[LCC] information on the Taylor and Francis censorship case

[David Greenberg]

As someone who has had some involvement in the censored special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality, I may be able to provide some additional information. The story begins roughly ten years ago when Bruce Rind (then an assistant professor of psychology at Temple University) published several papers co-authored with Philip Tromovich and Robert Bauserman, on the psychological effects on juveniles of sexual contact with adults. The papers were a meta-analysis of previous studies. In these papers they conducted statistical analyses of the findings of other people's research, focusing on studies that used non-clinical samples. They found that sometimes there are damaging psychological effects, but in an appreciable proportion of the cases there are not. The effect sizes were small, and they were especially small for gay boys whose adult partners were male. When Dr. Laura, a right-wing radio personality, learned of this research, she castigated Rind and his co-authors for advocat
ing child molesting, which was not the case. None of their publications was a work of advocacy. Conservative "family values" groups raised a further ruckus. As a result, both houses of Congress adopted resolutions condemning the papers. A demand was made of the American Psychological Association that it repudiate the article. It did not do so, but appointed a committee of methodologists to review the work. It said that they had done everything correctly. Rind was barred from teaching graduate courses, and was restricted to teaching beginning undergraduate statistics courses. Then he was denied tenure. The fuss died down, but then was revived a few years ago when a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality devoted to pederasty in ancient Greece and Rome was being prepared. One of the contributors to that special issue, historian William Percy, asked Rind to write a footnote to his own article, summarizing the work of Rind, Tromovich and Bauserman. The footnote grew to a le
ngth where it seemed more appropriate as an appendix to Percy's article, and then it grew further, and it was decided that Rind's contribution would be an article in the Journal. When the table of contents of the forthcoming issue was posted to the web site of the publisher of the journal (Haworth), the family values groups again denounced this, and threatened a boycott of the publisher unless the article were to be removed from the issue. Haworth caved in, and published the special issue without Rind's paper. The fuss died down, but then I was contacted by John De Cecco, emeritus professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. He had been editing the Journal of Homosexuality for many years. He told me that there had been ongoing discussions between Rind and the publisher, that had culminated in an agreement that Rind's expanded paper would have a special issue of JH devoted to it provided that it pass editorial muster. He asked me to read and comment on the paper.
 I approved it for publication, and made some modest suggestions for revision. Ultimately, Beert Verstraete and De Cecco became the special editor for this issue, and commissioned a number of papers that either comment directly on Rind's work, or deal with themes of sexual relations between men and adolescent boys. I have a paper in the collection, as does classicist Thomas Hubbard. I have read most of the other papers in the collection. None is a work of advocacy. Rind's own paper argues that the institutionalized pederastic relations found in some societies are too incongruent with contemporary Western social arrangements and culture to be acceptable, so that significant change in age-of-consent laws is not going to occur. In the interim, Haworth sold JH to Taylor & Francis. Recently the editor at Taylor & Francis indicated that it would not publish the issue, due to the nature of the subject. A number of us tried to persuade the editor but to no avail. It appears that the 
decision was made at a higher level, to avoid the protests that might accompany the publication. Book publication is now being sought. Hubbard has joined Verstraete and De Cecco as co-editor. I would be happy to e-mail a copy of my paper, "Here's To You Mr. Robinson: Men Who Have Sexual Relations with Underage Males" to anyone who asks. Some parts of it deal with materials that would be of interest to classicists. 
   - David Greenberg, Sociology Department, New York University