Doing It Backwards, With Consequences; Pedaphilia in America

IN A BUCOLIC MIDSIZED COLLEGE TOWN in mid america, the college football team is king, but the local high school football team isn't far behind. Every other city of comparable size in america has at least two high schools, but not this one, nosiree. In our town, there is only one, and shall forever be only one high school, because by doing this the high school has an enormous number of athletes from which to select, and thus a very good football team. And that, apparently, is what matters. Same for the basketball team, and for that matter, all the other athletic teams. American cultural values in action. It just goes to reason; the bigger the high school, the more athletes, the better the athletic programs. There will forever be only one high school in this town for one simple reason: so much money has been invested building a huge and beautiful campus that it is inconceivable that our town would ever have the desire, or resources, to create another one. You can imagine how important a job football coach, basketball coach, and athletic director are at this high school. The current athletic director, who is also the former basketball coach, is a fixture. He is fifty years old, has been employed by the school district for nearly thirty years, was very successful as basketball coach, and has been equally successful as A.D.. We're talking about a shcool which spent a million dollars on a carpet for the football field, built an indoor practice football field; the works. Blissful. Bucolic. Athletic entertainment. All American. But suddenly there is disaster in paradise. Our man, whom we'll call "coach", was apprehended by police and sheriff's deputies the other day at a fashionable mall, preparing to meet a fourteen year old girl who he had met and talked to online. An no, he was not planning to help her with homework, or give athletic advice. Gee, why not get an eighteen year old? The cops have a complete record of their conversatoins, and it aint pretty. He's busted. He's toast. They also are starting to obtain a better idea of his overall behavior online with underage girls, and it looks very very bad. This guy's life might as well be over. No more job, anywhere, probably no wife and family, perhaps prison time, and definitely a crinimal record. Then, of course, the proverbial ruined reputation, deservedly so. Coach may as well head for some Caribbean Island, and start a new life, selling sea shells on the sea shore. He might as well plea to the rap; he aint going anywhere good with a trial and verdict. Truth be told, what he did was just as natural and normal as apple pie, sorry to say. Sad, but true. Human beings are by nature predatory, deceitful, and aggressive in pursuing their deep desires, no matter what methods are thougth necessary, whatever works, and sex is a deep desire. If pedaphilia means old people being attracted to young people, then everyyone over eighteen is a pedaphile. If it means acting on that desire, then most of us are off the hook, but a surprising number are not. History, past and present, is replete with adults praying sexually on children. Children have less defense. It is only sick and disgusting because we say it is, much to our credit, but it aint abnormal or unnatural. Its as human as mass murder, sad to say. You wonder what else coach had done during the past thirty years. A lot, it is being reported. He is doing some talking to the police. Every high school in America, every community has this going on, and the internet is a great enabler of it, an unintended consequence of technology. Will there ever be a solution to child exploitation? Probably not as long as children consent to being exploited, enthusiastically embrace being exploited, as is quite often the case. That aspect of it goes undiscussed. In a culture which shoves sex down our throats in order to sell things to us, and we all, including our children, go around with sex on the brain, while the same culture insists that capitalism is good and unauthhorized sex is bad, something has to give, somewhere. Victorian sexual morals in a twenty first century economy. Something has to give. What gives is our ability to be honest. We are forced to fulfill our physical longings clandestinely. If sex among consenting adults were brought out into the open from behind all the barriers we erect against it, maybe exploiting chldren would become a far less frequently utilized option. It is quite possible, in theory, to remove traditional social sexual taboos without commercialing sex for profit. We might wish to consider doing more of the former, and less of the latter, because right now, we've got it backwards.