Word: bronx
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Melzer, 53, until recently taught physics at New York City's prestigious Bronx High School of Science. In his 25 years at the school, Melzer's students knew him as a solid if unspectacular tutor. They were unaware, however, that for close to a decade he has also been a leader of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a 1,000-member group whose goal is the legalization of what it considers "consensual" sex between men and preteen and adolescent boys, but what most people consider child molestation. He appears on the masthead of its newsletter, the Bulletin...
Melzer is a dumpy, artless man with thick, black-rimmed glasses. "I've never broken the law anywhere," he insists, "and I've never, never, in any way, shape or form done anything improper" at Bronx Science. Answering what he thought was an inquiry from a British pedophile society (in reality, it was a postal-service sting), he wrote in 1979 that he was "attracted to boys up to the age of about 16" but added that he was "not willing to engage in unlawful acts...
Special commissioner Stancik suggests that if Melzer stays, the classroom might quickly empty. The question he'd ask Melzer's defenders, he says, is "how they would feel about their child being in that person's care." Not pleased, comes the reply from some vocal Bronx Science parents and students. Says 10th-grader Sammy Kim: "It doesn't matter if he does it or not, it's just that he advocates having sex with little boys. It's . . . it's his mind." A Bronx Science student's mother, who wishes to be identified only as Kate, is more direct...
...reporter talked with Kate on a conference call last week, the third party disagreed. Says her son Jake, a Bronx Science junior: "To anyone who's read The Crucible or knows about the Salem witch trials, it's somewhat frightening. The end result is a fear of people who are just members of organizations." Whether or not Melzer would consider introducing the practices of adulthood to his students at Bronx Science, he has already plunged them into the adult world's moral debates...
...pass away so that their children can be better prepared. That's not easy. Denial and shame are sometimes so strong that some parents never admit, to officials or anyone else, that they have AIDS. Marina Alvarez is not one of them. She founded a support group in the Bronx, New York, for mothers like herself who are HIV positive. "Information dispels fear," she says. "I can't say that my sons are absolutely O.K. with my illness. I don't think anybody's ever O.K. with a life-threatening illness. But they don't live in shame...