Gupta, Neeru & Mahy, Mary, Sexual Initiation Among Adolescent Girls and Boys: Trends and Differentials in Sub-Saharan Africa; Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 1, February 2003, pp. 41-53   PDF file of this article
This paper examined trends in adolescent sexual initiation in sub-Saharan Africa, with emphasis on differentials in social determinants across gender and contexts. [...]
Important gender differentials were also found. While secondary schooling was associated with lower probability of early sex among girls in all countries, the relationship was often in the opposite direction among boys.

Important new book:

Sex In A Cold Climate - OSLO; Sunday Herald Sun, 26 Nov 2000, p47. -AFP
Almost one-third of men aged 18 to 20 would have sex with children, according to a Norwegian survey. 

Few abuse victims become paedophiles; The study challenges perceptions about sexual abuse; 7 February 2003, BBC News 
Most men who were sexually abused as boys do not go on to abuse children themselves, a study suggests. Researchers at the Institute of Child Health in London have found evidence to suggest that just one in eight continues the cycle of abuse.
They said the finding indicate that the risks of victims becoming abusers is much less than previously thought.

Interesting web site, URL sent to Ipce [No message]:
< http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/GUS_AFS.HTM > 
[Nijmegen, BTW, is a Dutch city].

Silk industry bonded labour scandal; Scandal of silk industry where child 'slaves' work seven days a week; By Phil Reeves 24 January 2003 Independent 
Hundreds of thousands of children, some as young as five, toil as "slaves" in India's silk industry, enduring beatings, burns and 12-hour days, according to Human Rights Watch.
They are bonded labour, powerless juveniles doomed to remain bound to their employers because they are recruited to work in exchange for a loan to their families that they can never earn enough to repay.

Freedom: For Adults Only, By Mike Males, From Youth Today, November 2002, Vol. 11, No. 9 
[...] By American expert thinking, European, Canadian and Latin American adolescents should be developmentally damaged alcoholic felons. American experts rarely let reality affect dogma.
[...] America, whose anti-youth repressions - mass curfews, media censorship, punitive drinking ages, constant suspicion, groundless policing, violent punishments, compulsory drug- testing - occur nowhere else in such malicious totality.
Where Public Agenda surveys find that two-thirds of American adults display "stunning hostility" against kids [...] 

About The Boys.January 24 2003 
Feminist icon Germaine Greer expects to be branded a pedophile after writing a new book challenging conventional views on child pornography.
Greer, 63, says The Boy, which looks at male children in Western art, is about reclaiming the right of women to enjoy the beauty of boys.

'I cannot admit what I am to myself'; Thursday January 23, 2003 The Guardian - Interview
[...] My experience suggests that men become dangerous when they become obsessional: when they live alone, and their minds are filled with little else but thoughts of what they want but cannot have. [...]
So, yes, I fear that some of these men may ultimately pose a risk to society. Not now, but once they have been through the justice system, been labelled as perverts and deviants, and introduced to much more dangerous men in specialist sex-offender units; then, some of them may become obsessional paedophiles, justifying the label that society has already given them.

Foreword: The Debate on Pedophilia, Gunter Schmidt, PhD, Journal of Homosexuality 20 1/2, 1990 

Interesting site with a lot of background information [No message]:
MHAMic = Male Homosexual Attraction to Minors Information Center:
< http://www.mhamic.org >

Child abuse, or a crime in the eye of the beholder? Matthew Parris - London Times 20 January 2003 
Contrary to the spirit of the age, I think we should have a graduated response to those troubled by a sexual interest in children. [..]
I am unsettled by the application of the 1978 Protection of Children Act to computer images. [..]
The practice is a denial of the human rights of those thus attacked, and seriously corrupt. [..]
I am uncomfortable that it should be an offence to look at something. [..] 

Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every Diocese - If this is so widespread, is it not then the NORM, i.e. normal? NYTimes, January 12, 2003 By LAURIE GOODSTEIN 
The sexual abuse crisis that engulfed the Roman Catholic Church in the last 12 months has now spread to nearly every American diocese and involves more than 1,200 priests, most of whose careers straddle a sharp divide in church history and seminary training.
These priests are known to have abused more than 4,000 minors over the last six decades, according to an extensive New York Times survey of documented cases of sexual abuse by priests through Dec. 31, 2002.

Review of The Moralist 
FYI, attached is a recent review of The Moralist that appeared in Celebrate!, the gay newspaper of Key West. It's interesting that the critic feels the need to include his own personal experience in his critique. I'm seeing the same phenomenon when I do my readings at bookstores [...]

I am pleased to announce that my recent book, 
Lovers' Legends: The Gay Greek Myths, has been favorably reviewed in School Library Journal, the principal review medium in the domain.
Andrew Calimach 
A lavishly illustrated collection of nine myths restored from primary (and often fragmentary) sources and presented with the full view of the sexuality that pervaded Greek life.

Richard Goldstein, Persecuting Pee-wee, A Child-Porn Case That Threatens Us All, Village Voice, January 15 - 21, 2003
[..] Can a picture that was once legal be the basis of a prosecution today? Where should the line between innocence and indecency be drawn? Perhaps the most disturbing question relates to the way these pictures look today as opposed to when they were made. Would they seem pornographic if they weren't forbidden? [..]
Is our obsession with child porn creating a climate where kids are commonly regarded as sex objects? Amy Adler, a professor at New York University Law School, suspects so. [...]
The process of sensitizing us to child porn also forces us to eroticize children. Whether we intend to or not, we begin to see the world from a pedophile's perspective.

Beatings, not sexual abuse, turn child into a criminal; January 7 2003, smh.com.au. 
Physically abused and neglected children are far more likely to end up with a criminal record, researchers say.
On the other hand, sexually abused children are less likely to offend later in life, the study, released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Criminology, has found.

It's time to reform the sex laws and our minds - Priests are not the only paedophiles among us - Why did we allow the abuse in Islington care homes? Why are policemen so well-represented in recent internet child-porn cases?
David Aaronovitch 20 November 2002 The Independent 

What is a pornographic photograph? - December 18, 2002 The Guardian 
Jon Silverman reports on the growing paranoia that is now threatening even the most innocent of occasions - the school nativity play.