Gender ideology and child abuse apologism: the undeniable links

The shocking case of Rüdiger Lautmann who calls for 'paedophilia' to be reclassified as a sexual identity and added to the rainbow flag

Rüdiger Lautmann

News recently out of the Gender Clinic at the Tavistock that the number of children put on puberty blockers has doubled over the last year to 100 is clearly a major cause for concern regarding the protection and safety of our children. Even more worrying is the evidence, emerging pro-paedophile groups are also involved in campaigning to normalise gender reassignment for children. The starkest example is that of a German sociologist and gay rights advocate, Rüdiger Lautmann, who has argued that children from the age of seven should be able to live as the opposite sex without parental knowledge or consent. He has also written a notorious book, which advocates for paedophilia to be recognised as a “sexual orientation like any other”.

And most shockingly of all, until last year, he was involved in creating a number of daycare centres for children in Berlin as part of a “queer education” project. Following a public outcry, he was kicked out of the organisation, but it seems clear that Lautmann is not the only individual that advocates for the transgendering of children who is also a paedophile apologist.

The transgender and so-called ‘queer’ ideology currently invading political parties, universities and the workplace can be a handy smokescreen for the acceptance and normalisation of the sexual abuse of children.

For those that think the bad old days of the Paedophile Information Exchange, the vile lobby group that infiltrated the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970s are over, think again.

NCCL Press Conference, back in the days when they supported child abusers

There is a new resurgence of campaigners on behalf of paedophiles, and there are even moves to include them in the ‘rainbow coalition’ that began as Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual, and now takes up half of the alphabet. And paedophiles have been given a new makeover by their apologists, with some academics teaching ‘queer studies’ rebranding them as MAPS (Minor Attracted Persons).

Just look at Jacob Breslow, a former trustee at Mermaids, the organisation that campaigns for access to puberty blockers for ‘gender dysphoric’ kids. Breslow resigned from his position at Mermaids and took a leave of absence from his academic post when it was discovered he was a sympathetic advocate for paedophiles.

During a presentation he gave in 2011 to a US organisation which was co-founded in 2003 by a convicted child sex offender, Breslow argued that ‘Minor Attracted Persons’, should be better understood, and hinted that paedophilia should be categorised as a sexual minority.

Rüdiger Lautmann is a sociologist based in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of “The Lust for Children: Portrait of a Paedophile” (1994), and is accused of being a paedophile advocate, writes the German news platform Focus. Lautmann himself rejects these allegations, claiming that the purpose of his study of 60 men who had admitted to sexually abusing children was to understand and describe the phenomenon.

The 87-year-old is on the board of directors of SDPqueer which both promotes the use of puberty blockers for young people with gender dysphoria and lobbies for children to have a legal right to self-identify as the opposite sex, unfettered by any medical or other professional gatekeeping.

SPDqueer is aligned with Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), which wants to introduce a self-identification law for trans people, similar to the Scottish law proposed last year by Nicola Sturgeon, and since blocked by the British government.

Like many other pro-trans, ‘queer’ organisations, SPDqueer started out as a group advocating for lesbian and gay rights, changing its name in 2016 in order to incorporate a number of other sexual minorities.

It is also lobbying for the criminalisation of what is known as ‘deadnaming’. This is the public or private use to a transgender person of their original name, and would become punishable by a fine of up to €10,000. SDPqueer wants every German citizen to have the right to change the gender on their legal papers once a year.

Lautmann has repeatedly advocated for paedophilia to be recognised as “a sexual orientation, like any other“, and has been involved with SDPqueer in Berlin ever since the group was first formed in 2011.

His book is based on interviews with 60 men who openly admit to sexually abusing young children. Most of the victims were boys, though there were also some girls. According to Lautmann, these men “love the children“, buying them toys and other treats. Lautmann claims that the children are free to leave their “lover“ whenever they choose. Paedophile apologists in the UK put forward very similar ideas, often that children can consent to, and benefit from, sexual abuse by adults. Both of these men think that even a four-year-old can consent to sex with an adult.

Lautmann claims that the paedophiles he wrote about never forced children, allowing them only to “lead sexual activity“, and says that the vast majority of encounters are consensual. Again, like sexual libertarians in the UK such as Peter Tatchell, he claims that to prevent adult men from having sex with very young children is to deny the children pleasure, and that the child has a right to make a choice.

He also insists that paedophilia is a sexual orientation rather than a perversion, which is precisely how paedophiles have ended up being included in the rainbow flag – just as “Minor-Attracted People” (“MAPs”) have in the UK.

Lautmann has been calling for an end to the age of consent since 1979. One of his close associates is Helmut Kentler, a paedophile and sexologist. He claimed that paedophiles’ “lust for children” leads them to have a strong desire to take care of them. Wanting to see whether they would make good foster parents, he ran a project that actually placed foster children with paedophiles, in order to test out his theory.

In 2022, following several complaints from the public, Lautmann was prevented from taking part in setting up daycare centres for children. He had been on the board for this project, coordinated by the Berlin Senate Department for Youth, Education and Family.

It seems that those who support ‘transitioning’ children often work hand-in-hand with those wishing to gain sexual access to children. One person, posting on a paedophile forum as Krumme-13, states: “Gender and sexual identity do not only begin on the 14th birthday, when the so-called protection age limit ends. Children can, and want to, experience their childhood sexuality self-determined beforehand.”

But not everyone is shocked at the pro-paedophile, pro-transgender movement. Some mainstream German newspaper coverage of the protests against the daycare centre claimed that objections came only from anti-LGBTQ, extreme right-wing campaigners. Whilst there is one group that certainly does fit this description, much of the protest was from parents, child protection experts, and feminists.

Anyone protesting extreme transgender ideology and paedophilia apologism is accused of being bigoted and on the extreme right. The German Green Party put out a statement about the rally that said there was no place for “right-wing hatred and anti-queer agitation” or “the slander of rainbow daycare” in the Tempelhof Schonberg borough of Berlin, where the multigenerational house for gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and intersex people was to have room for 93 children at its daycare centre. Back in October 2022, more than 300 people opposed the right-wing demonstration, standing up for “diversity” and against “homophobic hate speech”.

These new day-care centres are part of a pilot project initiated by the Berlin counselling service, which insists that “the queer way of life should be accessible to children” via the provision of books about same-sex relationships, as opposed to the usual mainstream offerings. All children are accepted, whether or not they come from so-called ‘queer’ families. In an interview last year, the managing director said that “a couple of parents got in touch with us whose son likes to wear a dress and hairclips for his birthday. I hope that this will find more acceptance with us than the previous daycare centre.”

Children attending the daycare centres would be educated about LGBT issues. So far so good – this seems the opposite of what happened under Section 28, which I campaigned against. But looking behind the scenes, it is clear that both paedophile apologism and being in favour of transitioning children are part and parcel of the project ethos.

Although Lautmann denies that he is a paedophile apologist, he was a member of the board of trustees of a Human Sexuality Working Group, which, at that time took the position that children can consent to sex with adults. The evidence speaks for itself. Protecting children from transgender ideology could well protect them from sexual abuse.