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of classic paedophilia, as practised by the Greeks, for example, where it is an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life, I think there can be something said for it.
    Now again, this is not something that appeals to me, although when I was younger it would most certainly have appealed to me in the sense that I would have greatly relished the prospect of an older, attractive, mature man taking me under this wing, lovingly introducing me to sexual realities, and treating me with affection and teaching me about life—yes, I think that would be lovely; I would have enjoyed that.
    The conversation moved on to talk about public attitudes to paedophilia.
    I think there is complete and utter hysteria about this subject, and there is also confusion between homosexuality and paedophilia on the one hand and between paedophilia and pederasty on the other.
    Norris also attacked the media, criticising them by saying that,
    for example, the gutter press in England and Ireland fanned the flames of this kind of thing, and they dehumanised people, called them evil beasts, perverts and all this kind of thing …
    Of course there is a whole spectrum. In my opinion, the teacher, or Christian Brother, who puts his hand into a boy’s pocket during a history lesson, that is one end of the spectrum. But then there is another. There is the person who attacks children of either sex, rapes them, brutalises them and then murders them. But the way things are presented here it’s almost as if they were all exactly the same and I don’t think they are.
    And I have to tell you this—I think that the children in some instances are more damaged by the condemnation than the actual experience.
    In her article for Magill , Burke said that Senator Norris ‘did not appear to endorse any minimum age, or endorse my protest that a child was not capable of informed consent,’ quoting him as saying that ‘the law in this sphere should take into account consent rather than age.’ The Mail commented:
    When asked about incest, he seemed to have no objections in principle. As Miss Burke explained: ‘He hesitated, and conceded that in the case of girls a case could be made for a ban, as a possible resulting pregnancy might be genetically undesirable.’
    In the same edition John Waters (now a columnist with the Irish Times and the Mail on Sunday) crystallised the issue. In his full-page essay he wrote: ‘Sorry David, this is not about your sexuality. It’s about your stance on sex abuse.’ Norris’s comments about being introduced to sexual behaviour by older men was, according to Waters, unexceptionable in itself.
    It becomes more ominous, however, when connected to other remarks in the interview. For example, in one passage, David Norris appears to be saying that sexually abused children might suffer more from the exposure and ‘condemnation’ of their abuser than from the abuse itself.
    Taken in the round, his comments amounted to at least an insinuation that this society is excessively hung up about paedophilia and that there are other, more laid back but perhaps more appropriate options for societies in perceiving and dealing with the issue.
    The media response to all this has, in general, been of a piece with the treatment of recent controversies involving the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh and film director Roman Polanski. In both cases the defining question appeared to be not the action of these individuals but that they were being challenged at all.
    Three years ago David Norris joined with sundry ‘artists’ and media people to defend Ó Searcaigh following the showing of a shocking documentary that raised serious questions about his relations with teenage boys in Nepal. In a letter to the Irish Times , Norris described that controversy as a ‘witch hunt’ and questioned the motives of the filmmaker. Is there, perchance, a pattern here?
    The point about the Norris