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Harry's Freedom Foxhole - Sex and Kids

Here's a not-exactly-fresh newsflash: Americans are terrified of children discovering sex.

Here’s a not-exactly-fresh newsflash: Americans are terrified of children discovering sex. They aren’t just terrified of their children getting raped by coaches—which, it turns out, is something you should be justifiably scared of—they’re scared of any sentence that has the words “sex” and “kids” in it. OH MY GOD WHAT IF OUR CHILDREN ARE THINKING ABOUT PENISES AND VAGINAS RIGHT NOW? WHAT IF THEY ARE LISTENING TO PRINCE ALBUMS AND GETTING IDEAS?

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Take the news last week from Boston, where a high school English teacher named Kevin Hogan has been placed on leave because of his other job: making gay porn under the name “Hytch Cawke.” (Ha!) Hogan, who, it must be said, looks pretty hunky in the photos I’ve seen of him, wasn’t doing anything illegal or wrong. He was banging dudes on camera for money, but he wasn’t doing it at school, or where any kids could see—maybe some of his students could have potentially come across his videos, but I find it hard to believe someone’s going to say, “Hey! That guy in the gay fetish porn I’m jackin’ it to is Mr. Hogan! I’m SCARRED FOR LIFE!” Suspending teachers for being in porn only makes sense if you think being in porn makes you evil and unfit to be around kids. I guess some people do think that way, but those people are shitty and dumb. Instead of suspending Hogan/Cawke, the school should have installed him as the sex ed teacher. He probably knows a lot more about the topic than some shriveled-up bag of a gym teacher who hasn’t had a proper orgasm in decades.

If the school fires Hogan, it’ll just be an isolated decision made by conflict-adverse administrators. More troubling is a bill being considered by the Michigan legislature which would make it illegal for school employees (not just teachers) to have sex with students, even when the students are 18 and legal. OK, granted, some sad-sack middle-aged geography teacher cheating on his sexless wife with an 18-year-old is creepy and sad, and the power dynamics of two people having sex when one of them controls the grades of the other is completely fucked, and teachers who have sex with their high-school-age students should be fired most of the time. But thrown in jail? Even if the school employee can’t influence grades, and the student is 18 and wants to get it on? Even if the student is 18 and the teacher is in his or her 20s? Even if—and this is also part of the bill—the students are in adult education classes and not kids at all?

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The sad thing here is that this is the kind of bill that gets rushed into being a law, because if a legislator votes against it, he’ll be subjected to attack ads during the re-election campaigns featuring grainy black-and-white photos of them and bright red tabloidy text screaming, “HE WANTS TEACHERS TO FUCK YOUR KIDS.” Ads in response to that saying something like, “HEY, MAYBE WE DON’T NEED TO CRIMINALIZE ALL BEHAVIOR THAT SOMEBODY DOESN’T UNDERSTAND OR FINDS REPUGNANT” would be markedly less effective. So the morality police win again. Shit.

And when the morality police win, annoyingly dumb stuff happens—like a 6-year-old gets charged with sexual assault against another 6-year-old. That stuff is a bummer. Can we stop treating sex like it’s poison, pretty please?

I stole this image from Blackboards in Porn, which I mention because I like that blog.

@HCheadle

Previously – Fight for Your Right to Camp