Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Sex and teenagers

Was anyone looking at this specific sort of "relationship"? It just seems an oddball sort of thing to throw this out, especially when there are plenty of instances of teenage boys having sex with grown women.

MTV's UNDRESSED series did a story that I think pointed out the absurdity of some recent laws. You had a young couple, both 17, who'd been sexually active for some time. One of them turned 18-- and suddenly, what they were doing was ILLEGAL. They had to wait 2 weeks until the other turned 18, so it could be LEGAL again.

Isn't it just rediculous? Laws made to "protect" certain people under certain circumstances have added (possibly) excessive RESTRICTIONS to people who might be perfectly fine with what they're doing if left alone. Next thing you know you have increasing number of people getting completely HYSTERICAL about "people having sex with CHILDREN"-- even if the "children" they're talking about happen to be, say, 17.


"With different cultures, there should be different customs"

Nancy, I like how you think!

It is silly and I don't think it holds up pretty much anywhere. Laws are usually flexible in this respect, giving 2-3 years age difference when one is a minor (but at least 16-17). In NY, 17 is legal any way you look at it. Washington, DC is 16. What's legal varies between states with one exception - crossing borders for the purpose of having sex with someone under the age of consent in one's own state is illegal.

You forgot about Nura and Thom back in Dave Cockrum's run. How old were the Legionnaires supposed to be then?

Re: Grown men and young boys

I just threw that out as an example of a taboo relationship. Not responding to anything in particular.

Re: Ridiculous laws designed to "protect" young people

The bottom line is, no matter how many "teenage boys are having sex with grown women (I wish I'd known about this when I was 16)," if you are 25 and romancing a 17 year old, I firmly believe that THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT. It doesn't matter much to me whether or not the 17 year old is consenting, which sex the parties are, or if the parents are okay with it. I know that there are exceptions to every rule, but 17 year olds do not have the emotional maturity to deal with an adult relationship. Plus, its creepy.

whether or not one believes teens to be mature enough to have sex with each other OR older people, many of them DO have sex, regardless of what any comic book does or doesn't show.

Young people DO respect honesty over preachiness, but you can have a blend of both, and portray 'real' relationships in a mature fashion that does show consequences -- without being trashy.

Yeuch! This thread is sick! Teenagers shouldn't have sex! I want to read a super hero comic! Not a bunch of sick paedo fantasies.

We should start a petition and ban this filth.

That's a rather strong statement don't you think? Were discussing the Legion NOT Power Pack. Just so you understand I'll try to state a few things clearly for you.

1. Pedophelia is sex with children. That's just sick and unacceptable under any and every cirumstance for wherever or whoever and deserves harsh punishment.

2. Puberty ends childhood and begins the maturation of the human animal, there is no set biological age though there is a general age at which it begins.

3. Ignoring something or banning the thing doesn't make it go away it just makes it hide away in a dark corner.

4. Open intelligent discussion of a problem can develop a sensible approach to ending the problem as opposed to the closed minded brute force approach which generally tends to cause more harm than good.

5. We were discussing the fact that teenagers are attempting to discover their place in the world and to take a look at what and who they are and how they should behave. No one has tried to say that they found teenage sex good or were tempted to partake.

6. There are people who seem to have a problem with behavior they deem to be outside preconcieved politically accepted norm. Social stagnation and legally enforced predjudices are inherantly bad for society as a whole.

7. If you really feel that strongly then by all means start a letter writing campaign. You have as much right to voice your opinions as I do.

You make very good points Yellow Kid. You can't pretend that something you know is happening...isn't. Pretending that teenagers aren't haven't sex is not realistic. It never has been...not in the 50's, not now, and certainly not in the 31st century. The way we deal with it in educating the young about the responsibilities of such a decision, that is what is important!

DC may have a responsibility to show how they deal with it, especially if they even attempt to tackle the subject matter. The mere fact that you have a few dozen teenages interacting (cohabitating) with one another, unsupervised, immediately implies that the issue will have to be dealt with sooner or later. When you attempt to "sweep issues under the rug", they become problems. Young readers will begin to draw their on conclusions, based on real life events in their own enviornments.

Waid & Kitson's EMPIRE depicted a teenaged girl, Delfi, in bed with an adult man. Her exact age is open to debate, but it's pretty clear she was jailbait. Delfi's sexual behavior, however, was an integral facet of her manipulative evil. If there's any sexual content at all in the new LSH (I doubt it will be graphic), it will probably be there to support a significant plot point or characterization, not to endorse teenage promiscuity or titillate readers.

How many people were disturbed by the idea that Bilis and Thola were preparing to "do it" in the back seat of the space-cruiser? Not many, I presume, because the scene was not about teenage sex, it was about portraying futuristic teenagers in a familiar (and somewhat humorous) situation.

Have we seen the Legion deal realistically with the fact that most of their membership is comprised of aliens?

Yeah, most are humanoid and that is troublesome in and of itself, but I was thinking more in terms of things like maturity and lifespan.

Brainiac 5 is supposed to be a teenager. But is he?
If the average Coluan lives to be 600 years old, then it seems odd they would hit puberty at approximately the same earth age as Invisible Kid.

When we start looking at the non-Earth colony members of the Legion (Tinya, Querl, Lar, Jeka, Gates, Cham, Nura, Tasmia, etc...) it never really made sense to me that applied so much human biology who simple "looked" human.

Which brings us to sex and the Legion. Not only should we have cultural differences about sexual mores, we should have biological issues as well (such as the a Legion member that has a much SHORTER lifespan than the average human).

I don't want the Legion to be about sex, but I don't think it's good sci-fi/fantasy to ignore the issue or approach it in a manner that is ludicrous by making all the various races of the Legion chrono-syncronous with regards to age/maturity (meaning that a 15 year old Naltorian = a 15 year old Coluan = a 15 year old Terran).