Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 18:59:38 -0700
From: Kevin Harness <kevroc54321@tns.net>
Subject: The Love Of My Life: PREFACE

Thank you for reading this story.

Perhaps the title itself caught your eye, or someone told you about it.  No
matter why, I'm glad to have you looking back with me - to just a few short
years ago when epiphanies and life-changing events seemed abundant, and
dreams nearly given up became a reality.

Due to some of these recent events, I came to believe that two people were
greater than the sum of one plus one, and that we could make anything
happen.  Even if we couldn't make just anything happen, it felt like we
could and that was a very nice feeling indeed.

This is an account of what started out as a cross-generational relationship
and love with the most beautiful person I've ever had the pleasure of
knowing.  He wasn't just beautiful on the outside, but was knock-down
gorgeous on the inside, too.

The subject of a cross-generational relationship is, to be sure, a hotly
debated one.  On one end of the spectrum, you have the proponents of such
saying that they aren't targeting an underaged boy for sex at all.  Rather,
the motivation for the bond is said to be intense care and admiration of
the spirit of the boy himself.  On the other end of the spectrum, you have
this type of relationship cast into the same category as serial rapists and
outright child molesters.

While I do believe there are individuals out there that claim to be in this
type of a relationship for the reasons they say, there are others who sadly
are targeting underaged boys for their own lurid gratification.  This
regretably causes those individuals who aren't motivated by such and who
only want good things to happen for all concerned to be identified with the
bad.

Further, despite the actual good intentions of those not targeting
under-aged boys for sex, even if genuine feelings of mutual admiration and
possibly even love exist, the law dictates that a younger person is not
only disallowed to make this type of decision for themselves, but also that
they are unable to do so.

I only offer up that the 'age of consent' varies greatly across the
countries of the world.  Why would, for example, an aboriginal nation have
an age of consent set at 13 or 14 years old?  Those types of cultures,
despite the stark and often harsh living conditions have a significantly
higher longevity.  Then, in a technologically advanced culture and nation
such as ours (U.S.), the age of consent is 16 to 18.  There are arguments
in each country for their decision on 'age of consent'.

This invariably generates the question: Can there be a comparison from
country to country?

Which brings up the "Who is right, and who is wrong?" dividing line.

Are the more complex societies automatically pushing the age of consent
higher because of the complexity of and the number of factors involved in
dealing with life in that society?

Is that necessarily a correct concept?

Are we to say that all the countries across the world that have the age of
consent set at 15 years old - and there are quite a lot of them - are
morally wrong?  "Sorry Sweden and Denmark, you guys are depraved souls who
allow children to be exploited?"

One would be very hard-pressed to think along those lines.

Interestingly enough, in most of those countries one could travel there and
perhaps fall in love with a younger person and even - in quite a few of
these countries - marry them and be eligible for citizenship in that
country.  Yes, even gay marriages count.  Yet, you could also face criminal
charges by the laws of the U.S. government before you got to the marriage
part.

Many countries have such laws.

Once again, the people who indeed hurt our world's children could be
pointed out as being at least partially responsible for the implementation
of such laws.

It is an issue with many facets, many laws and rules often conflicting with
one another, with horrendous stigma and very permanent consequences all the
way around if you end up on the justice end of things.

So, what do you do if you happenstance meet a younger person and develop an
endearing friendship with them - and as well they for you, and within a
very short time indeed it is apparent that you've really hit it off and
like hanging around each other?  Further, a short time after that it
becomes rapidly obvious that a special bond has developed, and that you
both care for each other very much, and don't seem to want to be apart.
After some heart-to-heart conversations, what it comes down to is that - to
the best of your figuring - you two really, really love each other?

To define it further, let's propose that the relationship wasn't started by
having sex, and let's establish the age of the younger person as 14 or 15
or 16, and the adult is 25 or even 35 or so.

So in that circumstance, what do you say?  What do you do?

Sorry Joey, your age of consent birthday isn't for another six months or a
year and a half, to hell with all your feelings.  We'll just have to
postpone or cancel this whole thing?  I am fairly sure that crushing
someone's heart is the exact opposite of what a this well-intended person
was trying to do.

The main reasoning behind establishing an "age of consent" is so by
such-and-such an age which is established by law, nearly every person is
assumed to have enough presence of mind, judgement, and awareness to enter
into a physical and emotional relationship.

>From a different perspective I have had younger people explain to me their
exasperation at being considered 'children' at 15 and 16 years old, when in
fact these individuals were very intuitive, intelligent, and possessed a
good standard of morals, quite apart from the 'norm'.

Can you honestly say that you haven't met a younger person that was
extremely mature in many ways?  Yes, they may've lacked the experience of
an "older person", but they most certainly didn't lack good perception,
translation, and correct understanding of relative importances.

Propenents of cross-generational relationships would perhaps say that a
blanket statement of "all younger-than-18-year-old boys aren't fit to judge
what love is and discern between predatory behavior and actual caring" - is
too all-inclusive and that there are obvious exceptions to the rule.

Opponents would of course say that such a cross-generational relationship
shouldn't have been started in the first place, and that the "responsible
adult" was not doing their job.  To be sure, it is probable that the
younger person may be more prone to being hurt / scarred / led astray by
these set of circumstances, especially if enormous care and sensitivity are
not exercised by the "older" partner.

There are many circumstances where I would agree with that, but likewise
there are also some where I wouldn't.

When I met the boy / young man that I've written about in this story he was
half a year away from being 18.

I am not one to advocate the breaking of laws, believe me.  In this
situation, however, if I had gone along with the letter of the law, I
would've abandoned someone in great need of care and love, and would've
possibly eliminated the enormous amount of good that we caused for each
other.

This particular guy was the same exact person the day before he was
eighteen as he was the day he turned eighteen.  I know.  I was there.  So
does the passing of that day bestow some extra amount of understanding or
experience that one can draw on to now be more wise, more perceptive, or a
better judge of people?

Many who read my story in its inital form said that it changed their view
of relationships and gay life, and gave them a hope they hadn't possessed
before.  A few wrote me to ask how things were now, if I was ok, and to
thank me in earnest for recounting this part of my life for them.  Another,
after reading my story late one night, sent me mail saying he didn't know
whether to be angry at me for the story, or thank me.  I wrote back and
thanked him for his views, and bade him well.  Apparently he'd experienced
such a shift of personal viewpoint and understanding that it disoriented
him somewhat, for he emailed back the next day to thank me for the story,
and described how much it had changed him.

I wrote this story because this experience so changed my life much and I
learned so much, that I thought others should know what happened, so that
they may also experience some of the same.

I welcome your response to the story, and wish you all well.

Enjoy.


Kevin Harness
kevroc54321@tns.net