One thing that's different when you're young and queer than when you're young and anything else, is the importance of knowing about certain laws in your area. Particularly laws surrounding age of sexual consent. Where same-sex sex isn't outlawed, often times when you're allowed to have it is different from "straights." In The XY Survival Guide: Everything You Need To Know About Being Young And Gay, the "Law" is as significant a chapter as "Coming Out", "Sex", and "Health." The following is an excerpt from the section entitled "The Age of Consent" which talks about the inconsistencies of expected responsibility when you're betwixt and between childhood and adulthood.
The World has an ever-changing view on when — and if — children are allowed to decide who they want to have sex with. In 1886, in the Netherlands, the age of consent was set at 16. Today in the Philippines it's 12. Until recently it was 21 for homosexual acts in England. In America, age limits vary from state to state and range from 13 in New Mexico to 18 in many states. Obviously, there's no easy concrete way to establish when someone can decide to have sex. And in America, we're confused as ever.
It's simple: Any activity involving another person against that person's consent is just plain WRONG. But what is consent and how do we know when consent is given? Certainly — we say — when it comes to sex, people under 18 just don't know what giving consent means. Why is this? Certainly it can't be that we think young people are irresponsible or incapable of making decisions for themselves, since we have no problem giving people under the age of consent a driver's license, letting them babysit, employing hem and trying them as adults in many law courts.
Ironically and sickeningly, while young people are denied their own sexuality, that very same sexuality is used as a commodity for adults. Advertisers clearly aren't confused about whether or not children are sexual. They know their ad campaigns featuring young sexed-up boys and girls not only appeal to the few "deviants" out there, they appeal to the desires of every person. The success of CK ad campaigns, with pubescent youths in briefs and bikinis plastered on every bus stop in North America, is only one of many examples. Elian Gonzalez's shirtless appearance on the cover of Newsweek is another. Children in our society are sexual, as long as it benefits adults in some way.
Otherwise, children are the scapegoats of society. At every opportunity adults jump at the chance to pin the blame on "perverted, evil youth" so they don't have to think about whether they've done something wrong themselves. Just witness the way American press reported on the Columbine High School shootings. Everywhere there were stories of how today's teenagers are corrupt and violent due to their culture (i.e. MTV, movies etc. etc.) Suddenly teenagers were entirely responsible for their actions and — SURPRISE — capable of committing adult crimes. Where, dear adults, was your outcry for the innocence and putrity of those under 18 that you so strongly protect when you argue they can't consent to sex without the help of a law?
According to the federal publication on child abuse called Child Maltreatment 1998, three children per day perish in the United States at the hand of neglectful or abusive parents. But children being beaten to death, severly injured by their parents, or maimed by drunken drivers has never raised half as much fury as so-called "sex crimes," especially when the crimes are between two people on either side of the age of consent.
In undying efforts to convict law offender, we'll do anything to our children, often surpassing the violence and damage of the suspected offense — including lying to them, subjecting them to hours upon hours of loaded questioning by investigators, threatening them, subjecting them to anal and vaginal probing often without and against their consent or even an explanation, and forcing them to give false testimony.
The bottom line is this: while you can be granted, and sometimes burdened with all sorts of adult rights and responsibilities, in many places you cannot decide what happens to your own body — at least according to the courts — until you are 18.
Sometimes these laws aren't enforced. But this mostly applies to straight teenagers, and is the reason why age of consent laws are so crucial an issue for gay youth. It's grossly unfair and unjust that a 17yo can't express his love sexually with his 19yo boyfriend. When it comes to gay teenagers, age of consent laws are specifically abused daily by homophobic police, lawyers, and judges because they can apply them discriminately.
Many people, in having sex when there is a few year age between them, have broken the law and paid severely for doing so. Educate yourself on the law and limits in your state or province and what happens when you break these laws.
Taken from The XY Survival Guide: Everything You Need To Know About Being Young And Gay , written by Benjie Nycum and published in 2000 by XY Press.
In QT's interview with Mike Glatz former managing editor of XY Magazine, he said that he didn't mind if pedophiles buy his magazine for gay youth, because it could keep them afloat financially. The mention of 'youth' and 'pedophiles' set off alarm bells. Click here to find out what viewers thought of Glatz's comment.
Frank Prendergast -- Segment Prducer
There is a utopia out there but I can't find it.
Like youth itself, XY Magazine has the scent of a brave new world.
In this world young men and boys can be who they are and love who they
want. It sounds as freeing as a robin chirping in early May. In this altered universe, all those straight clothing stores would advertise in XY Magazine giving it loads of money to provide information
and reflection for boys who get boners for other boys. Ah yes, life
certainly would be better if those homophobes stopped messin' with our
lives and killing us.
The problem is… we're our own worst enemy. The gay community has
killed more of its own through the transmission of HIV than all the
homophobes in the world combined — which brings me back to XY, the self-proclaimed mag for queer youth. XY doesn't allow pharmaceuticals to advertise in their magazine.
They say that AIDS drugs aren't a part of teenagers' lives and so the
ads wouldn't reflect their audience.
I was surprised when I heard XY's stance and thought that it was a
noble position until I was flipping through the pages of a recent XY issue and spotted
an ad for porno sites. Teens were being urged to set up a cam in their
house to have sex. "If you're between 18-22 with a digital camera and would like to make easy money taking pictures of yourself, we want YOU!!"
If sex is a part of gay teens' lives then so, unfortunately, are
AIDS and drugs. Youth, as many will tell you, can be a dangerous time. Dangerous because when you're young, you feel invincible. I don't know if XY is pushing a picture of youth that isn't accurate or if the powers-that-be have become drunk with the whimsy of youth.
I'm not a big proponent for drug company advertising (in fact I
find their ads deceptively … um ... positive) but let's give ourselves
a reality check. Sex for many youth will lead to death. Youth itself may be strong and
exuberant but it is very much destructible.
