North American Man/Boy Love Association

North American Man/Boy Love Association

A NAMBLA logo. The capital M and lowercase b symbolize a man and a boy.
Founded	December 2, 1978; 45 years ago (1978-12-02)[1]
Founder	David Thorstad
Type	Unincorporated association
Focus	Pedophile and pederasty activism
Location	New York City and San Francisco
Area served	North America
Method	Removing age of consent laws

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors^[2][3] and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve what it considers coercion.^[2][4]

The group no longer holds regular national meetings, and as of the late 1990s—to avoid local police infiltration—the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters.^[4][5] Around 1995, an undercover detective discovered there were 1,100 people on the organization's rolls.^[4] NAMBLA was the largest group in International Pedophile and Child Emancipation (IPCE), an international pro-pedophile activist organization.^[6] Since then, the organization has dwindled to only a handful of people, with many members joining online pedophile networks, according to Xavier Von Erck, director of operations at the anti-pedophile organization Perverted-Justice.^[7] As of 2005^[update], a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco.^[4]