Childhood and sexuality - A radical Christian approach

It seems to me that one of the most frightening features of our time is the way in which certain minority viewpoints about child sexuality are deliberately ignored or suppressed by those who support the consensus view. Research papers pointing to unpopular conclusions are simply ignored; people such as Edward Brongersma are verbally abused and physically assaulted, merely for wanting to present an alternative opinion. This is the mark of a totalitarian state. It is the sort of thing I would have expected to happen in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, but never in "England's green and pleasant land." I decided that I'm at least, would give a fair hearing to all shades of opinion, whatever my personal preferences might be. [...]

Ford and Beach tell us that the Hopi Indians of North America and the Siriono of South America masturbate their own children regularly, and so do the Kazaks who live to the north of the Caspian Sea. [Ford, C.S. & Beach, F.A.; Patterns of Sexual Behaviour; London, 1965] Mothers on the East Indian island of Alor "fondle the genitals of their infant while nursing it," and Alorese boys are allowed to masturbate freely and openly from early childhood. If any such activities were to come to light in present-day Britain or America there would be a massive outcry, with police and social services intervening to separate the child from its "abusing" parents. Yet there is no evidence that Alorese, Kazak, Hopi, or Siriono children are in any way harmed by their early initiation into the pleasures of sexuality. [...]

The Pearl was an underground magazine which ran to some eighteen volumes between July 1879 and December 1880, when it was replaced by a short-lived successor, The Oyster. [...] The Pearl and The Oyster contain a number of erotic stories involving children, describing both heterosexual and homosexual acts. One concerns a ten-year-old girl called Alice [...]. [...] Another Pearl story, entitled "Young Beginners," portrays four children of different ages engaged in sexual play. The girls, Nelly and Janey, are fifteen and nine years old respectively; the boys, Gussie and Johnny, are fourteen and eleven. [...]

Suppose, for example, that a social worker, in the course of counselling a child, becomes aware that the child is involved in some sort of sexual liaison with an adult. The sexual activity may be of a relatively minor type, and there may be no reason to suppose that it is causing any serious harm to the child. Ideally, the social worker would like to be allowed to deal with the situation gently, to get the child to talk freely about the activity, and to work through his or her feelings about it. That would be a therapeutic approach to the problem. However, this kind of gentle handling of the situation is precisely what the social worker is not permitted to do. Our society has decreed that all sexual activity below the age of sixteen is illegal, and those who engage in it must be punished. Consequently the social worker must break confidentiality with the child and report the matter to the police. [...]

source: From the book 'Childhood and Sexuality - A Radical Christian Approach' by John L. Randall; Dorrance Publishing Co., INC., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; 1992