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IT’S A WARM August night in England. I’m writing this from an internet café off Charing Cross Road, in the gayest part of London. Some kids sit at a table outside, enjoying a Grolsch in the clear night air.
There must be 100 gay places to go around here—cafés, bars, clubs—all spilling out into the busy streets. And everyone is so nice, so friendly. By the way, those kids drinking outside on the sidewalk seem to be around 17, but hardly anyone is drunk, at least not in the American sense. Many people are drinking wine or juice; most of the drinking seems to be light. All the age groups here on Old Compton Street are mixing together without much thinking about it. There are hardly any bouncers—and those who are here are mainly checking for bombs, a London fact of life.
But there didn’t even used to be bouncers at all: in fact, if it weren’t for the occasional bomb threat, would be nothing for bouncers to do, since there are no IDs to check. Nobody here has an ID, since the UK government doesn’t issue picture IDs. There is no need for them. Young gay people in the UK are never ever bored, since they can do whatever older people do. That’s because in the UK, you can drink beer in a café at 16.
What made London’s gay life so much better than the US’s? In fact, what made Canada’s gay life—indeed, every other country’s life—so much better than the US’s? One word: twentyone. America is the only country with a 21 drinking age.
It wasn’t always this way. Until 1984, the drinking age was 18 in most states. But in 1984, the National Minimum Driving Age Act set a national age of 21.

HAVE A SHOCKING yet true claim, dear reader. I say the 21 drinking age has severely damaged our national social life, although it has not, in fact, stopped anyone from drinking. However, by wrecking gay social life and limiting teenagers’ access to most places, the 21 drinking age particularly destroys the quality of American gay life.
Still, the most disgusting thing about the drinking age is that it does not even work. The drinking age does not stop anyone from drinking, and it does not stop drunk driving accidents, as I will show. On the contrary, the 21 drinking age seems to have increased teenage alcohol abuse, although this is not something anyone but me [and the university researchers] wants to discuss.
Of course it is not just about the drinking age, but about how it is used and enforced. The USA has a unique way of using the age. Not only are we the only country with a 21 age, but also the only country which has laws not allowing anyone underage on licensed premises at any time—and this restriction is a big part of the problem.
There are in fact only two countries in the world with such “access laws.” In most US states, you aren’t allowed in most alcohol-licensed premises if you are under 21. In the UK, you’re not allowed in bars if you are under 5. That’s it—no other countries have such a legal restriction, and the UK one is barely enforced. It is common to wander around the English countryside and see parents and kids having a sunny afternoon at a picnic table outside a country pub, the kids eating hot dogs and the parents enjoying some wine.
But America’s alcohol policy is not about controlling underage alcohol use, since it does not have much effect on alcohol use. Its main effect is, instead, to make all our socializing shady and criminal. Because of age restrictions, our entire national social life has been forced into dingy corners beyond the prying eyes of thuggish, ID-checking bouncers. Every admission to every social event is subject to the humiliating “ID moment of truth”—you have to run this minefield whether you personally are under 21 or not. And this, dear reader, has destroyed the very heart and structure of our cities without anyone so much as mentioning it—all in the name of a law which actually increases teenage drinking.
Why isn’t anyone talking about this issue?

problem 1: it doesn’t work
OWEVER, BEFORE we can discuss the bad effects of the 21 drinking age, we must understand how it isn’t working.
In 1996, the last year where figures are available, 13,395 people died in crashes where a driver was above the 0.1% BAC limit for alcohol. That’s 32% of all fatal crashes in the US.
By comparison, about 540 people died in alcohol-related crashes in Britain. That’s 15% of all fatal crashes in the UK, a rate of less than half the US rate, even though the UK drinking age is 16 [or 18 for hard liquor].
Now I might even be in favor of having a restrictive drinking age if I thought it would reduce these deaths. But it doesn’t work. Surveys always show that around 90% of college students age 18-21 drink alcohol, and a full 75% “consume alcohol on a regular basis.”
I went to college in New York when the drinking age was 18. When kids wanted to get together, they went to the campus pub, had a pleasant drink with friends, and walked back to their room to study. How times have changed since 1983: now kids drink more, but dangerously.
It used to be American kids drank moderately, to be social—like the British, or Canadians. Now they drink only to get drunk, out of the public eye. They can’t drink on campus, so they do it at keg parties where the major purpose is to get drunk away from adults. Or they do it hanging out in cars outside of clubs. Or they do it in people’s rooms with a six-pack.
I know that any American teenager can verify these facts are true, although Europeans will no doubt be amazed by my story of America.
The reason so many fewer young British and Canadians die in alcohol-related accidents [even though they have lower drinking ages] is that young Americans primarily binge drink. That’s because in most states, minors cannot even enter a club, but they are allowed to drink in a home if an adult is present. And this has created the keg parties you can find in every American suburb.

