenthal said that “[Ginsberg] believed the age of consent should be understood as flexible as all people mature at different rates.” He went on: “So did he ever sleep with a young man less than a year below the legal age of consent? Yes. Not often, but the young men were not children.”[xliv] Indeed, in an early version of the “Thoughts on NAMBLA” essay cited above, Ginsberg wrote “I have no fixed idea of an exact legal age of consent since personally I tend to judge each situation as separate and unique.”[xlv] To George Petros, he said “I don’t know exactly how to define what’s underage and what’s intimidation. Kids have to be protected and I sympathize with those who want to write a law. I’m just saying you have to control the bureaucracy and be extremely careful about demagoguery.”[xlvi]

Ginsberg was right: These laws are indeed arbitrary and they vary greatly according to region and time. There is no universal age-of-consent law, so what is considered legal and ethical in one place and time may be reprehensible in another. I do not mean to suggest that a law permitting adults to have sex with children is in any way justifiable, but people raised in environments where something is legally and morally accepted cannot be expected to foresee changes decades later. The phrase “we are all products of our time” is much maligned and yet it is an undeniable truth.

I mention that because if Allen Ginsberg, for argument’s sake, had sex with a fifteen-year-old, then it might well have been at a place and time when this would have been legal… if that fifteen-year-old were female. During the period of his life when Ginsberg was most sexually active, and in those geographical regions, homosexual sex was outlawed entirely but heterosexual sex with fifteen-year-olds was not. Had he been sexually active with females of approximately that age, there would likely have been no controversy. (How many hetero rockstars are given passes for doing just that in the seventies and eighties?)

Considering all that, then, can we say that Ginsberg was a paedophile?

If he, as an adult, did indeed engage in sex with a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old in a region where the age of consent was higher than that, then the answer is that he was a hebephile. If he engaged in sex with people in their late teens, then he was an ephebophile. This is not a justification of his alleged actions, but rather a statement of fact. If he did any of that, we can certainly judge him negatively for it, but it does not make him a paedophile in any sense of the word. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that he was sexually attracted to children and plenty to the contrary.

Accusations as Manifestations of Homophobia and/or Sexism

Now that we have discussed the issue, I would like to make one final point about why so many people seem eager to label Allen Ginsberg a paedophile.

It is my contention that people view Ginsberg as a paedophile in large part due to their own homophobia. I say this because there certainly are a lot of references in Ginsberg’s letters and journals to “boys.” The same is true of William S. Burroughs. Naturally, this looks bad and seems to suggest sexual attraction towards and perhaps activity with male children.

However, is that necessarily the case? We do not assume that Kerouac was raping female children when he talks about being sexually attracted to “girls” and there are plenty of such references in his work. Even today, in more enlightened times, it is not uncommon to hear heterosexual men speak of sex with “girls” and very few people would assume that refers to children. It is a term referring to adult women that many understandably consider rather sexist, but it is certainly not an admission of paedophilia.

It seems to me that this is a notable double standard. If we assume a man who is attracted to “boys” is a paedophile and one attracted to “girls” is not a paedophile, then it is quite possibly a combination of homophobia and sexism that inform our assumptions.

We must also keep in mind that for many decades at least, there has been a despicable prejudice among the heterosexual population that homosexuals are more likely to have paedophilic tendencies. The gay community was extremely outspoken against NAMBLA throughout the eighties and nineties partly for this reason. Even today, people are more willing to believe that Ginsberg was a paedophile than his heterosexual contemporaries and this is likely a major contributing factor. (To give but one example, a biographer has claimed that Jack Kerouac had sex with a twelve-year-old girl, but one does not routinely hear him being denounced as a paedophile.[xlvii])

Conclusion

I do not believe Allen Ginsberg was a paedophile, nor do any of the people who knew him well or have studied his life in great detail. Indeed, there is simply no evidence to suggest that he was. The people who believe he was sexually active with prepubescent children are those who know almost nothing about his life but have rushed to judgment based upon something they have heard or read, all of which is unsubstantiated gossip.

