«Could a priest and a boy conceivably have a positive sexual experience together?» the reporter asked.
« Conceivably? Absolutely it's conceivable,» I answered, «because the data tell us that some kids report such relationships as positive.» I cited a large meta-analysis of the abuse literature by Temple University psychologist Bruce Rind and two colleagues, published in the Psychological Bulletin of the American Psychological Association, which found that not all minor-adult sex is traumatic at the time nor leads to long-term harm; boys were likely to call the experiences neutral or positive, girls negative or abusive. The researchers stressed that their work was not meant to exonerate anyone. Rather, they hoped that isolating the factors that render such sexual events painful for the child or troubling long into adulthood could help in tailoring more effective therapies.
I knew I was treading on dangerous turf when I praised Rind. In 1997, he was the target of conservative radio talk show host «Dr.» Laura Schlesinger and Judith Reisman, a prominent right-wing activist against pornography, sex education, and sex research, who has made a career of discrediting pioneer sexologist Alfred Kinsey. An anti-homosexual group had objected to Rind's study and gotten in touch with Dr. Laura. She denounced him repeatedly on the air as an apologist for pedophilia and soon was joined by a coalition of Christian conservative organizations. They in turn found support from a group of therapists who specialize in the aftereffects of sexual abuse and whose work is based on the axiom that all child-adult sex leads to adult psychopathology; more controversially, many also believe that a troubled patient is likely to have sexual abuse in her past, even if she doesn't remember it and therefore needs the therapist's help in «recovering memories.» Dr. Laura and her friends eventually persuaded Congress to censure the APA for publishing work that suggested sexual abuse was not always harmful. Rather than defend its scientific peer-review process, the APA issued a mea culpa and vowed to vet politically sensitive material more carefully in the future. Dr. Laura's victorious legions looked for other infidels to subdue.
They found me. A few days after the interview with the syndicate's reporter, his story ran in the Web edition of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, my publisher's hometown paper, under the headline, «University of Minnesota Press Book Challenges Demonization of Pedophilia.» I was quoted this way: «[Levine] said the pedophilia among Roman Catholic priests is complicated to analyze, because it's almost always secret, considered forbidden and involves an authority figure. She added, however, that, 'yes, conceivably, absolutely' a boy's sexual experience with a priest could be positive.»
Although Harmful to Minors discusses pedophiles hardly at all, overnight I became the author of «the pedophilia book.» Although the book doesn't condone, much less promote, child molesting, that was suddenly its reputation.
Within days, the University of Minnesota Press was inundated with calls. Half were demanding that the press's management resign and Harmful to Minors — and maybe its author—be burned. The rest were from producers from talk shows. My publicist in New York was playing off requests from The Today Show against Good Morning America and Fox's Greta Van Susteren. The AM-radio shock jocks were the most numerous and persistent. «My host is very fair, very intelligent,» one from Los Angeles told me. With the sensitivity of an eagle a mile downwind of a field mouse, he could sniff his prey through the phone line. When he realized he was stalking an egghead, he added, «She's an NPR type.»
She wasn't.
«So, Judith, do you have any children?» the host asked, a few minutes into the interview.
«No, no children.» I confessed, followed by a petition for indulgence: «I have a niece and nephew.»
«Do you touch your niece and nephew?»
«Of course I touch them.»
«And how do you touch them?»
I could feel where this was going, but was powerless to escape. «I hug and kiss them, I stroke their hair, I rub their backs.»
«And at what age would you say it was appropriate to start touching your niece and nephew in order to initiate them into sex?»
I gulped, then declared, «Never, never!» But it sounded feeble. She'd already asked me when I stopped beating my wife.
I hung up the phone and dialed my publicist, Katie. «Tell the next person who calls that Judith is unavailable,» I said. «It's the second night of Passover, and she's out eating Christian children.»
A few minutes later, a friend phoned in from her car: «Hey Judith! I just heard Dr. Laura denouncing you on the radio. Congratulations!»
So, Dr. Laura was the force behind my sudden fame. I'd soon learn that she had been alerted by Judith Reisman, who also called Robert Knight, with whom she'd worked at the Christian-conservative Family Research Council. He was now at a sister organization, Concerned Women for America. In the mid-1990s, CWA had run a massive campaign against America's flagship advocate of mainstream comprehensive sexuality education, the Sex Information and Education Council of the U.S., generating 30,000 letters to Congress calling SIECUS and its sex-ed guides «blatant promoters of promiscuity, pornography, abortion, pedophilia, and incest.» Now Dr. Laura had uncovered another member of «the pro-pedophile lobby.»
I started to weep. It was late, but I called Katie again. My voice was little: «I'm cooked.»
Katie answered with the un-flak-like candor I would grow to love. «You're right. It's pretty bad.» She put me on hold to decline several invitations from other AM talk-radio shows. When she returned, she'd regained her professional pluck. «Don't worry,» she said. «We'll spin it.»
The good news was the book would get tons of publicity. Within the next two months, it was covered by scores of media outlets, from the Lancaster, PA, New Era to the New York Times , the gay and lesbian out.com to the neo-Nazi Jeff's Archives, WNBC Radio to college stations in rural Wisconsin. The bad news was that most of the publicity was about a book I didn't write.
Never mind what Harmful to Minors is about, though. Most of my critics didn't read it. And even those who did, and took it seriously, felt obliged to lead their stories with the allegation that it was an apologia for sexual abuse, «the most controversial book of the year.» Spending up to 12 hours a day being interviewed, I just could not spin the story back to sanity.
In these stories, my «critics» got equal time. These were always the same few. Knight led the charge. Although he hadn't read the book, he pronounced it an «evil tome.» Reisman made more secular, if no less satanic, associations. She had not read the book either, she told one major daily, but she didn't have to. She averred that she hadn't read Mein Kampf and she knew what was in it. I thought of writing a letter to the editor noting a small evidentiary difference between that book's author and myself: I had not yet invaded Poland.
As in the Rind attack, politicians got into the act. Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay introduced a resolution calling on former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders to remove her preface from the book (unsurprisingly, Dr. Elders felt no inclination to oblige the conservative members of Congress). A New York City Councilman from Queens introduced his own resolution denouncing the book. But it was local politicians in the Press's home state who had the greatest effect and reaped the greatest benefit. Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty, who was also vying for the GOP's gubernatorial nomination, condemned Harmful to Minors as «disgusting,» and «an endorsement of child molestation.» He got more than 50 legislators to demand that the University suppress the book's publication. With alerts on the Christian Right Web sites, hundreds of e-mails and calls poured into the Press's office supporting this demand. None of these people had read the book, which was not yet available. When a protest at the university president's house drew only a few participants, its organizer, the lone member of his own political party, undertook a hunger strike (reliable sources observed him drinking a canned protein shake, after which I called him my dieting striker).