problem 2: it causes danger
S READERS KNOW, a keg party happens when an adult goes and buys a keg of beer [which, for our foreign friends, is a large metal barrel of beer with a tap on it]. The only object of these parties is to get blasted. [Some states have tried to toughen up the alcohol prohibitions by having the police raid suburban parties. But when the police raid teenage parties, it leads to people drinking in cars so does not solve the problem, because it cannot be solved.]
“We really force young people to drink in situations where nothing else is going on,” says Lynn Zimmer, a professor of sociology at Queens College in New York City, who specializes in alcohol legislation. “Young people can’t go to a dance club and consume alcohol. So we’re more and more pushing their alcohol consumption into these very isolated events in which that’s the primary thing that’s taking place. And that’s the kind of situation that is conducive to heavy drinking… macho drinking.”
Andrew Barr, author of Drink: A Social History of America—American Wine Association Book of the Year 1999—says it even better. “The minimum drinking age standard of 21 has produced a generation of young people who drink only to get drunk. They do not indulge in relaxed social drinking because that is something from which they are excluded by law. Instead, they drink until they throw up or pass out.”
American colleges are not allowed to educate students on how to drink moderately and responsibly, as Barr so eloquently explains in his book. The Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act requires colleges to inform all under-21 students that they must not drink, and that is the only message they are allowed to give, under federal law. If a college gave a message of moderation, it would be seen to be encouraging illegal activity and would lose federal funding.
But perhaps the most damning statistics come from Harvard University’s study of underage alcohol use. Harvard’s School of Public Health surveyed the current drinking behavior of 1,669 freshmen at various Massachusetts colleges, comparing it with a similar study of 7,000 students in 1977, when the drinking age was 18.
According to the Harvard surveys, the number of male students who got drunk between one and three times per month actually increased from 25% to 41% when the drinking age was raised. Also, the number who “habitually drank in order to get drunk” rose from 20% to 40% for men, and from 10% to 34% percent for women.
“What appears to be happening,” Harvard Sociologist Henry Wechsler said, “is the disappearance of light drinking on campus. Persons who drink are now almost exclusively binge drinkers.”
These teenage binge drinkers are dangerous. Not only do they drink more and have more drunk-driving accidents, but the excessive drinking causes people to get violent. When they’ve been binge drinking, teenagers are more likely to vandalize, more likely to rape and more likely to gay-bash. [What gay person feels comfortable walking past a college keg party that is just ending and disgorging its guests?] They are more likely to cause problems of all kinds, but there are many fewer policemen to watch them, because many American police spend their Friday and Saturday nights out “enforcing the drinking age” by raiding and shutting down bars and clubs. Meanwhile our European and Canadian friends were out having an orderly, sophisticated good time; their cities remained civil; and many fewer people died on the roads going home.
If we treat young people with respect, they will act like they deserve our respect. The 21 drinking age is making our society a society we don’t want.
Unfortunately, however, 21 is even worse for young gays than it is for “straights.” That’s because our main way of meeting other gay people when we’re young—the gay club—has been destroyed in America by the 21 drinking age.
If you go to Britain or Canada, you find lots of happening gay bars/clubs. These used to be the main way young people met, and in other countries it still is. American gay teenagers are the only people in the world who are systematically excluded from their own national social space.

problem 3: it ruins gay life
N MOST PLACES in America, a gay club is the only place in town where it’s possible to hang out and meet other gay people, but teenagers are banned from it. That leaves young gay people isolated and depressed, and in many cases it screws them up for years. [The resulting isolation may kill many kids each year through suicide, and certainly drives many kids to depressive binge drinking, leading to drunk driving itself.]
But it is not just a youth issue. Whereas “straight” people can meet people easily at the mall or church, for gay people gay clubs were always the main part of our social life. There were great, amazing places like Studio 54 and Paradise Garage in New York City, and many clubs all over the country with a good mix of people. None of these would be possible today because there wouldn’t be enough customers. Our gay space has been systematically destroyed, to the point that most people [including me] bitch constantly about the state of the entire gay scene. But we never stopped to ask why it happened.
A lot of readers will say they don’t want to use gay clubs anyway, because they’re so bad. But this is a self fulfilling prophecy—American gay clubs only got bad because the drinking age was raised, eliminating the most enthusiastic dancers and socializers, i.e. teenagers. All you have to do to prove my point is visit Canada or England, where the attitude is so much more positive.
By rationing access to gay life—putting it back in the closet, behind closed doors in dark corners—we have made being gay seem dirty again. When you need to run a minefield of ID-checking bouncers [many of them straight thugs] just to meet gay friends for a dance, it makes you feel dirty and cheap. It makes gay social life feel less respectable taken as a whole.
As I say, gay clubs are the primary way gay people meet, and I think they used to work well. Gay people are the only people in America who are forced to ration access to our main meetingplace. I think this undermines the self-esteem of the whole gay community, not just teenagers.

