Yes, that was still the process of discarding the old paradigm and introducing a new one, in the domain of party politics and writing programmes. In the domain of legislation the process probably ended 1994 when the same age of consent for straight and gay sex was introduced. The press exaggerates the affair of debating paedophilia and the age of consent shamelessly though. We didn't kick the paedophiles out without a debate: this topic had to be debated. Nowadays it is taboo. Re-read the absurdity of the laws we had then, and you know why we had to question everything, in this case very vehemently and unharmonously, by the way.

The main proponent of abolishing the age of consent, a man always accompanied by half a dozen kids, hijacked every party conference. He had picked them up from the street. These kids hadn't known an adult paying attention to them before and they were absolutely loyal to him. Whenever we tried to kick their topic off the agenda they started a noise. We delegated the matter to a commission in which he could participate. Probably that was naïve, but so what?