"Ten years ago, coming out was an adult process," says Jim Anderson, spokesman for Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in New York. "Now it's an adolescent process." And teenagers who have the courage (and support) to come out have an advantage over those who wait until their twenties or later. Eric Pliner of the Gay Center says that when kids "cut themselves off from their sexual identity, their ability to develop appropriately is hindered." Which can lead, Lord help them, to a second adolescence when they do come out, whenever that may be. (Prime-time example: ER's Dr. Kerry Weaver and her cringey, Tiger Beat dating tactics as a freshly minted, mid-forties lesbian.)

There's been another change over the past ten years, too: the emergence of gay youth culture. Maybe the best indication is that for these kids, GSA is simply part of their automatic shorthand, like URL or ADD. It stands for Gay Straight Alliance, and there are about 60 in New York City schools, virtually all of them started within the past decade. (Joshua helped start the one at his school last year — so far, there are twelve members, four of them gay.) Generally, GSAs seem to attract progressive straight girls — almost as if they're certification programs for the junior fag hag. Christina, who proudly wears an I PREFER GIRLS pin on her school backpack, helped start her school's GSA during her sophomore year, just as she was coming out. "It's where everyone gets exposed to gay and lesbian culture, and it's really a lot of fun."

Still, since it's an extracurricular activity, these kids have to contend with that old joiner-lone wolf dilemma. Ryan says he didn't go for the gung-ho(mo) style of the GSA in his old high school. "They called it the Raaaainnnbow Club," he says, rolling his eyes as he arcs his voice. "They were always mentioning that club on the morning announcements. Like, 'Remember to join the Rainbow Club on Monday afternoons.' And I was like, 'Aaaggghhhh.' " And while Adam is the president of the bowling club at his school, he says he would never join the GSA. "I owe a lot to them, and I'm glad they're there," he says, "but there was a kid in it a few years back, and he graduated years ago, and he's still referred to as the Gay Kid. I don't want to be remembered like that."

GSA members or not, these kids say they feel supported, in varying degrees, by their friends and schoolmates. Joshua came out at school in the spring of his junior year — his writing class hosted a poetry café where they read their poems and served doughnuts and coffee. "At the time, my mom was getting used to my being gay, and it was not an easy process, so I spoke with anger. I was like, 'I'm gay, and if you don't like it, too bad.' " The crowd of 50 students and teachers gave him a standing ovation.

The few friends whom Ryan has told have been supportive. "Shocked," he stresses, "but supportive. Usually, their first response is 'Prove it!' And I don't know how to prove it." (A few of his female friends have crushes on him, and one girl in particular recently asked him if he was "100 bazillion percent sure I'm grizzly.") At Devin's all-boys school, he's well liked not only because he's a top student, an athlete, and a clotheshorse but also because he's friends with a lot of girls outside of school. Thus, straight boys see him as a link to cute girls.

Possibly thanks in part to Howard Stern's tireless crusading on their behalf, lesbians win the popularity contest. And this appears to be true even — or especially — in high schools. Christina says that if you're a lesbian — and "you're not a man hater" — then you're "an awesome, cool, tough, or totally femme girl and you strut your stuff and have sexual power." And with that comes respect from other kids. Although when she first came out, a few boys in school asked her, " 'Can I watch?' And I was like, 'You watch too much HBO.' "

Teenage boys in Flatbush, D.J. says, are homophobic toward gay boys, "but for females, they're more accepting — because then they're like, 'I want to do you and your girlfriend,' " she says. "I told one guy that I'm gay, and he was upset, but then his mind changed and he was like, 'You know, me, you, and your girlfriend could get down.' "

Gay teenage guys, at least, have their own magazine — another manifestation of heretofore nonexistent gay youth culture. San Francisco–based XY magazine, a slick glossy launched in 1996, has a readership of 200,000 (it's available at Tower Records and Barnes & Noble in the city, and at selected stores in those chains nationwide). XY prints pictures of gay teens and young adults holding hands and kissing (and prints their poetry and essays, too).