problem 4: it wrecks our cities
T HAS ONLY BEEN 15 years since American clubs could swing open their doors to the street and just let people flow in and out, like in Europe.
But cultural memory is short, and most people nowadays don’t even remember what it was like. It’s as if the very heart of our great American cities was stolen in the night, and then a truth serum was administered to the entire country to make us not realize anything was wrong. What we have done is nothing less than destroying the soul of cities for our young people, replacing it with the right to sit around at home with a keg.
It is shocking that nobody is discussing this issue, lamenting the destruction of this important part of American culture. But of course issues like this cannot be discussed, and that is mainly due to Mothers Against Drunk Driving [MADD].
MADD is an organization of mothers whose children have been killed in drunk driving accidents. This is a group which cannot be challenged, since in an argument between gay teenagers armed with facts, and mothers with dead kids, the mothers with dead kids always win. Always. As my mom once said, “I don’t have to be logical. I’m your mother!” It doesn’t matter that in this case MADD actually are wrong.
MADD’s first chairperson, Candy Lightner, was largely responsible for getting Washington to raise the drinking age to 21. Lightner’s 13yo daughter was killed by a hit and run drunk driver in 1980, so I don’t doubt her sincerity. And I am all in favor of reducing teenage drunk driving, just like Lightner. The thing is, the 21 drinking age does not accomplish that goal. It accomplishes exactly the opposite, while at the same time destroying the national social life.
This is something MADD does not like to discuss. And if you try to argue with MADD, you feel like you are threatening the very goodness of American Motherhood.
In 1995, MADD president Katherine Prescott supported the federal ban on teaching college students how to drink responsibly. She insists that the only proper message to tell them is, do not drink: “I don’t think we should operate under the idea that they’re going to do what they shouldn’t do, therefore we should show them how to do it.”
The facts don’t matter, although Peter Coors, chief of Coors beer, disagrees with her: he thinks kids should be educated about responsible drinking. “I’m not an advocate of trying to get young people to drink, but kids are drinking now anyway. All we have done is criminalize them. Maybe the answer is to lower the drinking age so that kids learn to be responsible about drinking at a younger age”—like in Britain or Canada, where the drinking age is much lower but the rate of drunk driving accidents is very small.
Sociology professor Zimmer, alcohol author Barr, beer executive Coors, and almost every other thinker agree the 21 drinking age is failed social policy because it does not work. But MADD is not interested in the facts. A MADD press release brands Zimmer, Barr, and Coors’s suggestion of lowering the drinking age as “the single worst and most dangerous idea of the year.”
Mothers [dear reader, you know what I mean] can be scary individually, so I can imagine how legislators feel when confronted by an organization of thousands of mothers. OMG! However, MADD is quite simply wrong about this and we need to challenge their claims. The fact that kids were killed in drink driving accidents does not mean that the 21 drinking age stops anyone from drunk driving. We should not blindly carry on with a law that leads to mayhem, death and destruction while also ruining the vibrancy of our cities and destroying the soul of gay life.

what kind of country do we want?
OW, DEAR READER, I know what you are saying. You are saying: “I don’t care about drinking anyway” and “I hate gay clubs anyway, they’re bad and full of old gross guys and tacky.”
But these are self-fulfilling prophecies which we should challenge. Because as I’ve said, this is not about your personal drinking, it is about the quality of life we want to have in our country.
As I’ve said, it is not about drinking; it is about access. If you are under 21, you are banned in America from almost any social space in any city. It doesn’t matter if you are going to drink.
As for the supposed tackiness of gay clubs, the reason why American young people find the gay scene so nauseating is precisely because of the 21 drinking age. To start with, the drinking age has made clubs much older places, where young people don’t feel welcome. Also, by rationing entry, we have made the gay scene a much nastier place generally. We need to worry more about the effect that straight ID-checking bouncers have on our entire feeling of self-worth as gay people.
As I say, I am writing this from London. We Americans always say we love London and Paris—their civility, their action, the fabulousness of European “café society”. Coming from pent-up San Francisco, where you can only meet up with friends by scuttling through some mysterious doorway like a rat, London seems so fresh. In Europe you just stand in the street and laugh with friends, and all the gay bars have crowds of people standing in front of them—open to the world, showing openly that gay people exist and even making “straights” jealous.
Amongst that kind of jollity, the petty frustrations of American loathing—where gay life is relegated to a dark room—seem a world away. But “Cool Britannia” would never have been possible under current American alcohol regulations.

