I have held the opinion that not much good happens at 3 AM in White Castle parking lots. But of course I am not an Indiana circuit court judge so I am by definition not too smart. Judges, being much smarter than I, know that there is nothing wrong with getting drunk and starting or escalating fights with people with unknown capacities and sincere desires to put a hurting on someone. Three Indiana judges recently decided to demonstrate the wisdom, soberness and character that shows why we extend such deference to judges in general. After their show of probity all three judges were suspended from the bench. So I guess at least for a little while they won't be able to enjoy such perks as telling people to sit down and be quiet, having everyone stand up when they enter or leave the room, interrupting other professionals any time they feel like it, or lecturing grown men and women in tones dripping with condescension. Oh well. The judges’ plan, if there ever was one, was to enjoy a couple of drinks with their colleagues the night before a judicial conference in Indianapolis.
But by 3 a.m. the next morning, three Indiana circuit court judges, by way of a failed attempt to enter a strip club, were brawling with two strangers outside a White Castle in a drunken melee that ended with two of the judges shot and in critical condition in a hospital.
..though she MIGHT be Genarlow Wilson...if Wilson had been a legal adult when he did what he did. Formal equality under the law is a funny thing. There are still some remaining exceptions to it. Women do not have to register for selective service, though I think that will change soon. Women still pay less for life insurance and auto insurance. Ladies' Nights in bars or nightclubs are generally still legal. Men are arguably shortchanged in divorce and child custody claims. Private organizations have greater latitude to include or exclude people as they see fit. Men and women are both free to take maternity/paternity leave though men often do not, which adds to inequality. And so on. Most Americans would probably agree that equality under the law is a good thing. If I am accused of a crime the judge, jury or prosecutor should treat, judge and sentence me based on the evidence. I shouldn't be treated differently because I am of a particular age, gender or race. There shouldn't be any laws that dictate that person A of group A receives this sentence while person B of group B gets that sentence for the exact same crime. Obviously this is the theory and not the practice as there are still several instances where people don't get equal treatment. We've discussed "marriage equality" or what was more commonly known as "gay marriage". This means that two people of the same gender should be able to marry just as two people of the opposite gender can. Some think this to be the greatest civil rights issue of our time. Well maybe. I don't much care one way or the other. But I do think that if a community wants equality under the law for the good things in life then it must be willing to accept equality under the law for the bad things. To wit the Kaitlyn Hunt case. You may remember the Genarlow Wilson case in which a seventeen year old young man had sexual relations with two girls (young women) who were seventeen and fifteen. This was evidently part of a group sex incident. The case facts were recently rehashed here. Some people still view Wilson as a rapist. Kaitlyn Hunt is an 18 year old woman who had sexual relations with a 14 year old girl. They met in a Florida high school. Hunt has refused a plea deal and appears ready to proceed to trial. Her parents and attorney accuse the minor's parents and prosecutors of homophobia. Contrary to what's been reported Hunt admits to being eighteen before starting a sexual relationship with the minor. Hunt doesn't view herself as a child abuser. Neither do some people in the gay community or the media.
Problem is though the law is pretty clear on the fact that eighteen year olds aren't supposed to be having sex with fourteen year olds. The law doesn't make any exception for sexual orientation or gender. There's an old joke that "15 will get you 20". In other words it doesn't really matter how old an adult thought a child was. It doesn't matter if the child was mature for his or her age. It doesn't matter if the child consented. It doesn't matter if the child was "experienced". There is a certain age below which a child can not consent. Period. In the arrest affidavit when asked if she knew it was wrong to have sex with a fourteen year old Hunt replies that "she did not think about it because the girl acted older". Right. Just imagine a man saying that. Would we not start measuring the rope for the lynching party? Now it may be the case that age of consent laws were primarily written out of concern for male predators and female victims and to a lesser extent for male predators and male victims. (Attractive) female predators with male victims may cause some older men to snicker that "I wish my teachers had looked like that!!" while female predators with female victims may slip under the radar entirely. For both biological and cultural reasons people tend to be a little more perturbed about an older man with a younger girl than the opposite. But the law is the law. I am certainly not under the misconception that Hunt was the only eighteen year old in the universe who ever had sex with a fourteen year old. She just got caught. But if the female victim's parents and/or the police and prosecutors discover a female predator what do you think they should do? Turn a blind eye to it because it's a same sex interaction? How would that work? There are many cases where an older man or boy runs afoul of statutory rape laws and finds himself in a world of pain. In some cases you can make a legitimate argument that the law is out of touch with current realities. In other cases it's pretty obvious that the older person is indeed a predator and/or pedophile. The jury can decide the facts if the older person wants to go to trial.
