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The Progressive Pedophile Party

In the 1980s, the Roman Catholic Church may have aided and abetted pedophiles in its clerical ranks by not acting against them. But bizarre as it sounds, the avowedly secular Green Party in West Germany actively promoted pedophiles and their interests, as Der Spiegel reports. Excerpts: He is a boy, roughly 10 years old, with […]

In the 1980s, the Roman Catholic Church may have aided and abetted pedophiles in its clerical ranks by not acting against them. But bizarre as it sounds, the avowedly secular Green Party in West Germany actively promoted pedophiles and their interests, as Der Spiegel reports. Excerpts:

He is a boy, roughly 10 years old, with a pretty face, full lips, a straight nose and shoulder-length hair. The wings of an angel protrude from his narrow back, and a penis is drawn with thin lines on the front of his body.

The 1986 image was printed in the newsletter of the Green Party’s national working group on “Gays, Pederasts and Transsexuals,” abbreviated as “BAG SchwuP.” It wasn’t just sent to a few scattered party members, but was addressed to Green Party members of the German parliament, as well as the party’s headquarters in Bonn.

Documents like this have become a problem for the Greens today. Some 33 years after the party was founded, it is now being haunted by a chapter in its history that many would have preferred to forget. No political group in Germany promoted the interests of men with pedophile tendencies as staunchly as the environmental party. For a period of time in the mid-1980s, it practically served as the parliamentary arm of the pedophile movement.

A look at its archives reveals numerous traces of the pedophiles’ flirtation with the Green Party. They appear in motions, party resolutions, memos and even reports by the party treasurer. That is because at times the party not only supported its now forgotten fellow campaigners politically, but also more tangibly, in the form of financial support.

When the Green Party was founded in 1980, pedophiles were part of the movement from the start — not at the center of its activities, but always hovering along the periphery. At the first party convention in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe, pacifists, feminists and opponents of nuclear energy were joined by the so-called “Urban Indians,” who advocated the “legalization of all affectionate sexual relations between adults and children.” From then on, pedophiles, noisy and wearing colorful body paint, were often a visible part of Green Party gatherings.

More:

In their initial approach to the issue, Green Party leaders have agreed that they are dealing with regrettable but isolated cases. “Protecting children from sexual abuse was and remains a central concern,” says party co-chairman Cem Özdemir. “It is unacceptable that some are now trying to reinterpret the positions of individual groups in the past as a supposedly lax position of the Greens toward the sexual abuse of children.”

But it isn’t that simple. The Greens are not being accused of having advocated sex with children. The real question is whether they contributed to an atmosphere in which people could feel emboldened to pursue tendencies that are illegal if acted upon, and for good reason.

“In terms of national politics, the Greens were the only hope for pedophiles,” says Kurt Hartmann, a member of BAG SchwuP in the 1980s who now heads an association that promotes pedophile literature. “They were the only party that put their necks on the line for sexual minorities in the long term.”

The “Schwuppies,” as pedophiles are known within the party, made no secret of their sexual preferences. BAG SchwuP memos were circulated within party committees that openly portrayed minors as objects of sexual desire. One typical image is a photo of a boy in skimpy gym shorts, bending forward slightly as he stands on a playground. The official letterhead of the chairman of BAG SchwuP, Dieter F. Ullmann, featured a drawing of an older man with his arm draped over a young boy’s shoulders.

Party leaders claim that SchwuP was an embarrassment to the national party from the beginning. A look at the files, on the other hand, shows that the pedophile organization received funding — amounting to several thousand deutsche marks over the years — from the Green Party itself and from its parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

 Read the whole thing. 

[Via Lee Podles.]

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