Overzealous Law Enforcement Strikes Again
Posted: Monday, January 19, 2009
by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com
Recently, six teenagers at a Pennsylvania high school were caught participating in a new fad called ‘sexting.' Named as an obvious takeoff of texting, it is a practice in which one sends nude or semi-nude photographs of oneself, via a cell phone, to a peer – usually of the opposite sex. In this particular case, three girls had been taking and sending nude photographs of themselves to three boys. Besides being suspended from school, these teens, incredibly enough, now face much more serious consequences.
However, bringing child porn charges against them is completely ludicrous. Child pornography laws were created to protect innocent children from exploitation by adults, not to protect horny teenagers from each other. While it might be well within the letter of law to charge these teens with child pornography, it is clearly a perversion of the spirit of law to even consider doing so.
How many teen boys would rebuff a teen girl's attempt to send them a risqué picture of herself? Assuming the girl is not one who has been beaten with an ugly stick (to borrow an insult from Fred Sanford), I doubt that many teen boys – even the most moral and well-behaved – would be able to resist. There were no cell phones when I was in high school, but I can imagine that I would not have mounted much resistance in a similar situation.
If convicted of the charges brought against them, these six teens would likely be stigmatized for life. Each would be labeled with our modern-day scarlet letter – sex offender. This label is an albatross around one's neck that is difficult, if not impossible, to remove. In many states, it means they would have to register as sex offenders and then be constantly monitored by law enforcement officials in addition to being restricted in where they could live, work, and visit. All of this after possibly serving prison sentences. And for what? The girls for being stupid and the boys for being … well … boys! What a heavy price to pay for such ‘offenses'!
It's as if we are living in some silly Islamic theocracy instead of the United States of America. This is the kind of overzealous law enforcement that often makes the U.S. the laughing stock of the rest of the civilized world. I can just imagine their laughter right now. It would indeed be funny if it wasn't so sad. It's right up there with many of those asinine "zero tolerance" stances and other breaches of common sense. One can only hope and pray that reasonable judges will intervene in this case and spare these kids a life of hell and our nation further humiliation.
This Article has been viewed 186 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Terry, I respect your writing and do not disagree with your statements or perspective, Yet and yes that is a big yet, one has to assume your assumption about America is correct. In that you may disagree with my statement but in my opinion we have all have lost sight of the reality of what we have become. I certainly ask no one to agree, but your article is but one reality. Perhaps it is time we really took a look at what is happening? Best wishes.Robert, thanks for taking the time to read my article and comment on it.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.