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The University of Minnesota Press, author Judith Levine, and one very hot topic BURN   this   BOOK

ILLUSTRATIONS BY P-JAY FIDLER

By Paul Demko

Pedophilia is all the rage. Intergenerational sex is no longer taboo, and the North American Man/Boy Love Association is ascendant. Pedophilia: a game the whole family can play.

Readers' Digest Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, published earlier this month by the University of Minnesota Press, spent two years grinding through the institutional bureaucracy. After the manuscript was reviewed by staff members at the publishing house, five outside experts weighed in with written critiques. Then a panel of U of M faculty members waded through the critiques, along with a chapter of the proposed book. Everyone who laid eyeballs on Harmful to Minors agreed that it should be published. Listed below are the scholars who reviewed the book prior to its publication, as well as the members of the U of M's faculty committee. OUTSIDE EXPERTS: Janice Haaken, professor of psychology, Portland State University; author of Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking Back James Kincaid, professor of English at the University of Southern California; author of numerous books, including Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting Debbie Nathan, journalist and co-author of Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt Carol Tavris, psychologist and author of numerous books, including Psychobabble and Biobunk: Using Psychology to Think Critically About Issues in the News(One additional scholar reviewed the book anonymously) UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FACULTY PANEL: Daniel Brewer, associate professor of French Lisa Disch, associate professor of political science Raymond Duvall, professor of political science Michal Kobialka, professor of theater arts and dance Mary Jo Maynes, professor of history John Mowitt, professor of cultural studies Jennifer Pierce, associate professor of American studies Katherine Solomonson, professor of architecture

That's what one might well have concluded based on the reaction that greeted Judith Levine's controversial new book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, published earlier this month by the University of Minnesota Press. Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America's Culture and Family Institute in Washington, D.C., condemned it as "very evil." Tim Pawlenty, majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, labeled it "trash" and implored the press to halt publication. Gov. Jesse Ventura's office has received more than 19,000 e-mails opposing the book (nearly all of which are copies of a form letter available at www.conservativepetitions.com). And Harmful to Minors has been vilified on radio: Ian Punnett's morning show on KSTP-AM (1500) and Dan Barreiro's sports powwow on KFAN-AM (1130) locally, and nationally syndicated conservative talk shows including The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program and Michael Savage's Savage Nation. The editorial board of the Lancaster New Era in Pennsylvania declared, "This is a sick book and the University of Minnesota is sick for publishing it."

The U of M Press itself has received a deluge of phone calls and e-mails. "You should one: burn in hell," wrote a concerned Savage Nation listener. "Two: Never receive any federal monies (i.e., my tax dollars) again. Three: burn in hell." Advised a self-described Christian minister: "PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH THIS BOOK. I IMPLORE YOU TO BURN ANY COPIES THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY PUBLISHED." A citizen from Salem, Virginia, noted, "You in Academia are nothing but a bunch of anti-family, anti-American, pro-terrorist, socialist idiots." While the press has staunchly defended the content of the book--and numerous groups, including the Association of American Publishers, the First Amendment Project, and the PEN American Center, have weighed in to defend it--the university administration, which oversees the publishing house, responded to the criticism by ordering a review of its editorial policies.

Amid the melee, Levine's book soared as high as No. 16 on Amazon.com's rundown of top sellers, landing it on the Web site's "Movers & Shakers" list and inspiring the U of M Press to augment its initial run of 3,500 with a second printing of 10,000--uncommon territory for an academic publisher.

"Harmful to Minors launches from two negatives: Sex is not ipso facto harmful to minors; and America's drive to protect kids from sex is protecting them from nothing," Levine writes in her introduction. "Instead, often it is harming them."

But to know that, you'd have to read the book.

Of course, as Pawlenty conceded after denouncing Harmful to Minors on April 5, he hadn't actually read Levine's work in its entirety. No one had: Copies only began arriving in stores in mid-April, and up until that time only a couple of chapter excerpts had been available on the press's Web site.

Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, finds the lack of context, and the snowball effect of the media coverage, galling. "It's like the game of telephone that you play when you're a kid," Samuelson scoffs. "You sit in a circle and whisper in each other's ears. At the end you find out how the message has changed."