HE DRINKING AGE does not reduce drinking, but it makes our country a crappy place to live. This is about what kind of society we want to have, nothing less. Do we want a country where our cities are vibrant, lovely places to socialize as we see fit? Or do we want a country where access to our socializing space—access to our very social lives—is controlled by ID-checking thuggush bouncers, where 40% of college students binge drink every weekend to pass out, where gay teenagers sit alone depressed at home, and where gangs of drunken teenagers terrorize our streets?
The 21 drinking age degrades our urban culture and it destroys gay life. It kills people, the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.
Will we take action to improve the quality of our country? Or will we piss away the rest of our lives, too scared of our mothers to speak with facts and logic?
—PETER IAN CUMMINGS

© 2003 XY Media Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:1505, old post ID:19188

Ha! I love it. "Raising the drinking age has ruined gay social life." LMFAO!

Not here in Minneapolis.
http://www.gay90s.com

Notice how every Wed., Thurs., and Sun. is 18+?

in America, a gay club is the only place in town where it’s possible to hang out and meet other gay people

Not true. I'm not gay, but I've met plenty of gay people at parties, just out socializing with friends, and of course, at bars and I've never been to a "gay club."

That leaves young gay people isolated and depressed, and in many cases it screws them up for years.

True, many young gay people do suffer through bouts with isolation and depression, but it has nothing to do with the fact that they can't go to gay bars.

There were great, amazing places like Studio 54 and Paradise Garage in New York City, and many clubs all over the country with a good mix of people. None of these would be possible today because there wouldn’t be enough customers.

Huh. Didn't these "great, amazing places" have these dreaded bouncers or thugs you've been talking about that make the people who go there feel "dirty and cheap?" Yup, I think so.

Gay people are the only people in America who are forced to ration access to our main meetingplace.

Again, I'd have to say that's completely false. What's the "main meetingplace" for straight people in America over the age of 21??? You guessed it. BARS. Are people under the age of 21 allowed access to those "main meetingplaces?" Nope. Therefore, straight people are also forced to "ration access" to the main meetingplaces as well. Or, to put it in more user friendly terms, find other ways of meeting people! I don't buy for a minute that the only way to meet gay people is by going to a gay club. Like I said, I know lots of gay people here in the Twin Cities and I've never been to a gay bar. I've met them through classes at school, I've met them through mutual friends. I mentioned earlier how the biggest gay club in Minnesota (The Gay 90's) devotes three, out of the seven nights a week that they are open, to 18 and over crowds. That's almost half. There are several primarily gay clubs that I know of that are always 18 and up. That simply means they don't sell alcohol. Clubs aren't required to sell alcohol. It has nothing to do with the legal drinking age Peter. You just want something to blame your social frustrations on. This one cracked me up...

Do we want a country where our cities are vibrant, lovely places to socialize as we see fit? Or do we want a country where access to our socializing space—access to our very social lives—is controlled by ID-checking thuggush bouncers, where 40% of college students binge drink every weekend to pass out, where gay teenagers sit alone depressed at home, and where gangs of drunken teenagers terrorize our streets?

Jesus Christ! Talk about a backwards thinking moron! Yeah, lowering the legal drinking age will definitely reduce the way that college students consume alcohol and it will definitely reduce the amount of "drunken teenagers terrorizing our streets." Good God, I hope he stays in London.

Now don't get me wrong. I've studied enough law to be all for having a discussion about the value or lack of value of having the legal drinking age be the arbitrary number of 21, but to claim that raising the drinking age has meant the demise of the gay social lifestyle is just ridiculous. How many ways can one group claim to be victimized by society? Does setting the drinking age at 21 decrease teenage drinking? Probably not. Does it increase the safety of our roads? Most likely, no. But does it make teenagers become isolated from other teenagers and consequently become depressed and "screw them up for life?" No, it doesn't do that either. PETER IAN CUMMINGS simply sounds like a person who desperately wants more access to young, possibly drunk, gay males. Unfortunate but true. And considering it's coming from the founder and editor of a magazine who's stated target audience is "12-21 year old gay males," not very surprising either.

Just to clarify, I say it's unfortunate to read things like this because when people like Red say things like

Gays also tend to be sexual predators, though it's not always the case so I can't stereotype.

I tend to defend "gays," because I too firmly believe that stereotyping is wrong. Then I read something like this and it makes me understand exactly where people like Red are coming from. Unfortunately.

Archived topic from Anythingforums, old topic ID:1505, old post ID:19233