These are just some thoughts designed to make you think:

There will always be a controversy about the age of models appearing in gay porn. I am talking about the younger models here of course, as anyone who can prove that they are over 18 years of age may appear in pornography if they so chose, straight or gay, and heaven knows I’ve seen enough retired men and women making some pension-boosting money from appearing in porn movies.

But, if someone has proved that they are over the minimum age, why should there be a controversy? We’ve seen, in the past, some well known models (or those who went on to become well known) get themselves caught up in a ‘scandal’ for one reason or another. Lying about their age at the time is a common one, and unscrupulous producers knowingly using under-age models is another, though thankfully less common, reason.

In the USA there is a code called Title 18, section 2257, sometimes simply known as ‘2257’. This is a requirement of producers of adult material to be able to prove the legal minimum age of their models at the time of photography, or filming. You will see this at the bottom of many pages on most porn sites, certainly all those produced in the USA should carry a link to a page, or information, where anyone can find out the address of the producer/keeper of records, and make an enquiry into the age of a certain model. If an enquiry is made then the company must be able to produce documentation backing up and proving their claim that their models were over 18 when filmed. That’s the simple version of the code. And it means that, in the USA, producers must have copies of things like driving license, ID, etc. on file, by name of model, showing that they were legally allowed to appear in porn at that time.

That’s good, it’s something that all good and respectable porn producers would want to have, and insist on having before they get a guy naked. But it actually only applies to the United States. So, when you find a company from, for example, Europe, stating their 2257 information, it actually doesn’t mean anything, legally. It has been taken as good practice by good producers, no matter what their country of residence and business. (Other countries have other laws, some have no laws at all.)

But it’s always interested me to notice that many a ‘teen’ and even ‘twink’ site that carries content featuring ‘just 18’ etc. boys will have their 2257 address of records in a place like Cyprus, or Prague. Are they really based there? Is this just a way of avoiding the legalities? And if so, why? And what happens if you are based in the Czech Republic but your servers are in America and your content comes from Spain? Where do you stand legally then? It’s a bit of a minefield.

And there is another one. What about those sites (I won’t mention names here as I don’t want to get caught up in the fuss) that feature young looking models. What’s the difference between someone who is 18 or 19 but who looks 16 or 17 appearing in a movie, as opposed to someone who is actually 16 or 17 appearing in one? Obviously it’s not legal, in most countries, to show under-age nudity and it’s probably not moral either, although that point could me argued on a personal level. And yet there are many sites around where the models look younger than they are, and we’re told that they are ‘just 18’ etc. to start with.

It looks like there is a fine line between under-age porn actors and porn actors who look underage.

Just as a final, slightly unrelated thought, I’ll leave you with this. A couple of years ago there was a controversy because a famous actor, who was then 17, appeared naked on stage, in London, in a play. You could go and see him nude live on stage, but you couldn’t show photos of him nude on the web – though people did.

The female divas have been taking over lately and we know what that means it must be time for the boys to step in and take the stage. Every four years or so it seems we have a Boy Band resurgence or something close to that. Where would they get prom songs if it weren’t for Boy Bands? Well hold on no longer…

Perez Hilton, Jamie King, and Simon Fuller the American Idol Creator are bringing you a new show called Boy Band Search (boybandsearch.com).
Jamie King, is THE MAN of this group and a someone any boy band would die to work with. King happens to be the director of Britney Spear’s 2009 Circus Tour, Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet world tour which was just named Top Tour for 2009 by Billboard Magazine. But get this Jamie King is also the director of Madonna’s record-breaking Confessions world tour – which in my opinion was the best concert of all time and has not YET been topped by anyone. Remember the concert where she came down from the cross?

If you are between the ages of 13 and 21 years old and think (we mean KNOW) you are an excellent singer or dancer then you better submit your video for this soon. Make sure you have a unique voice to be a teen boy band idol. Think N’SYNC, 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys, and NKOTB (New Kids on the Block). I’d go back and take some notes from these groups before applying and make sure you offer something unique. See what each boy band such as Westlife offered or N’SYNC offered that Backstreet boys or NKOTB did not.

We had a highly popular thread not long ago about XY Magazine and its fate. There has been concern over issues that never came in the mail and if the magazine was still even around. Now we see that the main website of xy.com, a prime domain name and listed in the top 600k sites in the world is down. Xy.com featured personals, chat, and listings of clubs and businesses.

I emailed a few emails I had on hand for the staff over at Xy and had no reply. I assume either someone has purchased the site from the magazine’s owner or they can simply not afford hosting anymore. With the dismiss of many websites and news organizations in 2009, we are not sure what to expect.

Some of the traffic on Xy goes over to YGA Mag, which stands for the Young Gay America Magazine. This is a magazine that I have not seen printing that often and not getting the circulation that XY once had in bookstores across America. The neat thing about XY is that it was at the Barnes and Noble in Mid-America where that gay youth could find something to feel good about and give them hope. It was great to be able to find a treasure like XY at a local bookstore in nowhere, America.

One of the biggest issues facing the schools, from elementary through high school, is bullying. Unfortunately, much of this bullying is focused on issues of sexual and gender identity. The Supreme Court has ruled that schools are obligated to protect students from sexual harassment, and sexual bullying constitutes sexual harassment; however, many communities are not including sexual orientation or gender identity in their anti-bullying policies or legislation.

