ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ: “Pederasty is a serious problem in the gay male community, because it is so pervasive that one could say that is integral to mainstream gay culture.”

We hear a lot about homophobia and bullying, but some researchers find that anti-bullying programs actually cause more bullying. Listening to my inner gay intuition, I’d like to suggest a reason for the latter findings.Where there are more anti-bullying programs, boys are being aroused too early by the prospects of gay sex. In some cases, as in the Minnesota anti-bullying bill, such programs actually structure and encourage contact between self-questioning boys and adult gay men. The result in the Caleb Laieski case was that gay “mentors” who were supposed to protect boys from bullying were actually sodomizing them, in effect outing them. Then they were not helping the outed boys deal with the fallout.

Now the outed boys are going to be targeted for mockery and derision even more by peers who know what happened. Added to this stress is that the boy has to deal with the callousness of the adult male who caused most of the problem.

So the indirect and unintended consequences of anti-bullying programs actually have much more power than the direct and intended results. Boys are drawn early into gay sex by the educational program itself, and they aren’t ready for it. . . .

When I say teenage boys aren’t ready for any of this, I mean they really aren’t ready. Let us note some of the recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice. There has been a spike in HIV infections among boys aged 13-19, and recent data showing that active gay boys in that age range are in emotionally abusive and physically abusive relationships over 40% of the time.  Here we are talking about boys who have come out of the closet, kids who have been told that openness will lead them to a magical happy place. Their straight peers and still-closeted gay peers aren’t exposed to nearly as much emotional strain or physical risk. . . .

When grown men who are thirty and older chase after teenage girls, we tend to call them predators, even if the girls have passed the age of eighteen and are “just legal.”

But for some reason, old men chasing after pubescent boys is not viewed with as much outrage, for several reasons. People tend to blame the pubescent boy because they assume that by the teenage years, if he had sex with a man, it’s because he is gay. This assumption causes most teenage boys who have found themselves in the situation to remain silent about their possible feelings that they were tricked or exploited by the older man. A certain number of them will wish they could go back on what happened, but new laws against “ex-gay therapy” are inscribing into law the notion that it’s not only unwise, but unlawful, to go back on sexual acts that they may been unfairly coaxed into.