And five years ago, here in New York, Jeff Brenner started the weekly Friday-night 18-plus party "Kurfew," a co-ed event that draws between 500 and 1,000 young gays and lesbians and their straight friends to Twirl, a vast, lounge-style club on West 23rd Street. Brenner, who was then 25 and had just been fired from an accounting firm 48 hours after coming out at work, recognized that "there was nothing for an 18-year-old gay kid to do." So he started promoting a party where, for $5 to $20 per person, there's "no pressure. They can sit, they can dance, they can be exposed to the community and avoid a predatory environment."

In New York, gay kids, like all teenagers, recognize they have a certain strange sway over adults — they realize the culture at large (television, movies, advertising) objectifies youthful sexuality. But unlike a gay kid who lives in Lebanon, New Hampshire, a gay youth here can flaunt that power to a ready, receptive, and sometimes all-too-appreciative audience. (One meet-and-chat Website for gay teenagers features several self-posted professional-quality photos of lovely young men in the metropolitan area who are essentially advertising their availability to older men. "If you have a house in East Hampton, I LOVE YOU!" one aspiring houseboy writes.)

With this in mind, the Hetrick-Martin staff tends to be fiercely protective, and their actions on behalf of the kids fall somewhere between fairy-godmotherly and meddlesome. During the Gay Pride Parade, for instance, the school always has a big, colorful float surrounded by jubilant kids. Understandably, they get wild applause from viewers along the route, as well as from fellow marchers. But if one of those marchers decides to elbow his way into the scrum of teenagers, and happens to be wearing, say, a bottle's worth of Glitter Girl body gel, white-feather angel wings, a silver thong, and not a stitch otherwise, a staff member will ask him to move along — it's just not the image they're trying to convey. HMI staff members also send task forces to Christopher Street, beseeching bar owners to be vigilant about checking IDs.

Adam, who only needs to shave part of his upper lip, and even that just once a month, recognizes and ruminates over his youthful power. At some cafés, he says, he can occasionally get himself a free coffee from gay waiters. "It's only because I'm young. I'm not flattered by it anymore. In a few years, I will no longer be a commodity, and I know that," he says. "I definitely feel like I'm being manipulative in a certain way." This small-beans manipulation could be seen, though, as payback for the unwanted attention he gets from the occasional older man who winks at him at 7:30 in the morning on the crosstown bus when he's on his way to school.

As recently as ten years ago, a gay kid's only entree to gay adulthood might have been to sneak into a gay bar and get hit on by an older person and learn the secret code of homosexuality — the grown-ups' code. Now, though, as gay teenagers are more and more visible, they're establishing their own code. All the external, cultural changes are making the internal, personal process less terrifying. It's easier for gay kids to give themselves permission to be who they are. The importance of being out while doing normal teenage things like hanging around or talking or going to the prom or sitting around the cube at Astor Place cannot be discounted, because, as Devin says, "I'm human before I'm anything. I'm Devin before I'm gay."

GLSEN's Anderson says the progress is tangible: "I think the difference in the adults these kids will become cannot be underestimated. We're beginning to see a generation of young people who aren't forced to hide in the closet, or to be true and honest about only part of themselves."

And yet — despite their courage, despite the pockets of approval they've found, despite the city and its resources and very visible gay community, despite Queer As Folk and Will & Grace and two sevenths of this season's Real World cast — these kids still have an overarching sense that there's much work to be done. "You can't be open everywhere. You have to analyze and observe before you act," says Joshua, who plans to study political science at Sarah Lawrence next year. His hopes for life beyond college are endearingly and awesomely ambitious: "I would like to be the Martin Luther King of gay rights." If Joshua has his way, in his lifetime — and in those of D.J. and Adam and Ryan and Devin and Ross and Christina — "people will accept it. You can be any way you want and not have to worry about being beaten up. We'll get them in the courts and in city hall and in the streets. That's my dream."