A queer archival project is featuring an uncritical “tribute” to the co-founder of one of the most notorious pro-pederasty groups in the world. The LGBTQ History Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, claims it is “dedicated to preserving the lives and legacies of LGBTQ+ activists from the first wave of gay liberation.”
Incorporated as a tax-exempt organization in 2020, the LGBTQ History Project is run by August Bernadicou, who started recording interviews with the “pioneers” of the gay movement when he was just 13 years-old.
“Through our efforts, we aim to shed light on the stories and experiences of those who fought for LGBTQ+ rights. A shared history fosters empathy, bridges divisions, and works towards a future where everyone can thrive regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” the Project explains on their website. “We aspire to create a society that embraces equality and justice. We seek to nurture empathy and compassion, contribute to a more inclusive world, and evolve with the community’s needs.”
One of the “pioneers” highlighted by the charity is David Thorstad, the co-founder of the North American Man-Boy Love Association and a former member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
On the LGBTQ History Project’s page for Thorstad, he is described as “consistently [fighting] to limit oppression based on sexual preferences,” adding that he fought against “the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.”
Under Thorstad’s leadership, NAMBLA lobbied to abolish age of consent laws and fought to free men who had been convicted of the statutory rape of children from prison.
Thorstad was among the NAMBLA executives named a defendant in the infamous Curley v. NAMBLA litigation, in which the organization was represented by the ACLU. The lawsuit was launched in 2000 by the family of a 10-year-old boy who had been raped and murdered by two pedophiles.
One of the pedophiles who had kidnapped, sexually tortured, and ultimately killed the child was a member of NAMBLA at the time the crime was committed, and pro-pedophilia literature produced by NAMBLA was found in his vehicle. The Curley family accused NAMBLA of inciting child sexual abuse with their “adult-child sexual relationship propaganda.”
In 1981, Thorstand wrote a pamphlet titled “Boys Speak on Boy Love” in which he boasted that “NAMBLA believes that children need more than just sexual freedom, but it also recognizes that the denial of sexual pleasure can inflict severe and lasting pain.” The pamphlet featured a number of “testimonies” claimed to be written by pubescent boys who endorsed adult-child sexual relationships.
Despite Thorstad’s claims that being a man who wanted to have sex with underage boys was akin to being a “Jew in Nazi Germany,” the LGBTQ History Project not only boosted an article from Thorstad in 2019, but also posted a heartfelt tribute to him following his death in 2021. In the 2019 article, Thorstad slammed Stonewall for being too concerned with assimilating into wider society.
“I am sad and shook by the untimely passing of David Thorstad,” Bernadicou wrote in his statement, revealing that in the two years before his death, they conversed over email at least 745 times, with the former feeling that he felt “connected” to the latter.
“While I don’t agree with some of his politics, our exchanges have impacted how I see the world and myself. I guess we are both underdogs—lost in a time loop of yesterday if that day even existed. He was the last of the dying breed; fighters who never cared and cared even less the older they got,” Bernadicou concluded in his statement about the man who created one of the most well-known pro-pedophile groups in the United States.
But Bernadicou’s connections to Thorstad and organizations with questionable links go farther. In his autobiography, he proudly boasts that he received the Charles Shively Award in Gay Liberation from the William A. Percy Foundation in 2023.
The foundation’s namesake, William A. Percy III, was a gay studies professor from Boston who died in 2022. On his personal website, he hosted many of Thorstad’s writings, and the organization that bears his name also posting a number of concerning articles.
One such article positively reviewed the book from Allyn Walker, a female-to-male “non-binary” academic, who was forced to resign from a criminal justice assistant professorship for defending the “dignity” of “minor attracted people.” Another article hosted by the foundation claimed pedophilia to be purely a “moral panic,” with a third arguing that there is no link between viewing child pornography, and becoming a child molester.
In 2021, Bernadicou was also given the Troy Perry Media Activism Award. Reverend Troy Perry is the founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, with a ministry for the LGBT community. As such, he has been invited to the White House by Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama.
