Doctorow on YA sex

I wrote about Cory Doctorow's novel Little Brother a while ago here. It seems the sex scene in the book offended some more than the idea of a teen outwitting Homeland Security with hacked Xboxes; here is the author's vigorous defense of giving teen characters the license to experiment. (Locus)

I've spent enough time explaining what this "plot-sense and story-sense and character-sense" means to enough people that I find myself creating a "Teen transgression in YA literature FAQ."

There's really only one question: "Why have your characters done something that is likely to upset their parents, and why don't you punish them for doing this?"