In ten to thirty years, the survivors will speak out

The New York Times reported this week  that the American Boy Scouts are ending a nationwide ban on gay leaders. According to the Times, the organization was seeking to resolve an issue that threatened to tear apart the organization and expose it to crippling lawsuits. Discrimination based on sexual orientation will also be barred in all Boy Scout offices and for all paid jobs. The step, the paper says, is aimed at heading off lawsuits in New York, Colorado and other states that prohibit such discrimination in employment.

It's a pity, however, that the Times missed a shocking story which emerged at the same time as jubilation over the new policy. If they had the stomach for it, it might make readers think twice about the wisdom of allowing the Boy Scouts to have gay leaders.

It is the story of Moira Greyland, a woman who has made a career for herself as a harpist of Celtic music and the founder of two opera companies in the United States. She is the daughter of two American writers. Her mother, Marion Zimmer Bradley, who died in 1999, was a revered author of science fiction and fantasy novels. Her best-known book is the Mists of Avalon, a feminist reimagining of the Arthurian legend. Her second husband, and Moira’s father, Walter Breen, wrote books on numismatics. But her parents had other interests, too.

The story emerged last year when a blogger published two searing autobiographical poems written by Greyland. It was already a matter of public record that Breen was a convicted child abuser who died in jail in 1993. But no one had known how Moira’s own mother treated her. “She was cruel and violent, as well as completely out of her mind sexually,” she wrote in an accompanying email. The news was so convincing that other science fiction writers were horrified and speechless. Some of her fans burned her books.

This week, Greyland gave more details about her childhood on another blog.

"Suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrified at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3-12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it."

Bradley and Breen were part of the gay and bi-sexual subculture of West Coast America. That they were paedophiles was just an added extra, as their daughter testifies.  (more...)

In ten to thirty years, the survivors will speak out

Background:

The Story of Moira Greyland