Not that I have anything with which to back that up, or even a clear idea about how one might differentiate “punishment for prohibited sex” from “punishment for refusing to be sexually available to men”…

There’s my contradictory $.02!

As to what would happen if this were two girls– there would be no crime charged, but I would bet one of them would wind up in a mental ward.

The lesbian and gay rights movement started precisely because such laws exist and were being enforced. Cops were specifically busting bars where it was rumored that gays or lesbians were congregating.

I hesitate to discuss anything with a troll, but the reason everyone on this thread is so outraged is that this law _doesn’t_ think that these questions are worth “pondering.” There is no distinction made between a young man who rapes or coerces another young man into sex and a young man who has consensual sex with his younger boyfriend. And I have the sneaking suspicion that you don’t draw any such distinctions, either, Fitz. That’s why you’re on this thread trying to rationalize turning an eighteen-year-old gay boy who had consensual sex with his younger boyfriend into a predatory rapist. Of course underage boys can be seduced, molested, and raped, just like underage girls. They can also screw around with teenage boys, just like underage girls. The psychological dynamics between girl/boyfriend and boy/boyfriend are similar enough to receive equal treatment under the law.

I seem to recall a DA using that arguement in a murder trial a few years back: that the defendant is gay, so he wouldn’t mind being raped by other men, so the jury has to sentence him to death.

utterly repugnant. I’m about 40 grand away and a bottle of tequila away from building a small artifical island and declaring it a sovereign nation.

I’m curious what you’re thinking about that, Kim.

How do we know the underage boy in the duo was homosexual? Or either?

I’m not sure that I agree with Amp’s headline for this post - either or both of the kids could be gay, or bi, or just experimenting - but the point remains the same - this guy was punished extra for gay sex. Now, the idea of an 18 year-old of any gender having sex with a 14 year-old of any gender makes me uneasy; but the point here is that both het and homo statutory rape are, well, statutory rape, and should be punished in the same way.

Is consent the same for young heterosexuals as for young homosexuals?

Yes.

Can underage boys be seduced?, molested,? raped?

Certainly, but, according to the Salon article, they both have insisted it was consentual the whole time. Also, a person - particularly a young person, I think - can be seduced in to consentual sex - but that is part of what statutory rape laws are for, to keep sexual-but-not-quite-fully-responsible kids from being manipulated in to sex by older people.

1. “Homosexual boys have the same right to commit sodomy with girls that heterosexual boys do!”
2. “It’s Romeo and Juliet, not Romeo and Steve!”

Gah.

Can underage boys be seduced?, molested,? raped?

Yes, of course — why do you ask? I think you know. They can be seduced or molested by women and men. Men who rape men may not be gay (one source says the vast majority of men who sexually assault other men are self-named heterosexuals).

Are the psychological dynamics equivalent, different, similar?

For young women and young men? The literature on this says they are different (as you’d expect given differing gender expectations).

But what we need to “ponder” here is the sentence, not that it took me much “pondering” to decide that in a case like this a sentence of even a year would be barbaric, in fact any custodial sentence would be, if this passage from the Salon piece is accurate:

How the police were brought in, why they were called, isn’t clear. Someone from the center complained and the trial was based on stipulated facts — one paragraph stating that on that night in February, the boys engaged in consensual oral sex. That single paragraph was the basis for the 17-year sentence.