Submitted On: November 8, 1993

A Statement to the Press Exposing KRON
by Eileen Scheff

I am an attorney from Detroit, Michigan and a member of NAMBLA. 
As an activist in the legal and political struggle for lesbian/    
gay rights and for freedom of sexual expression, I am here today 
to support NAMBLA and to demand that the witch-hunt against it 
be stopped.

The attempt by the media, and in particular KRON to portray NAMBLA 
as an organization of child molesters is completely false and must 
be denounced. NAMBLA opposes all forms of exploitation and abuse of 
children. NAMBLA advocates the rights of all persons, young and old, 
to freely and fully express their sexuality.

The media and police are targeting NAMBLA because it stands for 
the rights of young people to have consensual sex with whomever 
they want. They hope that by getting away with invading NAMBLA 
meetings with secret cameras, trying to assassinate its members,
and riling up hysteria, they can use the attack on NAMBLA as a
spring board for a broadening and growing attack on all sexual
minorities and on all sexuality.

In many parts of this country and the world, lesbians and gay 
men are routinely prosecuted and imprisoned under gross indecency, 
sodomy and other anti-sex laws. The attack on abortion rights and 
women's rights is intensifying, and parental consent laws already 
deny many young women to their rights to be sexual. In New Jersey, 
the government is attempting to deny poor women their sexuality by  
making their families starve if they have any more children. In
California, Governor Wilson denied lesbians and gays men their
ability to earn a living by vetoing AB 101 in the fall, and is 
now trying to deny women and children their ability to even live
by drastically cutting AFDC.

The current witch-hunt against NAMBLA has everything to do with 
increasing the attacks on all of us and nothing to do with protecting 
children. Denying youth their sexuality or driving sexual expression 
deeper and deeper underground will not stop child molestation. Our 
children need the social and economic power to fight back against all 
abuse, be it in the home, at schools, or on the streets. They need age-  
appropriate, non-moralistic, sex positive, including gay positive, sex 
education beginning in Kindergarten. They need youth-controlled centers, 
where they can freely socialize and enjoy safe, consensual sex. They 
need government stipends so that they have the economic independence 
to free themselves from abusive homes or anywhere else where they are 
being oppressed. 

I call on all progressive people in the lesbian/gay community, in the 
women's movement, and in the community at large to defend NAMBLA and its 
right to advocate for consensual sex regardless of age, and to unite our 
forces to make a fight for the real solutions to sexual coercion and abuse. 

****

Eileen Scheff is a 39-year-old attorney from Detroit, Michigan. She is as 
advocate for lesbian/gay rights, an activist in the Women's and abortion 
rights movement, and a member of NAMBLA. As an attorney she has success- 
fully fought to strike down Michigan's gross indecency and sodomy laws as 
applied to private sexual acts. Most recently, Ms. Scheff has been active 
in the Detroit-area Cracker Barrel Protest Coalition in its efforts to
end the restaurant chains racism and homophobic employment practices. 
Ms. Scheff is also a mother of two children, ages 2 and 5.