This is largely his own fault, of course. His decision to support NAMBLA was destructive and severely damaged his reputation. As I have explained, it was a choice lamented by his friends and supporters, for it threatened much of the good he had done over the previous four decades. These people are eager to emphasise the fact that Ginsberg’s support was purely a free-speech issue and that he eventually came to regret it. Bob Rosenthal says that Ginsberg finally realised that his stance on NAMBLA was “completely indefensible.”[xlviii] Olmsted concurs: “Allen finally regretted joining NAMBLA, realized it was a mistake, and didn’t quite know how to clean it up.”[xlix]

Stevan Weine calls Allen “willfully naïve” and says “[h]e had a blind spot when it comes to advocating adult sexual activity with children.”[l] He explains, without justifying Allen’s position or actions, that his ephebophilia likely stemmed from “his own trauma of childhood sexual abuse.”[li] He suggests that Ginsberg’s adoption of an indefensible position was perhaps a form of “self-punishment,” and explains that “Allen brought the NAMBLA controversy upon himself in the years following his publicly revealing, in 1989, that he had signed consent for his mother’s lobotomy.”[lii] (This of course does not hold with the timeline but it is nonetheless an interesting theory.)

Yet I would not dismiss his support of NAMBLA so readily. No matter how reprehensible we consider NAMBLA, it certainly seems that Ginsberg saw in them an oppressed group whose basic rights were being infringed and, in the face of tremendous personal cost, he offered them his support. Even after it had hurt him badly, he refused to rescind that position. In his late-life interviews, he was reflective but not regretful. He believed in NAMBLA’s mission and remained naïve about any illegal activities they were involved in. He showed concern for the welfare of children and young men but at the same time he felt that the way to protect these people was likely through a more nuanced approach than the prevailing laws and attitudes dictated. In 1995, he said:

I’d say where force and violence are involved, where mental violence is involved, there’s a fine line. What about some thirteen-year-old kid whose parents have beat him up and rejected him and is out on the street looking for love, hungry, taken in by some pederast who treats him nicely, gives him an education, sleeps with him — what are you gonna do? What humanely should be done? How are you going to make the distinction? The cops don’t make the distinction. The law doesn’t make the distinction. NAMBLA’s good for making public discussion on this issue, discussing what should be the right laws. People want to scapegoat the discussion. They’re willing to talk about it publicly and bust people but sensible discussion seems to be out of the question. I’ve been accused of being a child rapist simply because I went on the air and said I was a member of NAMBLA.[liii]

It is perhaps a bad example, but he makes a good point about the necessity of public discussion. Certain issues are so unpleasant that it’s easier to ignore them but Ginsberg felt – albeit naïvely – that NAMBLA offered a viable contribution, at least in terms of bringing certain topics to the public’s attention. The files in his archive certainly show that. The documents he saved covered a range of issues and discussed them with surprising tact and depth and Ginsberg’s comments publicly and privately show that he appreciated those ideas. It seems, then, that his support for NAMBLA was a brave and principled one, even if it was misguided.

Finally, it is likely that Ginsberg slept with people whom most of us would now argue were too young to be engaged in sexual activity with a person of his age. It is reasonable to condemn him for that; however, that does not make him a paedophile. As Bob Rosenthal has said, “Allen was attracted to young men, not prepubescent boys.”[liv] In the absence of any evidence that he was sexually attracted to young children, it is simply wrong to call him a paedophile, no matter how you feel about his actions and statements. This does not imply that hebephilia is acceptable, but these terms are not the same. Ginsberg likely slept with young men in their mid to late teens at a time when men doing the same with young women were considered to have done nothing legally nor morally wrong. I do not defend his actions but the attacks on him for this smack of homophobic hysteria.

Footnotes

[1] If true, Ginsberg’s position would be in line with the progressive attitude in Germany today, where there is a government-funded programme that aims to provide free and confidential treatment of people with sexual attraction towards children and adolescents. Named Prevention Project Dunkelfeld, the programme’s slogan is “You are not guilty because of your sexual desire, but you are responsible for your sexual behaviour. There is help! Don’t become an offender!”

[2] Although the above claim by Dworkin has been removed, she is unfortunately still mentioned in the NAMBLA section of the Ginsberg Wikipedia page.

[3] To Ginsberg’s credit, he did acknowledge the problems inherent in the power dynamic and the limitations of this concept. Barry Miles, who also cited this Washington Post interview, confidently asserts that Ginsberg was being “hyperbolic” in Ginsberg: A Biography [p.493].

