Yes, all the evil of sin, without even the enjoyable parts. The worst of both worlds.

All birth rates are down, of course, and the study makes no effort to differentiate between married 19-year olds and unmarried 16-year olds. But its probably still good news. The usual suspects crow about the birth control culture, but if you read carefully you see signs that teens are fornicating less and later in their lives, which is all to the good.

I don’t have prevalance figures for male victims of any sort, ie, what percentage of all males are sexually abused as minors. I did not mean to imply that the prevalance among females has any bearing on the prevalance among males. If anything, my guess is that the prevalance among males would be only a fraction of that among females.

In a separate comment above, I wished to point out an anecdotal correlation of homosexual men and same sex sexual contact as minors. This sub-topic is one my friends and I have come to learn during casual discussions with homosexual men that we have known. That being that if the subject of age-at-first-homosexual-sexual-contact (whether consentual or not) comes up, over half of those who have the question posed to them (it’s not something we casually ask everybody) admit to such a contact as a minor, including pre-pubescent ages.

neither of us have hard or reliable data on this that I know of, so I don’t know that we can profitably disagree. But we do disagree. I don’t trust your anecdotal figures, even if my distrust is founded on my unrepresentative childhood on the elegant and quietly tasteful Greenwood estates. Partly because there is a definitional problem when you include post-pubescent teens. I deplore teeny-bopper sex, but I wouldn’t call it child abuse in many cases.

I am open to the view that same-sex child abuse can be correlated with adult same-sex attraction and therefore possibly causative. A couple of abused gay guys I know are convinced that this is their story and I can’t gainsay them. But if the incidence of child abuse were as high as you say and the causation were as you’d say, there should be a lot more homosexuals than there are.

In any case, we agree more than not. I think the line our society is drawn that teenagers should be off-limits to adults is salutary but given other trends I don’t think its stable, unfortunately.

I think the mid-middle, lower-middle and lower classes are much more florid than your upper-middle class genteel upbringing can imagine.

Without exposure to the whole strata, most of the upper-middle class seems to think all homosexuals are the “born that way” and “cool and socially well-adjusted” Will-and-Grace types. The reality is different. The percentage of male homosexuals who were abused by a same sex adult is astounding, but the psych profession doesn’t seem to want to discuss those things because it doesn’t fit with a political agenda.

The overall 25% figure that Oprah once cited is on the low end.

It really is an unspoken tragedy. If you can find your state’s online sex offender registry look up some numbers. I was shocked at the number of sex offenders among the populace of Indianapolis.

But also look at the messages our media and schools are giving. According to the TV show Glee, at what age do teens start having sex? In real schools, at what ages are condoms and morning after pills available?

I’m not so sure (that we’ve retreated). It’s hidden more.