Several children have committed suicide due to bullying of this sort and almost 25% of students who have been taunted, teased or bullied because of being perceived as gay or lesbian have attempted suicide. Even more disturbingly, this type of bullying is most severe during the later elementary and middle school years. While the schools must address these issues and are working diligently to do so, the gay, lesbian and transgender community should do so as well. What can we do to help these kids and improve acceptance in the schools?

The gay community can assist with this critical issue in several ways. First, gay and lesbian centers across the country should be actively providing support to gay youth. Offer youth groups and make sure they are as accessible as possible to young people. Work with school Gay-Straight Alliance groups whenever possible to share knowledge and resources. A good social support system can reduce the risk of suicide among GLBTQ teens and reduce the impact of bullying.

Consider offering your support services to local school boards to share information about the struggles and challenges of gay and lesbian youth. You may even want to consider visiting the schools and providing information via an assembly or classroom presentations. Gay, lesbian and transgender youth are not the only ones victimized by this sort of daily torment. In fact, four heterosexual students report name calling and accusations of a sexual nature for every gay or lesbian student. Contact your school boards and legislators about the importance of anti bullying legislation that specifies sexual and gender identity protection.

Responding to harassment in the schools is more challenging if you are the one being bullied. Ignoring the bully, surrounding yourself with supportive friends and responding with humor can all be helpful strategies if you don’t feel like you are at physical or emotional risk. Know your school’s discipline policies and work within those policies and with the assistance of your parents, teachers and administrators to stop the bullying.

The latest gay bullying comes from Queens, New York where Jack Price, 49, had left a deli after buying cigarettes in College Point, when he received a number of antigay comments and was attacked. No matter whether you are young or old you have to be on the lookout for anti-gay remarks and slurs and be able to get away from attackers. We can only hope that Obama will keep his words spoken at the HRC Equality Dinner and sign into the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill that will be on his desk soon. See safeschoolscoalition.org for more information on anti-gay bullying.

I walked out to the mailbox today and was in shock when I opened it. I thought I was timewarped to the 1990’s when I was 16 years old and was at the bookstore and sneaked away from my family to look through the pages of a XY Magazine. Back then it was a great magazine that helped us deal with being gay and coming out. It also brought happiness to us by seeing the pics of the hotties and read stories about them instead of seeing the girls and girl talk you read in most teen magazines.

Although, It has been maybe a year or at least several months since I received an XY Magazine in the mail with a letter attached to it asking for a donation. I think I paid for a subscription to support the magazine as I do many gay magazines (advocate, OUT, Instinct, etc.). You can add Men’s Health, GQ, and Details to the list if you think those are gay.

The problem is that most gay teens in the year 2008 do not know about XY.com or XY Magazine. If you type in gay teen personals into Google you will get an AOL site that comes up first. Then if you type in gay teens in google you get Chadz Boys (chadzboys.com) which offers support and may be a good resource online. ChadzBoys is ranked 324,716 in Alexa above XY which is ranked 352,041.

XY Magazine used to be so popular that you could type in the keyword “XY” or “Gay Teen” and get it to come up in AOL. You know the old software version of AOL that used to bog down your computers that is all but extinct now (just like most magazines and newspapers).

The XY site online says in the title it has been around since 1996 and that is not true. This magazine has been around longer than the AOL Keyword days and we know that was way before 1992. I would just drop the been around since from the title of the site because the youth could care less how long something has been around. They want something that is around now… not a fallen hero.

The fact that About.com (owned by the New York Times), Wikipedia.org, and Student.com own the results in Google for the term “gay teen” that is very sad. It is sad because these are mostly corporate owned companies and not owned by the gay community. Wikipedia is an exception but it should be on page two or so on this term since its a freaking encyclopedia and is NOT a resource for gay teens who are searching for help or comfort online.

The website over at XY.com ask most to be a member before stepping inside then you go inside for non-members and barely see five articles. I mean what kind of resource is this. As for personals, this site is not too bad and its free but cannot compare to myspace or facebook where you get to know quite a bit about anyone before meeting them.

You have to give XY Magazine props because they were able to get themselves seen in bookstores at a time of gays not being accepted. Especially with covers you would see on girl’s teen magazines but aimed at boys and that is just something that does not happen much. So I give credit to Peter Ian Cummings for a job well done back in the day. I just think here in 2008 that XY.com and Gay.com have both lost their ways and lost their focus.

I have been an investor in Planet Out which owns Gay.com and Out Magazine. Jim Cramer a year or two ago talked about Planet Out stock and said they need to make their content free. Well they sort of did but their site is so hard to navigate that it would not even matter. They also set up some blogs and you would think they would be making more money now but I cannot even tell you what their stock price is… my investment was lost from what I can tell or their ticker was changed – I will have to look into that more!

Gay.com should have made chat easier and personals free. Gay.com is not a niche site it is a very popular site that should all be free with advertisements. They could have incorporated the ads on the chat with a better, improved chat but nothing has been improved on that site in several years. I was in Paris and no one was using Gay.com chat they were all using Manhunt and GayRomeo.com.

So those of you asking What Happened to XY Magazine? or Why isn’t anyone on Gay.com personals anymore. It is because the gays youth have went over to the corporate-owned sites such as About.com and Myspace. If you want them then re-invent yourself. Take notes from Madonna bitches because she knows how to reinvent herself!

UPDATE:  I have to give XY Magazine credit for their article on gay teen killing in Iraq.  These kids were 14 years old and killed so cruely and I am so glad that XY Magazine brought this to light.  Iraq and Iran are killing off the most beautiful souls that exist in that tragedy of a place.