Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2021: Week 15
- Content warning: This article contains extensive discussion regarding the sexual abuse of minors.
The Loyal Opposition is a 26-page zine published by Bjo Trimble and John Trimble in March 1964.
The topic of the zine is Walter Breen, convicted serial child sex offender and husband of Marion Zimmer Bradley. It dealt with the fannish reaction to a convicted child molester in the midst of 1960s science fiction fandom and the discourse between the people who didn't want to believe it and those who did, and what these things meant for future conventions.
The zine addressed this topic in relation to Breendoggle, a fan controversy in which some fans wanted Breen banned from Worldcon due to the fact he had sexually molested young girls and boys on multiple occasions and over a period of many years. In fact, Breen was convicted in 1954, likely also in 1964, and then later in the 1990s, and he ultimately died in prison.
"The Loyal Opposition's" content and focus were testimonials from other BNFs who supported Breen and either did not believe these accusations, or did not think they were very important.
This zine was a direct response to a document called The Great Breen Boondoggle, Or All Berkeley Is Plunged Into War which was written and distributed by Pacificon II Committeeman Bill Donaho and mailed to a select group of Bay Area fans as well as other fans in the United States. Some content in "The Loyal Opposition" was quoted in Minac #12, a zine which contains much commentary in defense of Breen.
In "The Loyal Opposition," the Trimbles stated that they "take full responsibility for its contents; with the exception of the excerpts from Dick Ellington's Open Letter and the reprinted material, all of the contents of this magazine have been solicited by us."