 

It took two years for Harmful to Minors to work its way through the University of Minnesota Press editorial process. When Judith Levine's agent submitted a partially completed manuscript in May 2000, it was read by an editor and given the initial green light. The book was then vetted by an eight-person staff committee that included all editors, as well as the director of the press, Douglas Armato. After examining the quality of the writing and research and considering how the work would fit with other books published by the press, the panel endorsed the manuscript.

But the book still had a long way to go. As is standard procedure at the press, the work was sent out to two experts in the field, who reviewed it for scholarly significance and assessed the author's knowledge of relevant research. Both scholars recommended that the book be published. At that point the manuscript was still incomplete: It consisted of seven finished chapters, along with a synopsis of the final four. Because of this, and owing to the controversial subject matter, the U of M Press waited for a completed draft, and then sent out Harmful to Minors once more, to be scrutinized by three additional outside experts. And finally, after Levine made further revisions, a panel of U of M faculty members inspected the five written critiques, the author's credentials, and an excerpt from the book--and unanimously endorsed its publication. (For more about the review process, see accompanying sidebar.)

"It's a very rigorous process," sums up Kathryn Grimes, marketing director for the U of M Press. "We have very high standards for the books we publish." In light of the uproar over Harmful to Minors, Grimes says, she recently took another look at the written critiques sent in by the five outside scholars. "What struck me was that the reviewers thought it was an important work, and that nobody seemed to feel that the author was particularly 'out there.'"

Levine is a Brooklyn-based journalist who has written for publications ranging from the Columbia Journalism Review to Ms. and already has one book, My Enemy, My Love: Women, Men, and the Dilemmas of Gender, under her belt. She has been writing about sexuality for more than two decades and began working on Harmful to Minors in the mid-1990s. She's a founder of the National Writers Union and also of No More Nice Girls, a group that promotes abortion rights through street theater.

The main thrust of Harmful to Minors is the notion that children are sexual beings, whether parents like it or not. And while youth are routinely bombarded with sexual imagery through movies, music, and television, they are provided almost no accurate information about sex. This information blackout, Levine contends, exposes minors to increased risks of disease, abusive relationships, and unsatisfying sex. In making her case, the veteran journalist explores, among other subjects, censorship of pornographic materials, the purging of effective sex education from schools, hysteria over kids who act out sexually, and myths about pedophilia.

Joycelyn Elders, who served in 1993 and 1994 as U.S. Surgeon General under President Clinton, was enlisted to write an introduction to the book. The choice seems prescient in retrospect; Elders was drummed out of the Clinton administration for her frank discussion of masturbation and condoms. Levine would soon join her as a symbol of sexual decadence in conservative circles.

The book's detractors seized upon a section in which the author questions current laws pertaining to statutory rape. Levine recounts the tale of 13-year-old Heather Kowalski and 21-year-old Dylan Healy, two Rhode Island lovers who ran off together for several weeks in 1997 after meeting in an online chat room; their disappearance resulted in a barrage of media coverage and hand-wringing about Internet predators. After the couple turned themselves in, Healy was sentenced to 12 to 24 years in prison for 12 counts of felonious sex with a minor and two counts of crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. The author points out that Healy's cellmate, who had shot a man, got less time for his crime.

"Legally designating a class of people categorically unable to consent to sexual relations is not the best way to protect children, particularly when 'children' include everyone from birth to eighteen," Levine writes. "Criminal law, which must draw unambiguous lines, is not the proper place to adjudicate family conflicts over youngsters' sexuality."

Levine then goes on to describe the way adult-minor sexual relations are handled in Holland, endorsing the approach as a "model of reasonable legislation." Since 1990, under Dutch law, sexual intercourse between adults and minors between the ages of 12 and 16 is legal. If a child or parent believes the child was coerced or exploited, however, criminal charges may be filed against the adult. "The Dutch law, in its flexibility, reflects that late-modern script-scrambling, the hodge-podge of age and experience at the dawn of the twenty-first century," Levine writes.

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