When teenagers reveal that they had sexual experiences before age 13, shouldn't every effort be made to find out something about their sex partners?

That concern is missing from recent reports about the "risky behavior" of teens who call themselves homosexual, where these students report much higher pre-teen sexual experience than their heterosexual peers.

The good news is that America as a whole is still horrified by child sexual abuse.  Penn State officials, including Joe Paterno, are suddenly gripped with remorse, following years of apparent failure to blow the whistle on accused child predator Jerry Sandusky.  Justice was not done speedily, and therefore, more boys were evidently harmed.

The public is appalled at the failure to protect these youngsters, and it's far more important than any football legacy.  The inaction of adults in authority may have cost a number of young men their innocence and their trust.

What is curious is our culture's mixed messages about early child sex and who the "partner" of that child is.  The party line for years to kids in middle school or in "gay" materials pushed on teens has been promotion of early sex while providing either fuzzy or improper guidance about the age of the sex partner.  Kids are supposed to be "empowered" now to choose to have sex starting around, oh, age 12.  And if it's with someone older, isn't that their business?

Not all people who are involved in homosexuality, nor all progressives, think that this is okay.  Problem is, plenty of these age boundary-smashers do populate advocacy groups, schools, influential teachers' unions, and youth counseling.  Through serial neglect, obfuscation, and deceit, leftists have given youth a culture that is confused about child-adult sex.

There's even a line of thought among some homosexual advocates that says that young guys need to rethink those first fumblings initiated by the coach, the uncle, the family friend down the street.  The boy isn't necessarily a victim, and it wasn't really criminal -- it might have been the boy's first "gay" encounter.

Revisionist history -- it works every time.

These messages to kids are quite common in homosexual literature.  I remember how outraged I was when I first read Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade.  I reviewed this book because it was recommended by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, on the "Book Link" portion of their website, back before the group purged that page of its most disturbing content after much negative publicity.

I could only picture some vulnerable young boy reading the following.  Remember, it's describing the experience of a 13-year-old:

One day, on the bus to shop class, this ugly f--- of a man sat behind me. ... he managed to get me to follow him to a nearby restroom. ... [A graphic description of homosexual sex follows.] I spent a good deal of time locked in the stall, trying to clean up. ... This incident should have soured me on men, but it only made me more confused and needful. ... The whole world of rest-room sex had opened itself up to me. Soon, I was spending a great deal of time hanging out at shopping malls and cruising the rest rooms for sexual encounters. (pp. 43-44)

Or take this one, from the book Growing Up Gay, Growing Up Lesbian, also recommended by GLSEN:

My first experience was with a much older man, a friend of Derek's [his dad] ... When I was fifteen, he must have been twenty-nine, thirty ... I seduced him ... It was a wild night. We did everything. (p. 111)

It's the boy who chooses; at least that's what curious youth are supposed to take away from this narrative.  NAMBLA would be so pleased.

Along this line is incomplete information from public health officials.  The Centers for Disease Control extracted data from the widely administered public school Youth Risk Behavior Survey and found that "gay" youth were much more likely to report pre-teen sex, four times more likely than their heterosexual peers.  This is a jaw-dropping difference.

This data was retrieved from those school districts where students are permitted to declare their "sexual orientation" -- inappropriate enough.  But why didn't the adult surveyors ask the elephant-in-the-room follow-up: "How old was/were your partner(s)?"

In the real, parenting, non-gay activism world, we would be asking, "Who victimized you?"

But children are not so protected in the world of identity politics.  An article from Medill Journalism School quoted Gary Howell, Illinois Psychological Association's chair of the sexual orientation issues section, with his assessment.  He mused that these kids take "risks" because of the difficulty of the "coming out" process and "unaccepting parents."  And the budding journalists of Medill accepted this response with no further probing.

School board members, teachers, and parents are buying the concept of first, the "gay teen" and now, the "gay child."  It's clear that the real message from many progressives is, "You're on your own, kid!"

When a child begins acting out with age-inappropriate heterosexual behavior, the first suspicion is molestation.  When a youth begins calling him or herself "gay" and reveals early sexual experience, why are we not asking that same question?

The on-campus student riot in support of Paterno made me wonder if today's teens and young adults fully understand the harm of child sexual abuse.  Many may not realize the criminality of these adult-child interactions, and perhaps it's time for youth education on this subject.

There's never a time when adult-child sexual relationships are anything but horrific.  America needs to stop talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Linda Harvey is president of Mission America and hosts a talk show on Salem affiliate WRFD  in Columbus, OH.