Need help from DU History buffs:

[TheMightyFavog]

I've got a teabagger on Faebook that's claiming that Mahatma Gandhi was a pedophile. Something about having sex with a bunch of twelve year olds. My bullshit detector is seriously redlining here, anybody got any good sources showing he's wrong?

[handmade34]

1. that's trash

...and the person making the claim has the burden of proof

[rucky]

2. Make him prove it.

[Posteritatis]

3. His marriage was arranged when they were both thirteen or fourteen, I believe

That probably got spun into "the adult Gandhi was clearly a child molestor" through the usual leaps of logic.

Of course, the burden of proof is on the teabagger to support his argument. I'm sure if you press him he'll come up with some wonderfully "credible" sources, of course. ;)

[Luminous Animal]

8. This is a pretty good article about Ghandi and sex... no child molesting.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html

[Warpy]

4. There is actually some evidence for it in the western sense

because after his vow of celibacy, he slept with anyone who was willing, but sleeping is all they ever did. Some of the willing were family members. It was his way of testing his resolve. He passed the tests.

It's the tropics, so sleeping is done nude.

[mzteris]

5. here:

"Mohandas Gandhi's sleeping arrangements attracted public attention during the winter of 1946-47, when he was trying to quell violence between Muslims and Hindus in the Noakhali district in what is now Bangladesh. It came out that Gandhi was bunking nightly with his 19-year-old grandniece, Manu. In part this was an effort to stay warm in the winter chill, but Gandhi soon acknowledged there was more to it: he was testing his vow of brahmacharya, or total chastity in thought and deed. If he could spend the night in a woman's embrace without feeling sexual stirrings, it would demonstrate that he had conquered his carnal impulses and become "God's eunuch." It turned out that Manu was not his first brahmacharya lab partner--he'd also recently gotten naked (partly, at least) with another young woman in his extended family, starting when she was 18.

Unschooled as you are in the mysteries of the East, David, you scoff--and to be frank, there were quite a few raised eyebrows in India. One of the most vocal critics was Nirmal Kumar Bose, a university lecturer who served as Gandhi's interpreter in Noakhali. While conceding that no hanky-panky had taken place (Gandhi and his entourage typically all slept in the same room) . . . Gandhi believed that sex for pleasure was sinful (for that matter, he felt eating chocolate was sinful), that sexual attraction between men and women was unnatural, and that husband and wife should live together as brother and sister, having sex only for purposes of procreation. . . .

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2521/did-mahatma-gandhi-sleep-with-virgins

[Warren Stupidity]

11. 19 and 18. Ok, so the charge was pedophilia.

So this does not address that charge.

[mzteris]

13. did you not read it?

He didn't HAVE SEX WITH HARDLY ANYONE! And the ones he "slept with" - and that was only sleeping - were overage anyway.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Did you not read my reply?

The charge was pedophilia and the data provided is for two women who a) he probably did not have sex with, and b) were not children.

I have no idea what you and I are arguing about, but I'm pretty sure you are dead wrong :-)

[Historic NY]

24. In 18th/19th century America unmarried people slept together...

with a bundling board between them,or being wrapped in blankets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(tradition)

(interesting I have to check out that court case its from my county)

[sufrommich]

6. He's getting his right wing smears mixed up, that claim is

usually reserved for Mohammad. :crazy:

[OHdem10]

7. Could it be that the poor soud has confused Mahatma with Mohammed

the prophet of Islam. Mohammed had what some might
call a child bride and the Fundies make this same
accusation against him. Remind them that even in
this "Christian" country men married some very very
young girls in earlier times. Different times had
different social rules.

[kenny blankenship]

9. I can't give you the source but i read that he sometimes or once slept with young girls in his bed

without having sex with them to, I guess, improve his chastity through what you might call stress testing.

You don't have to search far on the internetz to find out something about this:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2521/did-mahatma-gandhi-sleep-with-virgins

If you're interested you can take it from there. I don't care about this, so I'm not researching it further.

