A polarizing figure (Erin)

Let's imagine, for the sake of argument, that Jennings had reported to the police that he suspected a statutory rape of a teenage boy may have occurred. Did he see it? Had he ever seen the perpetrator? Did he have any evidence, other than his claimed conversation with the boy? Was there any physical evidence? Was there a witness? No. Perhaps someone better versed in the legal system can help me out here, but it seems unlikely to me that the police would have been willing or able to take any action at all based on his report. Remember, he wasn't reporting on something that happened at school. This occurred in another city, a place completely unconnected with him.

But, let's assume that the next steps were taken, that the police brought the boy in and prevailed on him to cooperate with their investigation. (Again, unlikely, since the boy did not consider himself to have been injured.) What would happen in the unlikely event that the case came to trial? Come on, you know the drill. Defense lawyers would have questioned the boy's truthfulness, his character, his sanity. His life would have been exposed and picked apart. As people took such pains to demonstrate on another thread about Child Protective Services, the word of a young person is always suspect. Kids lie, you know. Kids make up stuff. He's probably just a promiscuous little gay boy who made up this story to blacken the name of a respectable citizen. What was he doing in the city at night, anyway? He'd get what girls get: he's promiscuous (I'd use the shorter four-letter word, but oops, I got moderated for it), he's lying, he's a promiscuous liar. AND he's gay. Mentally disturbed, a drug-taker. He must have been asking for it. He was probably selling it. He looked older. And so forth, ad nauseam. (All these accusations against the victim were used by lawyers to discredit boys who accused priests.) Without any evidence but his word, how likely is it that the perpetrator would be penalized?

Meanwhile, the boy has been outed to parents and classmates. If he comes back to school at all, every other boy in his class will have learned his secret in the worst possible way. He'll have to go to school with other boys who are convinced he's not only gay, but in the sex trade (again, I used another word, the one that would spring to the lips of teenage boys. I changed it to avoid the moderation queue, but there's no moderation in high school.) I don't approve of older people having sex with underage teens, and I don't excuse it. But the legal system isn't set up to help.

What's really sad here is that hypocritical conservatives don't really care what happened to the boy. All that counts for them is finding something to lambaste Obama with--and cast a few slurs on gay men while they're at it. What would help in a case like this is counseling and a support system for gay teens--a safe place to talk things over and to grow into their sexuality gradually, with age-appropriate partners, like heterosexual teenagers. That's exactly what Jennings has been trying to build. But conservatives don't want that. What they want is for gay teens to be kept in ignorance, silenced and marginalized--exactly the conditions that led to Brewster's midnight foray in the first place.

The sad logic of right-wing Catholic dogma is that your teenager is better off dead than grown-up, happy, and gay. Because his well-adjusted happy gay life will last only till he dies--and then, it's screaming in the flames of hell for all eternity. So, you'd best stop him from knowing himself for as long as possible and hope he gets hit by a truck before he has a chance to express his sexuality or find love. Otherwise, it's burn, burn, burn. I guess the good news is that the parents will ultimately look down from heaven and feel happy about their son's destiny of damnation, because it's God's will, so it must be good. I submit that this kind of thinking leaves no room to care about Brewster. It's cruel to the parents as well as the children.

sigaliris,

Taking deep breaths, count to a thousand, and stop accusing people of wanting see children die, let alone of damning them to hell -- especially people who have done no such thing in either case.

PS: I am neither "right-wing" nor Catholic.

Sig, good post. MW, I think there is a lot of truth to Sig's post, even if I might not agree with her conclusion: "The sad logic of right-wing Catholic dogma is that your teenager is better off dead than grown-up, happy, and gay."

I do believe, however, that treating homosexuality as a sin, as something shameful to be hushed up ("God forbid we should talk about it in the public schools!") can never have a positive outcome for gay teenagers.