It's too late now to legislate that teens shouldn't be allowed a cell phone until he's at least 18 and fully licensed to use it. Cell phones took parents by surprise: so small, so innocent, yet so powerful in the hands of a bored or twisted teen who now has an extremely efficient tool for wasting time, cheating on tests, organizing fights, bullying classmates, phoning in bomb threats, arranging drug deals and, more commonly, texting pics of their privates to anyone they feel like, i.e. sexting.

A study released last December found that one in five teens had sent or posted a naked picture of themselves, and a third had received such a picture or video by text message or e-mail. One school principal suspects that a random ransacking of the phones in his school would find indecent pictures on half to two-thirds of them. Three out of four teens say posting suggestive stuff "can have serious negative consequences," which means they know it's dumb--but they do it anyway.

But here's a twist; if you're underage (age of consent varies by state) and you sext someone your pic, you could possibly get arrested and have to register as a sex offender, even if the pic is from one minor to another. In 2005 a 13-year-old Pittsburgh, Pa., boy was charged with sexual abuse of children and dissemination of child pornography when he posted nude pictures of himself on his blog. This seemed like a confounding twist in prosecutorial philosophy, since the victim and the villain in this case were the same child. But just in the past year, more than a dozen states have followed suit, arresting kids as young as 12 for sending or receiving x-rated pics on their phones. And because of overzealous state prosecutors wanting to make set an example for other teens, parents have suddenly raised the prospect of retirement savings melted down to pay legal bills, college dreams deferred, scholarships lost, all because their kids were caught doing what kids do.

The rush of prosecutions, however, hasn't stopped teens from sexting. The legal system naturally depends on deterrence; you make an example of those you manage to catch, so that potential offenders think twice. But to teens danger is as likely to feed desire as to frustrate it. The qualities required to shape their behavior, the humor and patience mixed just a certain way with clarity and resolve, are too much to expect from laws written to apply equally to everyone. Doesn't the law need to exempt them from prosecution for just being teens and to find some better way to punish conduct that parents didn't manage to prevent?

Especially since sexting might actually be the least of parents worries. Compared with what they are actually doing, teenagers' virtual sex lives may be less a mirror than a mirage, an image of how they see themselves that vanishes as you get up close. Research shows that even as teens get more daring online, they are delaying actual sex, having fewer partners and generally behaving more responsibly than many of their parents ever did. When it comes to baring all, remind them that even if they escape the law they'll never erase the trail, when they decide to apply for college or a job or run for President: indiscretion lives forever, their naked teenage ghost in cyberspace.<./p>

Parents; don't think you can prevail by brute force. You can block websites, limit time online, screen e-mail, unplug the webcam. But teens are more smarter than you think; they will find a work-around. Teachers know that students can text under the desk without glancing down, their phones set with a ringtone pitched too high for adults to hear. Parents are fighting on teens turf and like the sexual revolution the parents experienced when they were teens, sexting will continue until something new comes along to fulfill the teens virtual sexual appetites.

Has Gay Lost Its Mojo?

Is being gay really 'gay' anymore? Do we have our own secret places where we can go be ourselves and act differently then the majority of society? Seems like a lot of gay bars have become deserted, the Internet isn't as satisfying as it once was, and gay neighborhoods have become tourist attractions and safe havens for straight girls to live in. Heck, even sex clubs have lost their luster since drug use has subsided and gay guys aren't super sexed up on meth and x. Have gays become complacent? Common?

Since gay boys have become more mainstream it seems as though being gay isn't what it used to be. Look around, stylish straight guys aren't really all that different from young gay guys in dress, style, and mannerisms. In fact, flirting and showing affection between straight guys is now the norm and some straight guys are even more concerned with their look and clothes than your average gay guy. Plus, with tons of rap stars singing about anal sex and rimming, you've now got tons of curious straight white boys wondering what that's all about and making it more common for them to ask their girlfriends to participate in sex acts that were once considered taboo and only part of the gay scene.

Everyday you can see gays in the media and everyone probably either has a gay sibling, relative, coworker, or neighbor. We're not so much of a mystery anymore since the entire gay lifestyle has either been written about, filmed, or posted on the Internet. Straight guys are more sexually expressive and comfortable with their sexiness and now find acting sexy and showing off their half naked bodies hot. Wasn't this a gay phenomenon just a while back? And what about the tons of videos on myspace and youtube with straight guys acting gay, or lip-syncing with their shirts off; and pictures of naked groups of guys posing for the camera hiding their junk? Crazy shiz...

If you think about it, does the desire to be with another guy sexually even make you part of a community anymore? Do gay guys connect in any other way with other gay guys other then sexually? Even within the gay community there exists divisions between race, age, and desires, and we're not even taking into consideration the whole lesbian and trannie part of the community.  Maybe we don't have that much in common at all. Maybe we're not even a community per se. Maybe we have more in common with straight guys then we originally thought.

To become more accepted and mainstream is probably what the gay community originally envisioned and that's a good thing but it seems that even though straight guys have taken on a more gay persona, they're still not comfortable with the whole gay concept. Yeah a lot of straight guys have gay friends now and girls have always gravitated towards gay guys probably because there's no sexual tension, but overall being gay is still an oddity with the majority of society. Gay is now an adjective, like acting retarded, absurd, something to be embarrassed about. But the harm implied by calling someone gay has been watered down by teens, sorta like white teens calling each other the n-word. The hatefulness of the implication has been eliminated by frequent use.

So maybe gay boys aren't really that much different then straight guys. We both seem to be in pursuit of the same thing: Attention and getting off. Strip away the fact that we're sexually into different sexes and what you have left is guys wanting to be in the company of other guys. Maybe the need to feel close to someone of the same sex is there to fill a void left because relationships are so much harder to come by these days. And the majority of young people are in pursuit of companionship rather than traditional relationships, and that allows them to become closer to someone of the same sex without actually having to have the sex to make it meaningful.

So if society is in an ever evolving stage, maybe the differences between straight and gay are becoming blurred. If you're young and you can separate sex from a relationship then maybe you've evolved into someone that can appreciate another person for who they are, not who they desire. This is a good thing, with traditional relationships falling apart on a regular basis maybe guys will realize the value in the friendships they can make with other guys whether straight or gay. Just maybe.

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