[Pamelita]

18. Intersting

Still no source though.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Any standard bio

but you should know that facts are liberal in tone...

We are at the point where we live in two realities... so it don't matter what source you show him... it really does not.

[Lasher]

12. He slept naked with young girls but claims he never had sex with them.

The story is laid out here at Wikipedia. It's creepy but there is no evidence to counter his claim that he never had sex with any of them. Even at that, did that make him a pedofile? I don't know but I wouldn't have left my daughter alone with him.

[mzteris]

14. there were usally lots of peoplel al l sleeping in the same room

[Lasher]

16. Please consider reading the Wiki section I linked.

It's wrong to characterize this as just crowded bedrooms or to suppose it happened in an environment where sex could not have occurred because others would have witnessed it. He slept naked alongside young girls, in the same bed, to test his willpower to resist copulating with them.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Your wiki page doesn't help you much.

The closest we get to an actual act of pedophilia is 'sleeping with the 16 year old wife' of an associate. Unfortunately for your prejudices, this cannot be pedophilia if the woman in question was of legal age, even if there was actual sex involved. The other documented instances involve 18 and 19 year old women, which even by our current standards is not pedophilia. In all the documentation cited so far, everyone involved insisted that in fact there was no sex. So we are left with 'nude sleeping'. There is no crime there. You might not know if sleeping in the nude is 'pedofilia', but I do. It is not.

[Lasher]

20. Perhaps objectivity is being compromised here less by my prejudices than by yours.

I didn't pass judgment on him as a pedofile. I said I didn't know. Learn to read.

Being a wife, perhaps by arranged marriage as was the custom in that region, does not make Abba's age not sixteen at the time. Abha Gandhi died in 1995 at the age of 68, which means this incident occurred around 1943. And so a 73 year old Mohandas Gandhi slept in the same bed with the 16 year old wife of his grandnephew while they both were naked, to see if he would get a woody.

And yet you try to characterize this as simply sleeping in the nude. It was not. I said it's creepy. It is.

[HopeHoops]

19. That happened in 1643 on the Starship Enterprise while it was in orbit of Alderon - enter Death Star

Fortunately, the Enterprise was able to escape the explosion shortly before Buzz Lightyear arrived and totally fucked everything up because he had a Woody.

Tell that fucking teabagger to get the FACTS straight!

[Scruffy1]

21. First his name was Mohandas not Mahatma

I'm always amazed that people who claim to be his followers never bother to even read his autobiography.

[applegrove]

22. When he was older he used to share a bedroom with girls. He never touched them but it was creepy

enough reading about that in a ghandi biography I read.

[WillyT]

23. Look Up Bar And Bat Mitzfah...

According to Jewish law, when Jewish children reach 13 years old for boys and 12 years old for girls they become responsible for their actions, and "become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah" (English: Daughter (Bat) or Son (Bar) of the commandments). In many Conservative and Reform synagogues, girls celebrate becoming a Bat Mitzvah at age 12<1>, along with boys at 13. This also coincides with physical puberty.<2> Prior to this, the child's parents hold the responsibility for the child's adherence to Jewish law and tradition. After this age, children bear their own responsibility for Jewish ritual law, tradition, and ethics and are privileged to participate in all areas of Jewish community life.<3> Sometimes the ceremony itself is erroneously referred to as a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_and_Bat_Mitzvah

All I mean by this, is that for most of human history, the age of consent was more closely related to the age of puberty, and NOT just in Jewish tradition.

There were no public schools, most were not going to go to college, back then you became an adult as soon as you reached puberty. And yes you could have sex, but you also had to work your as off every day because you were now considered an adult and had to work the farm.

Now a days... we have the problem of backing the age of consent away form puberty because we want our young people to have a chance at learning and succeeding before being encumbered by the responsibilities of parenthood.

:shrug: