Prepubescents don't treat sex play as something magically different. They know it isn't. And they have to be taught that left-handedness is bad, sleeping when you're sleepy is wrong ( when it interferes with church or school ) and that some physical affection is sex, but rubbing other bits for pleasure isn't sex.

The pair-bonding impulse which tends to make kids more focussed in their affections and less generalized also arrives with a surge of hormones which makes their sexuality more genital ( and procreative ) and less diffused.

Thus the child more inclined to use others as a masturbatory tool is less inclined to see the significance of this. The child more inclined to see sex as something genital and reserved for a relationship doesn't need to be taught, because they're already becoming more "private" by the day.

Now to the Antis, this means that the child suddenly comes to see things more truly. Not differently: "truly." And they're asked to reevaluate everything they knew before by accepting a dismissal of things which are "childish."

Yet we don't do that in other regards.

We allow that primary school friendships may be based on things as simple as a shared lunchbox pattern and a love of playing hopscotch. By the time the child reaches middle-school, their capacity for abstract reasoning has set in and worldviews ( ethical, political &tc ) may now shape friendships. Also ( again ) the bonds are generally fewer but tighter. They are less likely to run in a puppy-pack with EVERY kid in their neighborhood, but to travel a few miles away for concentrated time with a BFF.

This was certainly the case for me. Yet nobody was instructing me that I should dismiss my childhood friendships as false for being so diffuse and easily formed. Nor should I evaluate them as shallow by later standards or feel myself ill-used for having spent so much time playing with kids who would later reject me when my religion and politics ( such as they were ) failed to meet the new criteria of middle-school bonding.

I still can't say I feel exploited that allowance money was spent on birthday prezzies for kids who would later reject an Atheist Sci-Fi geek.

One doesn't have to "put aside 'childish' things." Childhood is already doing that for you without any social pressure.

I don't think that sex is overrated. The sex you don't want but are taught that you should want is overrated. But sex itself isn't.

That said, we mustn't confuse who we desire with who desires us. The two rarely coincide for anyone of any orientation.

The LG you adore from afar is no more there to be "used" by you, than you are here to be some gay fellow's hot sex partner.

However, love is never wrong. And busybodies interfering with mutual love just because it isn't what they would choose for themselves are never right; no matter how many numbers they have to try to win by violence what they cannot win by rhetoric.

Dante