Minor offenses.

I just read "The Treachery of Youth" by Sean Kennedy in your December 19 issue. Normally, I love The Advocate and consider it to be an upper-class magazine that I could recommend to gay friends and straight allies without hesitation. While you don't shy away from the topic of sexuality, you don't normally make smut of it, and I usually enjoy everything I road. However, this article appalled me. It appears to have been written by someone who actually believes gay men are and even should be child molesters. From my point of view, people who are adults are the people responsible for not engaging in sex with minors, period! Minors can certainly be seductive; in adolescence it is their job to learn about that. But adults still bear the responsibility of keeping their hands off of them. It is ridiculous to insinuate that being seduced by a minor gives an adult license to molest that minor.

LENNA MORRIS Houston, Texas

I am sick and tired of a public that refuses to deal intelligently with life as it really is! I was a very predatory underage teen. When I was 13 (1953), I had a junior high history teacher who was in his late 20s and a roal hunk. Whenever I was in his presence, I tried to ooze every ounce of charm a skinny 13-year-old could. I would find ways to talk to him after class or eat lunch with him when he wasn't at the teachers' table. I even joined the football team as a water boy because he was the assistant coach. One of my tasks was to hand out towels when the players and some coaches came out of the showers. Thus I got to see the object of my desire in the altogether.

These were the backward '50s, and I never got anything more than looks. If it had been 2003 instead of 1953, things would probably have gone far enough to make the local papers or even CNN! Of course, the ignorant public would have to blame the teacher.

TIM WOODBURY Webster Groves, Me.