I feel your pain, Lin (damn, now I'm having a Spock moment, too - "Devil in the Dark", anyone?)
I'm trying to work on a side-project whilst taking a break from my WiP, and although the plotline is YA-friendly (teenager discovering powers and unexpected heritage), the world it's set in is, I fear, too politically-incorrect to get past your average YA publisher. I've been reading "Write for Children" by Andrew Melrose, who teaches at the University of Winchester, and he's pretty stern on the subject of authors' responsibility towards their impressionable audience
I'd rather pitch something a bit racy as an adult novel and have teens read it, than pitch it as YA and draw a blank...