Comments

1
You could have spared yourself the rushed write-up and held it off for a future special feature in 'Youth Pastor Watch.'
2
How long is "a long, long time?"
4
@ 3, telling someone to go kill themselves is shitty. Come up with something else.
5
Glad Dan spoke up early and quickly...this is really quite bad.
6
Killing or not killing himself will not make @1 not a dipshit.
7
Obviously this is tragic and our thoughts are with the victim.

However, this tragedy says nothing about all homosexual activists or about any other homosexual activists.

It doesn't mean that all or most homosexual activists abuse teenage boys.

It would be demagogic and prejudicial to try to fan this tragedy into a sweeping condemnation of all homosexual activists.

Perhaps some will try to do that, but if so they will demonstrate themselves to be hateful malicious bigots who are part of the problem in our society and not part of the solution.

Just like posting stories about 'youth pastors', without any context, without any data, says nothing about 'youth pastors' in general but only serves to inflame and feed anti-religious prejudices that are already present.
8
So this is kind of an extreme example of a variety of gay relationship that's always bothered me.



Bean is 66 years old. His ex is 25. The victim here is 15. Doesn't anyone see a problem with someone getting into an intimate relationship with multiple people young enough to be his grandchildren? Isn't there something innately creepy, or at the very least very imbalanced and unhealthy about such an age disparity?



It's fairly common to see gay men advertising for sexual relationships based on fantasy incest between fathers and sons. Is that healthy? Does that reflect a desire for a mature relationship?



Obviously, this is a pattern that's ingrained in human nature; ancient Greek male sexual relationships were explicitly structured around the love of older men for younger youths. But that was also explicitly an unequal relationship (and not just sexually). Is that kind of inequality acceptable to us? Would we accept that sort of inequality between a husband and wife?
9
M? Don - I think that will change as the rising generation of adults ages. I knew a number of couples who met at ages that would be considered borderline or dodgy - 22/16 was a common combination. Of course, in those days, the drinking age was 18, there were very few places to meet aside from bars that were few and far between, fake IDs were rampant, and most of us might well not have expected ever to be able to have legal sex whatever the age of the partner in question. If somebody drove to a bar and gained admittance, not everyone in whom he expressed interest cross-examined him with all the skill of Rumpole about not-quite-so-magic numbers. Had I been sexual at 15, I'd surely have gone outside of the heterocentric 1/2+7 formula - maybe a lot beyond it, who knows? But now conditions are different. My contemporaries were used to thinking age relatively unimportant when we were young. The current 35s had things chopping and changing when they were just coming into their own, and the new crop is rising with plenty of opportunity for relationships with contemporaries and less opportunity to mingle with those of an inappropriate age range.

As for your questions - who says all sexual relationships must meet some (presumably heterocentric) standard of maturity? Who's included in your us - and acceptable to what purpose? As for your closing, don't we see old/ish men marrying women younger than their daughters quite frequently, often dumping long-serving wives in order to do so?

I do think there's something to the generalization that growing up a same-sexer probably gives a small increase to one's chance of being well suited to an intergenerational relationship, though likely less than it once did.
10
wow.

this is nauseating.

but we're still winning, right?
11
@8 I think it is far more disturbing to see someone conflate even an extreme age disparity between adults with rape.



Yes, there are all sorts of things that might be wrong in a relationship between people in such disparate phases of their lives, but that's why were reserve that level of agency to adults.



Once it's between consulting adults, what would you even do with that lack of acceptance you're contemplating?
12
@9,
The internet rule is half the older person's age plus 7. There's even a wikipedia entry and all sorts of handy charts on the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_dispari…
13
@8 We accept this inequality between men and women all the time. Hugh Hefner is 86 and he's married a woman who's 26. Rupert Murdoch was 82 and his now ex-wife was 44. Older man and younger woman is so common it's cliche.

Old and powerful wanting young and nubile is neither new nor exclusive to gay men.
14
After the prices the HRC charged for those fund raising dinners at the Westin over the years (I think to pay for the swanky offices in DC) this just makes me puke
15
M? Chef - And while I have called that "rule" heterocentric on numerous occasions, I think it is gradually creeping down to heteronormative. When I was 16, society wasn't arranged for us to be able to date 17/18 at all. Now things have improved in most locations. But with lingering homophobia and the logistics of the smaller pool, I don't think we're ever going to get to a point at which we get absolute parity.

I can see why people like Mr Savage who don't want to appear to be pushing for "special rights" avoid coming up with guidelines that are more realistic for same-sexers, but he gives women passes for socialized behaviour that is less than optimal. An "orientation-blind" approach probably belongs in the same category with "gender-blind" and "colour-blind".
16
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that sodomy in the third degree is a felony, while sex abuse in the third degree is a misdemeanor? Sodomy can (and often does) include consensual sex, but "sex abuse" is the lesser of these 2 crimes? WTF?!
17
@16,
No, the sodomy laws in Oregon are for victims under 16 and I'm OK with that being a felony.
http://www.oregoncrimes.com/oregon_sodom…
18
@2: probably not that long, given that it's a felony in the third degree. Bean probably won't even get any jail time.

And Dan, after all your moralizing on the subject, you'd better be damned sure no one ever entraps you with jail bait whom you thought was old enough and mature enough to know what he wanted.
19
@17... Word. I'm *not* ok with sex abuse only being a misdemeanor.
20
Same to you #18.
21
@16: I'm not entirely sure how "sodomy" was interpreted in this particular case. However, "anal sodomy" is definitely a Bigger Deal, medically speaking, than penis-in-vagina, while "oral sodomy" is a Smaller Deal than penis-in-vagina.





I don't think it's improper or homophobic or a double standard to treat "abusive anal sodomy" separately from "other sexual abuse" in terms of criminal law, though I agree with Sandra Day O'Conner's argument that laws about sodomy (whether anal or oral) ought to be unisex/gender-neutral with regard to whose orifice is penetrated.
22
He offers younger men large amounts of money for sex.
23
@ 12, I've never understood why anyone should be expected to pay attention to that rule. When it's broken, no one raises an eyebrow, or ever has. It's not a *rule*, it's just something that somebody said sometime.
24
"Has Been Arrested for Allegedly Fucking a 15-Year-Old Boy”



Errr, that’s not ‘fucking’ that’s raping.
25
24

damn. thats good.....
26
@ 22, where did you hear that..?

We know you're in a hurry, Dan, but of course will be waiting for your longer take on all this. If this turns out to be true, it wouldn't be the first time someone who does a lot of good social work had seedy underpinnings. I've known enough people who lived that dichotomy that it feels like a trope.
27
"He offers younger men large amounts of money for sex"



Jeez suddenly rape becomes 'fucking'. Now paying for sex from exploited trafficked child sex slaves is "offering young men money"



Any more euphemisms ya got there?
28
ljf

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