Endnotes

[i] Herman, Peter, “Fearless Poet,” on NAMBLA.org. (I will not provide a direct link to this particular website as I do not want to support them in any way.)

[ii] Ginsberg, Allen, Deliberate Prose (Harper Collins: New York, 2000), p.170

[iii] This and subsequent references to Ginsberg’s possession of NAMBLA materials come from the Allen Ginsberg archives at Stanford University.

[iv] A Witchhunt Foiled: The FBI vs. NAMBLA, p.53

[v] Kingsman, October 9th, 1989, p.1

[vi] ibid

[vii] Night Call, October 1989, p.6

[viii] Letter from Harvey A. Silverglate, October 24th, 1989. Ginsberg archives. 

[ix] NAMBLA Press Release, November 17th, 1989. Ginsberg Archives.

[x] The Independent Magazine, 19th November, 1994, p.22

[xi] Letter from Bill Andriette, June 11th, 1993. Ginsberg Archives.

[xii] Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys, 00:11:21-00:11:38

[xiii] The Independent Magazine, 19th November, 1994, p.22

[xiv] First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2017), p.209

[xv] Rosenthal, Bob, Straight Around Allen (Beatdom Books: St. Andrews, 2018), p.127

[xvi] McDonald, Ryan, “Howl of protest: Facing public pressure, Hermosa Beach Mural Project to remove poet Allen Ginsberg from work honoring counterculture,” in Easy Rider News. Accessed: https://easyreadernews.com/howl-of-protest-facing-public-pressure-hermosa-beach-mural-project-to-remove-poet-allen-ginsberg-from-work-honoring-counterculture/

[xvii] Straight Around Allen, p.127

[xviii] Morgan, Bill, I Celebrate Myself (Viking: London, 2006), p.612

[xix] Deliberate Prose, p.170

[xx] Deliberate Prose, p.171

[xxi] ibid

[xxii] Deliberate Prose, p.172

[xxiii] E-mail correspondence.

[xxiv] This phrase is often used in NAMBLA materials. See for example 1982 Gay Pride leaflet. Ginsberg Archives.

[xxv] First Thought, p.208

[xxvi] Horton, Leon, “Keeper of the Sacred Scrolls: Bill Morgan,” in Wills, David S., (ed.) Beatdom #23 (Beatdom Books: St. Andrews, 2023), p.104

[xxvii] Straight Around Allen, p.126

[xxviii] Straight Around Allen, p.127

[xxix] ibid

[xxx] Dworkin, Andrea, Heartbreak (Basic Books: New York, 2002), p.45-46

[xxxi] Heartbreak, p.46

[xxxii] ibid

[xxxiii] Caveney, Graham, Screaming with Joy (Bloomsbury: London, 1999), p.173-174

[xxxiv] Screaming with Joy, p.174

[xxxv] Screaming with Joy, p.174

[xxxvi] The San Francisco Examiner, 16th September, 1994, p.D-9

[xxxvii] Olmsted, Marc, Don’t Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg (Beatdom Books: St. Andrews, 2014), p.149

[xxxviii] Hays, Matthew, “Ginsberg and Me,” in Advocate, 28th October, 2010. Accessed: https://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2010/10/28/ginsberg-and-me

[xxxix] “Allen Ginsberg” in Seconds Magazine, Vol 28, 1994, p.230

[xl] ibid

[xli] Qtd in The Evening Standard, 16th April, 1997, p.18

[xlii] Deliberate Prose, p.126

[xliii] Weine, Stevan M., Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness (Fordham University Press: 2023), p.240

[xliv] E-mail correspondence.

[xlv] “Thoughts on NAMBLA,” 13th July, 1994, p.3. Ginsberg Archives.

[xlvi] “Allen Ginsberg” in Seconds Magazine, p.231

[xlvii] Nicosia, Gerald, Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac (Grove Press: New York, 1983), p.232

[xlviii] Straight Around Allen, p.127

[xlix] Don’t Hesitate, p.149

[l] Best Minds, p.240

[li] ibid

[lii] Best Minds, p.241

[liii] “Allen Ginsberg” in Seconds Magazine, p.231

[liv] E-mail correspondence.