Teenagers And Sex (And Teachers And Lawyers)

Ok, we've heard the story a million times: a teacher has sex with a student, goes to jail. More and more, the teacher is female and the student is male. You can see pictures of many of them here; most are good-looking, one was even married to the school's principal (and it seems the student forced himself onto her, but she's the one who did jail time, proving it's about time we have a second look at how these 'child molestation' laws are written in the first place).

The most recent case is Melinda Dennehy, a former New Hampshire high school teacher who didn't sleep with a kid, but emailed him nude pictures, some even ''with her genitals exposed''... oh my!

There's an older column from a place I'd never heard of before called Associated Content, in which Sylvia Cochran writes:

Prior to joining the ranks of bad teachers, Melinda Dennehy stands accused of sending an x-rated photo of herself to a child. She is now on leave with pay. With pay?

There are so many things wrong with those two sentences, and most of them are in its writer's mindset. First off, where is it said in ''woman sends picture to kid'' that the person isn't good at their job? Is a driver a bad driver when he has an accident? Would that mean drivers who haven't been in any are de facto good? And then when someone is ''accused'' (yes, I know, she pleaded guilty today, but this article is dated from March) of something, their whole livelihood is taken away? What if she hadn't pleaded guilty? Or what if it was a plea bargain, and she chose that (a misdemeanor, by the way, sending pictures) instead of something else because fuckers in the media have already made her to be a monster in that case and her name has been smeared as a teacher anyway?

In this case, she sent a kid nude pics. The kid then proceeded to send them to his friends (who seemed to like them), and they made the rounds. The kid should not walk away from this scott-free: he was a minor, in possession of porn, and distributing said porn to other minors. Isn't that an offense - or two - too?

This whole case is fucked, and it was allowed to go to court, with at least one lawyer on each side, a judge, and police showing evidence.

Meanwhile, hard drugs are rampant in the streets, bankers are stealing billions of dollars from their customers, multinational companies are ruining our water supplies inland (i.e. what we need to live) and killing everything in the ocean, and kids are dying in wars overseas where half the people they themselves shoot at are civilians they can't tell apart from the bad guys.

Surely the U.S. Supreme Court decision to reverse the Chicago gun ban will strike balance in the world - oh, wait, cops keep dying in Chicago since May.

All of this makes me lean towards a simpler world - make everything legal, except 'harming others' and 'stealing'. Let the rest sort itself out. Boy, am I glad I was 20 by the time I started fucking my teachers. Although I did lose my virginity at 15, with a chick who was 19. I should report her.