Please do remember that I was discussing young, underage men who propositioned ME. And I said no. These were not young men “giving consent” to sex, or “willing to have” sex. These were underage strangers who had seen me at public Gay Liberation events, and who had taken the initiative to track me down and insist on having sex with me, with no encouragement at all from me.

Humans are certainly able to decide whether or not they want to have sex before they are 18, no matter what psychologists may witter on about. Evolution made sure of that.

I had sex with other teenagers when I was a teenager, and we all thought sex was great. And if surveys can be believed, the majority of the commenters here either had sex with other people or wanted sex with other people when they were teenagers. So I understood the younger men when I was in my early 20s, I was just not interested.

And if you tend to believe whatever theory is current in the mental-health industry, about sex or anything else, you would benefit from taking some logic classes and adopting a more skeptical mindset. They have a very long history of getting it wrong, then coming up with a new theory and saying “no, no, we got it right this time” – and then finding out that they were very wrong again.

With a 14 year-old?! That’s crazy. It’s illegal AND unethical. The rational decision-making part of the brain is the LAST to develop. A teenager can be 6’4″ 200 lbs—or be able to solve problems in quantum mechanics—and not have the cognitive and emotional maturity capable of giving consent to sex. Do NOT Go There—whether they’re hairy or not!

I have lived for many decades in a very different America – it’s full of unpleasant facts. In the America I live in, Gay people are rarely treated with fairness when they are accused of sexual crimes. And many Gay men have ended up in prison or have been beaten, tortured and/or killed, or have had their houses burned – just because they were gay, and someone else imagined or pretended that the gay guy had committed a social or legal crime. I know that these things are incomprehensible to you, but I have seen them happen to people around me. And these things definitely still happen in many parts of the U.S.A., including parts of New York – they are not ancient history.

I wish you well, and I hope you make sure you stay in sheltered communities where everyone knows you, so that you can remain safe from the real America. The one in your head is much nicer.

Therefore, such interactions should remain prohibited, no matter how “willing” the minor is.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the reality of human sexuality.
Also, the significant variability in what constitutes a “minor”, a shown in the lack of uniformity in the Age of Consent laws, not only in the US, but around the world, should serve as a reminder that not all adult/”minor” relationships are automatically non-consensual.

You are assuming that I would believe an unsupported accusation. You make that assumption in error.