Radio 3 'pushes the barriers' with explicit gay sex

That gay kiss in The Archers was just the beginning. Radio 3, the BBC's classical music station, has gone even further and commissioned a play that includes scenes of under-age sex between two males.

Plague, written by the acclaimed dramatist Lucy Gannon and which will be broadcast next month, leaves little to the imagination and is unashamedly explicit.

The drama, set in 17th-century Derbyshire, tells the story of a forbidden love between a middle-aged married man and a 15-year-old boy. The two are thrown together when their village is cut off by plague.

During its recording, the actors kissed and rolled on the floor to act out the sex scenes.

The play may alienate many of Radio 3's audience, some of whom have accused the station of abandoning its classical music remit in favour of ratings-grabbing gimmicks.

Ms Gannon, who has written television hits such as Bramwell, Soldier Soldier, Servants and Peak Practice, said she was "dead chuffed" with the play. She said the only real change Radio 3 had insisted on was the age of the boy, whom she originally wanted to be 14.

"The kiss and the sex are fully realised in the drama," she said. "We should have got past the stage now of being coy about a homosexual kiss. Whether it is homosexual or heterosexual, passion is passion. The audience has a right to hear it.

Pete Meakin, who has also appeared in The Archers and who plays the older man, said it was important that the piece was realistic.

"I have appeared in more than 100 radio plays and made love in a lot of them but this is my first gay kiss," the actor, who is married, said. "There will be some criticism but all the greatest art has got to push some barriers. Sex and the BBC are no longer such alien partners."

Plague is the latest in a series of television and radio dramas to embrace homosexuality. Last month, The Archers included its first gay kiss.

John Milton-Whatmore, the chairman of the viewers and listeners organisation MediaWatch UK, said: "I find this unpalatable and distasteful. There seems to be a fad and a fashion at the moment to put gay and lesbian relationships in the public arena.

"A certain group of broadcasters, for reasons best known to themselves, want to give the impression that this sort of relationship is the norm. But it is not."

Sarah Spilsbury, of the viewers' group Friends of Radio 3, said: "Some people might find these kind of things embarrassing but I do not think it is outrageous. Radio 3, perhaps more than any other station, is the home of serious drama."

"Pedophilia Chic" Reconsidered (The taboo against sex with children continues to erode)

"This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, however—unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest—is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex—more accurately, man-boy sex—is now out in the open. Moreover, it is on parade in a number of places—therapeutic, literary, and academic circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and bookstores—where the mere appearance of such ideas would until recently have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to prosecution.
Dramatic though this turnaround may be, it did not happen overnight. Four years ago in these pages, in an essay called "Pedophilia Chic," I described in some detail a number of then-recent public challenges to this particular taboo, all of them apparently isolated from one another.1 Plainly, as the record even then showed, a surprising number of voices were willing to rise up on behalf of what advocates refer to as "man-boy love," or what most people call sexual abuse.
This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, however—unlike those against, say, animal sex or incest—is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex—more accurately, man-boy sex—is now out in the open. Moreover, it is on parade in a number of places—therapeutic, literary, and academic circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and bookstores—where the mere appearance of such ideas would until recently have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to prosecution.
Four-plus years and many other challenges to the same taboo later, it is clear that this hypothesis got something wrong. For one thing, no sustained public challenges have arisen over other primal taboos. Even more telling, if nihilism and nihilism alone were the explanation for public attempts to legitimize sex with boy children, then we would expect the appearance of related attempts to legitimize sex with girl children; and these we manifestly do not see.2 Nobody, but nobody, has been allowed to make the case for girl pedophilia with the backing of any reputable institution. Publishing houses are not putting out acclaimed anthologies and works of fiction that include excerpts of men having sex with young girls. Psychologists and psychiatrists are not competing with each other to publish studies demonstrating that the sexual abuse of girls is inconsequential; or, indeed, that it ought not even be defined as "abuse."
Two examples from the last few weeks will suffice to show the double standard here. In the November 12 New York Times Book Review, a writer found it unremarkable to observe of his subject, biographer Gavin Lambert, that when "Lambert was a schoolboy of 11, a teacher initiated him [into homosexuality], and he 'felt no shame or fear, only gratitude.'" It is unimaginable that New York Times editors would allow a reviewer to describe an 11-year-old girl being sexually "initiated" by any adult (in that case, "initiation" would be called "sexual abuse"). Similarly, in mid-December the New York Times Magazine delivered a cover piece about gay teenagers in cyberspace which was so blasé about the older men who seek out boys in chat rooms that it dismissed those potential predators as mere "oldies." Again, one can only imagine the public outcry had the same magazine published a story taking the same so-what approach to online solicitation, off-line trysts, and pornography "sharing" between anonymous men and underage girls...
Professionals in the field know better. Fifteen years ago, for example, in his careful research volume Child Sexual Abuse, noted authority David Finkelhor was already drawing attention to the "body of opinion and research [that] has emerged in recent years which is trying hard to vindicate homosexual pedophilia." To read Finkelhor's sources on the subject—or, for that matter, to read the notes in the heavily sourced "Meta-Analytic" itself—is to see exactly what he means. In their call to redefine "abuse" as "contact," for example, Rind, Bauserman, and Tromovitch were merely resurrecting research and conceptual work stretching back over two decades; similarly, their distinctions between boys' and girls' supposed experiences of abuse have a pedigree that begins with Kinsey and branches out dramatically in professional publications of the last 25 years. The authors of "Meta-Analytic" may have made their points boldly enough to get noticed; but that is the only academic novelty to which they could truly lay claim. The real news about the normalization of pedophilia displayed in "Meta-Analytic" was that nothing about it was conceptually new...
In some of the clinical and therapeutic literature on pedophilia, it has become customary to distinguish between "ephebophilia," or sexual attraction to postpubescent children and teenagers, and "pedophilia" proper, meaning attraction to prepubescent children. Both forms are exhibited more than occasionally in another part of the written world, namely gay fiction. "Fiction" here emphatically does not mean pornography as such, but the kind of literature authored by self-consciously gay writers, published by reputable houses, and reviewed respectfully in the mainstream press. Again, it must be emphasized that numerous gay authors of note do not positively portray sex between adults and minors, and ipso facto are not part of this discussion.
Of course, this opus that "gay studies" bookshelves now reserve space for did not spring from nowhere. The book itself grew out of two issues of the American Journal of Homosexuality (Vol. 20, Nos. 1/2, 1990) dedicated to the pondering of "male inter-generational love." Here again, an ostensibly mainstream gay vehicle was put to the service of advocating pedophilia. In fact, the case of the Journal of Homosexuality is particularly interesting as a case study of how a pernicious idea can spread. The editor of this reputable gay journal, John P. DeCecco, is a psychologist at San Francisco State University. DeCecco is favorably quoted in the introduction to Male Inter-Generational Intimacy for having praised the "enormously nurturant relationship" that can result from pedophile-boy contact. DeCecco is also on the editorial board of Paidika..."

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