Notes about Sexuality and Religion

“There were five resolutions by the Greens on federal and state elections in which they called for the corresponding criminal law paragraphs to be abolished,” social researcher Stephan Klecha from the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research told the “Bild” newspaper on Tuesday. Klecha is co-author of a study on the “Scope, context and impact of pedophile claims in the milieus of the New Social Movement and the Greens”.

In the state elections of 1985, this decision even cost him entry into parliament, Klecha continued. “The collective memory” of the party “does not seem to work well on this issue,” said the researcher. Beck had claimed there had never been a resolution to criminalize child sex.

He criticized Klecha for the trivializing interpretation of sex with children in the 1970s. “Back then, adults simply transferred their perspective, their fantasies, to those of minors. That’s the basic problem with pedophilia,” he said. That can only be explained from the post-1968 era. Sexual liberation, rebellion against authority and the general removal of taboos were also transferred to children, Klecha continued.

In addition, the scientist criticized “model greens” like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who “back then publicly talked about sex with children, about his fantasies of a five-year-old undressing him”. Cohn-Bendit described it as an “erotic-manic game” on a talk show, and nobody contradicted him.

Klecha and the Göttingen party researcher Franz Walter published an interim report on their research in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on Monday. As a result, in their first basic program from 1980, the Greens spoke out in favor of extensive legalization of sexual relationships between adults and children and those in custody. In addition, not only the state association in North Rhine-Westphalia campaigned to remove pedophilia from the sex criminal law. According to the researchers, there were also corresponding decisions in Rhineland-Palatinate, Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin.

There was only a gradual change of heart among the Greens after 1985, when feminists such as Alice Schwarzer and homosexuals increasingly spoke out against pedophilia. The demand for legalization was not formally lifted until 1993, when the Greens merged with the East German Alliance 90.

Leading Greens such as party leader Claudia Roth welcomed the publication of the research results. This topic is not about the election campaign, “but about the serious processing” of the work of pedophilia activists in the 70s and 80s, Roth told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on Tuesday. “The processing of these misguided debates and dangerously wrong decisions and activities is urgently needed and it is about a depressing past that we all have to face,” said the Green Party leader.

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But not only the Greens called for the decriminalization of pedophiles. The then youth organization of the FDP, the Young Democrats, fought for the repeal of the relevant paragraphs, as the researchers revealed. The Hessian FDP politician Dagmar Döring published a relevant article at the time . At the weekend she therefore withdrew her candidacy in Wiesbaden for the federal election campaign.

Also the then FDP general secretary and later SPD politician According to the scientists, Günter Verheugen advocated a change in sex criminal law in favor of pedophiles. However, the FDP did not make any such decisions. Verheugen, who was FDP general secretary from 1978 to 1982, “personally believed that paragraphs 174 and 176 could be revised”. These norms of the Criminal Code (StGB) criminalize the sexual abuse of children and those in custody.

Verheugen denied the allegation. “Pedophilia was not an issue and I can rule out that I would have ever commented on it,” Verheugen told the “Welt” on Tuesday. According to his recollections, there was no internal German party discussion about sexual child abuse at all during the time in question – “neither in the FDP, nor in the SPD, nor in the Union”.

Verheugen went on to say that he “vaguely remembered that there was a discussion in the German public at the time about the different age of consent provisions for male and female adolescents in the then StGB”. But as far as he can remember, he did not take an active part in this debate either. “I don’t know what Mr. Walter is referring to, especially as he hasn’t contacted me either,” Verheugen underscored.