Jessica and I serve important functions in each other’s lives -I am living proof that a dyke can grow up in Sussex County while being out of the closet and make it out alive; she shows that my experiences growing up here have hardly been unique. And yes, also that Rehoboth’s fuzzy bunny boundaries of tolerance most emphatically do not reach school property. One would think that tolerance was like bandannas and trenchcoats-things that hysterical school administrators banned from school grounds for the greater good of the children.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat upsetting. I have a martyr complex; it would have been nice to say that the homophobia that the handful of us who were openly queer during our stint in high school endured had some purpose, that the schools grew more tolerant. So much for fantasy, particularly since school has started and the nine-month cycle of staggering systemic intolerance has begun anew. Gives me great hope, really.

Via shared (albeit several years delayed in her case) experience, Jessica and I have established what can be construed as a “mentor” friendship. I’m not a huge fan of the word-it implies that I’m a lot wiser than I actually am, and that I’m more than a glorified “homophobia sucks, but it’ll all get better eventually” cheerleader from afar. Be that as it may, I’m a big fan of the whole “collective experience being passed on to younger generations” thing.

Something that I’ve noticed more and more since I turned 18 two years ago is the relentless paranoia that dogs those adults who work with gay youth. I hate to admit it, but I wouldn’t set foot near any minor whose parents weren’t comfortable with their kid’s sexuality and with their hanging out with other queers. As a litany of people have pointed out to me since I became legal, being accused of corrupting a minor will ruin your day.

What bothers me most about those who are worried about gay adults working with youth-gay or straight, but especially gay-is the underlying assumption that either our intentions are not pure or that we cannot prove their purity if challenged. I blame our culture at large for this mentality-America has turned youth into a perfectly acceptable and pervasive fetish. For a society that claims horror at kiddie porn, we sure manage to sell a lot of “barely legal” pornography. I wonder how many millions have been made from people who wish to believe that they are watching the real mating habits of uniformed Catholic schoolgirls.

It follows, then, that in between pornography, Hollywood glorification of May-December romances, and any other wink-wink nudge-nudge message that youth exist to be sexually exploited, that we queers-we who define ourselves by who we sleep with and therefore of course must be a bunch of oversexed perverts-would be the first to jump at the chance of corrupting the children. Or just jump the children. I’m not sure which is more infuriating-mainstream America for creating the myth and the lie, or groups like NAMBLA (you knew they’d be referenced eventually, right?) for being “the proof” of our perversity.