• A new Chief Justice.
• Terrorist attacks in Bali.
• Republicans gone wild.

Are the editors of Time magazine living in a different country? Did they consider this a slow news week? How else to explain Time’s cover story this week?

Come to think of it, we are tired of reading about Tom Delay and John Roberts and Judith Miller. We’d much rather read about … uhm … you know … fresh-faced gay boys in pukka shells.

And guess what? Time wants us to read about them too! This week’s cover features a cute faux-hawked dude. The title reads The Battle Over Gay Teens. Uh-oh — the battle? That can only mean one thing: somewhere in the article, Jesus will weep.

But before we get to the Christers and their crazed conversion therapy sessions, there’s much good news for the new gay teenager, as John Cloud’s Time article reports:

• According to The New Gay Teenager, gay boys and girls are coming out at younger ages and with greater regularity than ever before. The average gay person now leaves the closet just before, or shortly after, graduating high school.

• In 1997, there were approximately 100 high school Gay-Straight Alliance clubs for gay and gay-friendly kids. Today there are nearly 3,000. Approximately 1 in 10 high schools has a Gay-Straight Alliance, according to the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. Last year GSAs were established at U.S. schools at the rate of three per day.

• Surveys in The New Gay Teenager found that on average no more than 13% of young people with same-sex attractions wanted to change and lead a straight life.

Naturally, the homophobes are not taking this lightly. Rod Dreher, a loudly Christian, loudly political conservative, recently wailed: “We religious conservatives are losing the culture war badly! Homosexuality is at the white-hot center of our popular culture!”

Like we told you, Jesus wept.

The Time article also says that ex-gay conversion groups like Exodus International aren’t fairing too well either. (Did anyone ever take them seriously to begin with?)

Consider the following highlights:

• Some of the teens participating in the Exodus therapy sessions had no intention of going straight. Corey Clark, an 18-year-old member of his school’s GSA club, explained that he sees nothing wrong with being gay. He attended Exodus’ Youth Day because he wanted to understand his evangelical church better and the sort of parishioners who insist that gays should change or Jesus will hate them.

• One teen explained that Exodus had helped him develop some heterosexual attractions, but he’d met very few people at the conference who could honestly claim to be completely straight. In fact, at least two of the young men attending the conversion meetings — one 21, the other 18 — hooked up that same week! They are actively in touch with one another.

• Most encouraging of all, a newly converted ex-gay teen at the all-Christian meeting kept looking over at the tote carried by another new convert and squealed, “I love that Prada bag!”

We know the feeling.