But I don't automatically think we can say that the prosecutors or the parents are acting out of malicious or "homophobic" reasons in proceeding with the case. The parents may well have acted even sooner if the alleged predator were male. Listen to what the parents say here. And ask yourself what you would have done. AFAIK we lack evidence either that the parents made anti-gay statements or that the prosecutor disproportionately goes after same sex statutory rape cases. Absent that or some proof that Kaitlyn Hunt has been singled out/overcharged I don't accept charges of bias. But biased prosecution or not, no one made Hunt take those actions. And comparing Kaitlyn Hunt to Rosa Parks or the civil rights movement is ridiculous. Rosa Parks was not agitating for the right to have sex with fourteen year old girls. Kaitlyn Hunt should be treated like any other eighteen year old who had sex with a fourteen year old. Her sexual preference and gender should not matter. And I have known too many women, who at fourteen identified one way but upon maturity identify in completely a different way to accept the argument of Hunt's supporters that this is about homophobia. No. From what I can see this is about parents who don't want their fourteen year old daughter having sex with an adult woman. And I find no fault with that...
What's your take? Is Hunt being unfairly singled out?
Do consent laws need to be changed?
Should there be different standards for age of consent for heterosexual vs. homosexual relationships?
It's been a minute since I was in grade/middle school. I don't remember having crushes on any of the women teachers there. I knew virtually nothing about their personal life and wasn't that interested. It was big news when occasionally their boyfriend or husband would pick them up from or drop them off at school. I mean who knew that Miss or Mrs. so-n-so actually had a life outside of the classroom? Of course I was a bit of a solipsistic young lad and the times were more conservative so it wasn't surprising that I didn't know anything about a teacher's extra curricular life or her activities and lifestyle before she became my teacher. Of course, as the Stacie Halas story shows us, maybe it's a good thing that I didn't know anything about my teachers' lives prior to them becoming an educator. 32 year old Stacie Halas was a California middle school teacher who was recently fired from her job. She lost her appeal of that firing as well. Why was she axed? Well she was terminated from her position because she was, prior to working as a teacher in her current school, but perhaps not other schools, an adult film actress. Evidently some other teachers and/or students recognized Halas' .... (ahem)... face and did some quick research to make sure. Once this information became public, Halas was let go. People found interviews in her movies in which she talked about being a teacher and hoped her other job choices would not be discovered. I wonder who got the job of downloading and reviewing those movies, purely for research purposes of course.
Her lawyer, Richard Schwab, said Halas had tried to be honest but was embarrassed by her previous experience in the adult industry."Miss Halas is more than just an individual fighting for her job as a teacher," he said Tuesday. "I think she's representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody."
Halas has been on administrative leave since the video surfaced in March. Teachers then showed administrators downloads of Halas' sex videos from their smartphones.
In hearings, former assistant principal Wayne Saddler testified that, at the start of a sex video, Halas talked about being a teacher, and he felt her effectiveness in the classroom had been compromised.
In October, Oxnard Unified School District spokesman Thomas DeLapp told CBS Los Angeles that once students were able to find the videos of Halas on the Internet, they made it difficult for her to be an effective teacher."We even had kids who were referring to her by her stage name in class, from catcalls in the back," DeLapp said.
Of course there are other jokes I could make about this but right now I don't have any more*. When I first heard about this I was somewhat opposed to the school board's action because people can and do change. Do we want to put a scarlet letter on someone for the rest of their life for a bad, but legal choice they once made? Halas' time as "Tiffany Sixx" appears to be in the past. It's not as if she were arriving directly from the studio sets to teach impressionable young teens/pre-teens and/or tell them all about her deeds. At least, that doesn't appear to have been the case. But thinking more about this teachers are indeed supposed to maintain a good moral example for the children they instruct. Performing circus sexual acts on film for money with men and other women is usually not considered to be setting a proper moral example. I used to be a 12 yr old boy. I can definitely say that Halas' effectiveness as a teacher would be near zero if she was teaching boys of that age. So for that alone, even if I don't care about her previous career, she'd probably have to find a different job. And while the sordid details of her paid interactions with men or women may have been outre, the fact is that virtually every teacher, heck almost every human being has had sex or will have sex at some point in their life. There's just a record of some of her activities. If she had announced she was gay, should/could she have been fired for that? That is still considered deviant in some circles and to be setting a bad influence. But working essentially as a prostitute is, unlike gayness, something that still unites many on the feminist left and on the traditionalist right in disgust. So maybe it's not as cut and dry as people might think. And let's be honest, it's not just about the children. That's something of a cop-out. I do not think that in the average corporate workplace, were it discovered that the budget analyst in general ledger was or had been an adult actress, that she would be able to keep her job, or at least keep her job with the same level of respect and productivity that she had had prior to that information becoming public. Is that fair? Probably not. People should be judged on what they do at work, not on what they've done in their private lives. But that's idealistic. The reality is that often you sell not only your on the job skills to your employer, but also the implied or actual promise that you won't embarrass your employer or bring undue complications to your job. If, for example, a man who was an actuary, supply chain mgr or officer for a Fortune 500 Company decided to supplement his salary by investing in perfectly legal strip clubs or lingerie football leagues, chances are good that his company might bid him adieu. That's just how it goes.
So what do you think?
Was the school district within its rights to terminate Halas?
Was it the right thing to do?
Would you be concerned if Halas were teaching your children?
If you were a male student in her class would you ask her for extra "homework" or some one-on-one tutoring? (*Ok, just one joke)
I don't have any deep analysis here. I just want to know what do you think of this new NRA advertisement. Slate writer Matt Yglesias tweeted that he was "Pretty comfortable saying that the president’s children are in fact more important than yours"
