YOUTH ARE THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE (with thanks to Daniel, an actual youth, and Glynnis, who can still remember her youth, and prepared specifically for Bitch Nation, yet another one of these ‘zine things…)

Let us drink a toast to the corruption of the young, as the above-mentioned, twisted and nifty Daniel said just the other night, though it be with ginger-ale-filled glasses in a coffeehouse, since youth cannot get into the bars that make up the social space in gay culture.

There has been discussion in my town over the way in which a local bar attempted to subvert law by turning a blind eye. Let us not kid ourselves, folks – the owners were doing it to collect the cover charge – but I have spoken to some personnel involved, and a few were trying to give kids a place to go. One or two may have had lascivious intent, but fourteen and up is LEGAL consent-wise.

Now the word has gone down that the establishment will not be doing so anymore. Partially because of police awareness – to some extent motivated by liquor license risk – but probably also due to puritanism, internalized homophobia and poor memory on the part of a few gay community members.

Another local bar had matinees on Sundays to which youth could go, and it provides space for punk shows on Saturdays, which affords opportunity for young queers to check out the place for future reference. It stopped the Sunday events, partially under police scrutiny also (as though more reasons to dislike those uniform fetishists were needed…)

It’s hard for me to relate, since I didn’t want to go to bars when I was young, but I understand that a lot of youth know that is where the queers are and they want to go there. In my town there aren’t many alternatives, as the youth group (S.A.F.E.) has folded and, while there are other discussion groups, they may not welcome high schoolers much. The tendency of such groups to seek ‘mainstream’ acceptance and rigid identity politics (‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ queers – boy or girl – gay or straight) that Jamie Hamilton pointed out in Bitch Nation #7, or the unfocused campiness/bitchiness, and the more-than-occasional burst of misogyny, by the gay male community that Rita Fatila notes in #8, do not help much.

Furthermore, S.A.F.E. had an adult overseer, which somehow suggests the need to monitor these youth to keep them ‘under control’. One more bitter irony – S.A.F.E. met in a street health/drop-in centre, and, a ‘gay’ passing acquaintance/attendee opined that gay street kids do not exist, as no queer lad would wear those clothes and have hair like that. Oh, classism, ageism and ‘blame the victim’ ideology are alive and sick in the gay community, I assure you!

Therefore, it doesn’t surprise me some people complain about the ‘babies’ in ‘their’ bar in their ‘ugly clothes’, and it also doesn’t shock me (though it does disappoint) that some people are chickenhawks under the circumstances (I make a distinction between someone who is attracted to a person holistically (or even on the basis of individual appearance traits) and someone who is attracted to that person’s youth and vulnerability alone for exploitative purposes – call me a bigot if you will…).

Let us be blunt. As my associate Glynnis pointed out the other day, when CNN had a piece on Catholic priests and the molestation scandals erupting in the USA, they entitled it ‘The Catholic Church and Homosexuality’ (the report had NOTHING to do with consensual relationships, so what’s up with THAT!?). In a related item, a Toronto reporter asked Mark Hall, a 17-year-old fighting to take his boyfriend to a Catholic school prom in Oshawa, Ontario why he did not become a priest, as the Church would protect his right to be gay within its confines.

There is metaphorical yellow tape around the notion of youth and queerness, because of people who equate queerness with child abuse, and queers themselves are hardly immune to that.

I don’t have any answers – if I had, I’d write for Jeopardy!© - but there are a lot of questions that have to be asked, and someone should get responses ready, because, if there’s one thing young people are known for, it’s not accepting ‘no’ or ‘wait until you grow up’ for a reply…