Interview: Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg

The trio Paul-Augustine-Thomas [Aquinas] has distorted the Christian attitude towards sexuality to such an extent that what was meant as a religion of love has been reduced to a catalog of rules that permit only certain sexual acts within marriage and forbid all others. The consequences of this attitude are borne by us today. [...]

A society which finds sexuality so questionable must naturally feel strong doubts about whether something so dubious should be permitted to children, or - horrible thought! - be taught to children by adults. From a social perspective the fear of paedophilia can be seen simply as a sexual fear. [...]

The Middle Ages emphasized original sin. It was the inherited human burden for everyone, even newborn infants. Rousseau, reacting to this, preached the opposite. Pure at birth, children are able to retain this heavenly innocence for a long time. Sexual feelings and drives are not innate, they are brought to them from the outside, from the evil world of adults, a secularized version of the Garden of Eden myth. [...]

These contacts were not only permitted by the societies [where paedophilic contacts were normal], but were considered a normal part of daily life. There was no social stigmatization, and therefore no individual psychic injury. Psychic injury might rather have occurred if the children had been excluded, for example, from the "club house" activities.

source: 'Interview: Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg' by Marjan Sax & Sjuul Deckwitz; Translated from German by Dr. Hubert Kennedy; Paidika - The Journal of Paedophilia; Special Women's Issue; Volume 2, Number 4, Issue 8; Amsterdam; Winter 1992