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| − | AKA The '''Breen Boondogle''' or the '''Breenigan'''. In [[1963]], six years after the second [[Exclusion Act]], the [[pacificon ii|Pacificon II Committee]] announced that they were banning [[Walter Breen]] from the convention. The committee announced their intention in a [[PR]] well before the [[Worldcon]] was held, explaining that they had been advised that they might be held liable if [[Breen]] (who was known by many to have had sexual relations with boys) were to seduce an underage male fan there. This [[Plunging All Fandom into War|plunged all of active fandom into war]].
| + | #REDIRECT [[Walter Breen#Breendoggle]] [[Category:redirect]] |
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| − | At around the same time, [[Breen]] was blackballed by the 13 members of [[FAPA]] needed to drop him from [[FAPA]]'s waiting list, but within a very short period of time a different group of 13 blackballed the ''entire waitlist''. The Secretary Treasurer took notice of the fact that FAPA had no waitlist, and came up with a handy list of names -- which "just happened" to be the original waitlist (before [[Breen]] was blackballed) in the original order. This became moot when [[Breen]] took on a ''de facto'' membership when he married [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]], who was already a member.
| + | {{fanhistory | year=1963}} |
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| − | Despite protests and even outright boycotts by some, [[Breen]] was not allowed to attend the [[Pacificon II]]. [[Bill Donaho]] outlined the [[committee]]'s actions, detailing incidents which had been observed regarding [[Breen]] that fell short of seducing youths but nonetheless concerned the committee, in a pre-convention [[fanzine]] called ''[[The Boondoggle]]'' (full title: ''The Great Breen Boondoggle or All Berkeley Is Plunged into War''). This was marked as a letter-substitute and also marked as DNQ: nevertheless, the resulting [[fandom]]-wide War is often referred to as the Breendoggle or the '''Breen Boondoggle'''.
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| − | Although [[Breen]]'s behavior ''at [[conventions]]'' right around the time of [[Pacificon II]] seems to have been beyond reproach, [[Breen]] (who also wrote an authoritative book on man-boy love) was known by many [[fans]], especially in the [[Bay Area]], to have engaged in sex with boys. (Ultimately, he died in prison a multiply-convicted pederast.)
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| − | But even 40 years after the event, the sole point fans on both sides can agree upon is that the resulting feud had long-lasting effects, including leading to a proliferation of mutually exclusive private [[apas]] where the opposing forces retired to lick their wounds and assure themselves that they had been undeniably right while the other side had been unmistakably wrong. Though [[Donaho]] later (by Feb 10, 1964, per a letter to [[Alva Rogers]]) came to believe that the expulsion was "both ethically wrong and stupid."
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| − | But over the years, more evidence has become public and we can now be reasonably sure that he was guilty of substantially what he was accused of. (Perhaps most damning, [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]], one of his vigorous defenders at the time, later testified under oath that she was aware of his activities.)
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| − | By today's standards, of course, the [[Pacificon II]] committee took the minimum possible action. The controversy over the expulsion doubtless had a number of sources, but the main one seems to have been that, while [[Breen]]'s behavior was known to some, it was not known to all [[fans]] or even to a majority. Only ten years after Joe McCarthy, [[fannish]] tolerance for unsubstantiated accusations was very low, so when the first that many people heard about Breen's acitvities was an official [[committee]] publication, the reaction was decidedly mixed.
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| − | See [[moskowitz-pacificon-ii-reminiscence|Sam Moskowitz' Pacificon II reminiscence]] for some additional information on this.
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| − | See also [[Exclusion Acts]]
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| − | {{fanhistory}} | |
| | [[Category:feud]] | | [[Category:feud]] |
| | + | [[Category:US]] |
