This doesn't exactly point to the end of western civilization. But it's close: I do think that teachers who engage in sex with students, no matter how consensual, should be removed from their jobs and barred from teaching unless they prove that they have completed rehabilitation. But the utter hysteria with which society responds to these situations does less to protect children than to assuage society's need to feel that we are protecting them. I don't know what triggered Morales's suicide, but I find it tragic and deeply troubling that this occurred as the case against Rambold wound its way through the criminal justice system. One has to wonder whether the extreme pressure she must have felt from those circumstances played a role. I've been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin' on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and '70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were...(Read Full Post)