Heretic TOC

Not the dominant narrative

The long ARMS of the law

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“Show me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find enough in them to hang him.” These chilling words, or some remembered approximation of them, are said to have been uttered to his clerical staff by Cardinal Richelieu, the notoriously ruthless, Machiavellian chief minister of King Louis XIII of France. He had the good sense not to write them down. So the cardinal had much better sense than me, a man who will considered honest, I trust, at least by his peers, and who has written a great many more lines than six. Goodness, how many times might […]

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The pencil is mightier than the sword?

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Heretic TOC welcomes Peter Herman’s return as a guest blogger today, exactly a year after his first piece, Skateboarding as metaphor for social shifts. Peter, a veteran activist, remains an occasional contributor to the NAMBLA website. JE SUIS STEVEN ADRIAN FREEMAN Worldwide, anger was expressed over the despicable murder of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, fast followed by equally predictable outrage over the magazine’s latest depiction of the prophet Muhammad in the wake of those deaths. One of the preferred symbols of solidarity with those who created the cartoons is the pencil. Such was the case recently in London’s Trafalgar Square. It is

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At last, the paedophile as hero!

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The paedophile as hero (well, a basically decent guy at least) isn’t exactly an overworked figure in contemporary commercial fiction, so when one turns up who is kind, wise, witty and moral, and even so handsome and athletic that women fall hopelessly (in every sense) in love with him, it is time to pay attention. Heretic TOC’s guest blogger today, “Dissident”, has done just that, by reviewing Pedal, last year’s debut novel by Canadian writer Chelsea Rooney (Caitlin Press, 2014). Dissident is a freelance editor and professional website administrator who also earns part of his living writing fiction, with a substantial

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Hi, this is Charles. I’ve been a naughty boy…

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Like Chris Denning, about whom I wrote last time, Charles Napier was a very bright spark – witty, charming, the life and soul of the party. Even the judge who sentenced him to thirteen years just before Christmas admitted that as a popular (not feared) young prep school teacher in the 1960s and 70s Charles for the most part charmed the pants off his mainly pre-teen pupils, whatever his principal accuser, cry-baby journalist Francis Whine (sorry, Wheen), might claim. I will return to his accusations, taking them seriously along with much worse allegations that Charles appears to have made no attempt

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I was severely amused by paedo Chris Denning

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Well, that’s it, another Christmas Day is over. Mine was fine, I hope yours was, but it must have been pretty bleak for Charles Napier and Chris Denning. Thirteen years for both of them! Charles Napier, sentenced the day before Christmas Eve, got exactly the same as was meted out to Chris Denning earlier in the month, as though these savage punishments were choreographed to send a seasonal message of goodwill to all mankind except paedophiles. The message might almost, indeed, have been tailored specially for Heretic TOC, bearing in mind that I personally knew both of these guys and announced

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The rise of the lachrymocracy

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Heretic TOC is on tour right now. I am writing far from home, on a borrowed PC, in the midst of a seasonal round of boozy festivities with friends in London and elsewhere, in what has become something on an annual catch-up fest. It’s because I live at such a distance from the capital, you see, which is where many old pals happen to be. I’d like to see them more often, but… On the most festive day of all, though, I expect to be back in my northern fastness, rapt in the Scrooge-like pleasure of counting my money. Not that

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Slapping the thighs of sodomy with mirth

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And now for something really different, as they used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus: a guest blog with satirical verse grounded in the classics. Just to get the ball rolling, here is a stanza of introductory doggerel from me: Is buggery our birthright? No, let’s keep a boy’s arse tight, Says our guest blogger today, Delight in his body but not in that way! Andrew Calimach is a Romanian-American author and descendant of the Calimachis, an old Moldavian ruling family. His research into the homoerotic domain of Greek mythology was published in 2002 under the title Lovers’ Legends: The

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Oh shit, I forgot the kid’s birthday!

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Husbands notoriously, or at least stereotypically, forget their wedding anniversary. Having just failed to mark Heretic TOC’s second anniversary on time, I am unsure whether this reflects my unromantic nature as a male blogger, or whether blogging is not supposed to be a project one is faithfully wedded to anyway, or whether we should all divorce ourselves from anniversary angst. Catching up belatedly on the fact this blog’s second birthday was on 8 November – oh shit it’s a birthday, that’s even worse: I missed the kid’s birthday! – I do actually see that it is a useful moment for reflection

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Inadmissible Testimony

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I always knew my lengthy interview in July for an upcoming TV documentary might go unused, even though the company making it, Testimony Films, made a considerable investment in my appearance. They gave me two nights’ hotel accommodation and other expenses, and committed a five-strong production crew to an entire day’s filming and studio hire in London, over 100 miles from their Bristol base, solely for my input. A couple of weeks ago, as briefly reported here in response to a request for a progress report, I said I had received an email from Testimony saying “As this is such a

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Paedophilia more popular than icecream in 2007

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Pedophilia has been more popular than icecream since about 1979. Paedophilia, however, has always been less popular than icecream except in just one year, 2007, when it enjoyed a brief moment of glory, pulling ahead of icecream only to fall back again the following year. Heretic TOC was inspired to make these discoveries following comments on Boy Chat about Ice-Cream Hands, the short film introduced here in the previous blog, ‘Harmless’ paedos venture out of the shadows. In the BC thread, “cabinet maker” found the film “creepy as shit”, adding “the ice cream man is a pedophile? how much more stereotypical

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