Hubert Kennedy
Hubert Kennedy (born 1931) - professor of mathematics, is known for his work on both mathematics and the German Homosexual movement - has written defiantly on the subject of man-boy love:
- What has surprised me is the extent to which the view that all sexual contacts between adults and children is harmful to the child has become accepted fact. This view is, of course, patent nonsense. To make it the basis of any discussion of the matter is to preclude any rational discussion. And rational discussion is what is sorely needed, for in its absence, real harm is being done to children—and the men (and women) who love them. I hope that recalling the books reviewed here will contribute to a better understanding of this controversial subject.[1]
Kennedy was once listed on the Editorial Board of Paidika.
Biography
From 1961 he was professor of mathematics, with research interest in the history of mathematics, at Providence College (Rhode Island). He spent three sabbatical years doing research in Italy and Germany. He published a definitive biography of Giuseppe Peano who conceived modern mathematical notation.
Kennedy came out as gay on the cover of the magazine The Cowl, and, along with Eric Gordon, was part of the first Gay Pride parade in Providence, Rhode Island, which was held on June 26, 1976.
In 1986 Kennedy moved to San Francisco, where he continued his historical research, now on the beginnings of the gay movement in Germany. He has over 200 publications in several languages, from an analysis of the mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx and a revelation of Marx's homophobia, to work on theoretical genetics. Most relevant here, Kennedy published on and edited the collected writings of the German homosexual emancipationist/theorist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. His translations of the boy-love novels of the German anarchist writer John Henry Mackay in Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay (New York: Mackay Society, 1983), have helped establish Mackay's place in the gay canon.
Kennedy wrote the foreword for the American edition of Tom O'Carroll's Paedophilia: The Radical Case,[2] published in 1982 by the LGBTQ+ Boston press Alyson Publications, and continued to write reasonably on boy-love and BL figures (e,g. Peter Schult). In Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement and Male Bonding Before Hitler's Rise (1991), Kennedy also published text from Der Eigene, the world's first gay journal which also discussed pederasty. For further treatment of Der Eigene, and a link thereto, see Historical examples of LGBT-MAP unity.