LGBTQ Latino and Black youth have their first sexual experiences at earlier ages than LGBT white youth, according to researchers from the Rutgers School of Public Health.

[…] The study, “Age of Sexual Debut among Young Gay-identified Sexual Minority Men: The P18 Cohort Study,” was published in the Journal of Sex Research July 1. It found that the average age of sexual debut for same-sex male sexual encounters was 14.5 years. Some 19% of participants said that their first such experience was before the age of 13. The survey included 600 people; of those, 424 were involved in the analytic study.

Halkitis said that the gap between minority and white people was not very big — but that it points to larger inequalities between the social groups. The study states that lower ages of sexual debut are connected to higher rates of HIV infection and drug use.

“I never meant to make it about race — it’s probably about socioeconomic context,” Halkitis said. “It’s not like 10 years later the white guys are showing up. It’s that, one, lower [socioeconomic status] connect with worse health outcomes and, two, that’s because people of lower [socioeconomic status] have less access, which leads to greater stressors in life, and Black and Brown men are experiencing racial stressors, and people who have stressors tend to engage in risky activities at higher rates.”