A paedophile party in the Dutch
parliament?
A new political party which seeks the legalisation of child pornography
and sex between adults and children presented itself officially in the
Netherlands on Wednesday. The official name in Dutch is Naastenliefde,
Vrijheid en Diversiteit , the NVD (which stands for love of one's
fellow man - or charity - freedom and diversity), but it was
immediately called the 'Paedophile Party' by outraged politicians and
citizens.
Completely insane
Have those crazy Dutch gone completely insane? And is the announcement
of the paedophile party proof that, in Holland, anything goes? The
answer on both counts is no, but given the Netherlands' image abroad of
being a very permissive society, it is easy to see why the
misunderstanding could arise.
It is true that the country has a permissive society when it comes to
dealing with difficult issues such as drug abuse and adult
prostitution. All countries all over the world struggle with these
problems, and nowhere in the world have they been solved. On the
contrary, the international drugs trade fuels a vast criminal industry,
while the prosecution of drug addicts clogs up judicial systems, and in
spite of the enormous efforts undertaken, police all over the world are
still losing the war on drugs.
Pragmatism
The Hague has opted for a more pragmatic approach. It regards drug
addicts as victims of a disease. Indeed, the Dutch tend to believe, for
example, that heroin addicts should get help to escape their addiction.
At the same time, those looking for non-addictive soft drugs such
as marijuana should not be driven into an underground criminal scene
where they risk coming into contact with hard drugs. So, after much
debate, a few years ago the Dutch decided to legalize the sale of soft
drugs such as hashish and marijuana in small amounts for personal
consumption - and the famous 'coffee shops' were born.
It's the same with prostitution. If you can't stop the adult sex trade
- with all the abuse, criminal exploitation and large scale trading of
women - try to mitigate its worst effects and regulate and legalize it
within certain limits. This, so the reasoning goes, offers women in the
sex industry better protection against abuses by their criminal bosses.
And so prostitution has been legalized to a certain extent and under
strict conditions.
Problems with permissiveness
It is measures such as these which have earned Holland the reputation
of being a permissive society. But this permissiveness is not without
problems, nor without adjustments when things threaten to get out of
hand. And so the number of 'coffee shops' has been greatly curtailed
recently and they have been put under stricter surveillance.
But above all, this permissiveness is not without clear limits. Hard
drugs remain off limits and hard-drug dealers and even wholesale
soft-drug dealers are prosecuted as happens everywhere else.
As far as the sex trade is concerned, there is a very clear and
absolute limit. Child abuse and prostitution and child pornography are
and remain absolutely forbidden. The furore over the sordid Dutroux
affair in Belgium has only reinforced the absolute ban on child abuse,
also in Holland.
The ban also includes sex tourism abroad. Dutch sex tourists have been
prosecuted and condemned for having sex with children in Thailand , for
example. Possession of child pornography, either in the form of printed
photos or images on a computer hard disk, is strictly forbidden and
actively prosecuted. Special police units are busy trying to untangle -
together with police elsewhere in Europe and the United States -
paedophile networks on the Internet.
Freedom and the law
However, under the Dutch parliamentary system, while all people are
bound by the law, everyone is also free to create a political party
with the aim of trying to change the law. Even if it is clear from the
outset that such a party will be hard put to win as much as a single
seat.
The launching of the pedophile party is, therefore, not a sign that
anything goes in the Netherlands. Rather it is more a sign of
desperation on the part of a group of pedophiles who for years have
unsuccesfully lobbied politicians to allow sex with children over the
age of 12 (the current legal age is 16) and to lift the ban on child
pornography.
So, the presentation of the party is either a publicity stunt, in which
case they have succeeded, or an effort to put their demands on the
future political agenda, in which case - as the first outraged
reactions here in the Netherllands have clearly shown - they are bound
to fail.
Bertus Hendriks 01-06-2006
See also
On the smells of sex
Alfred Kinsey - the secret life of a
sex researcher
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