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July 24, 2007

The McMinnville Taliban

Sometimes when I read the news I feel like we're watching a perverse game of cat and mouse in which the object is to see just how disillusioned and angry we can make our young people feel about life in America.

Last month, fifth-graders in California who glued tiny plastic toy soldiers to their mortarboards to show support for the troops were forced to cut the weapons off the figures. Earlier this year, a Rhode Island boy was suspended for bringing a plastic knife to school in his lunch so he could cut cookies. In June, a Virginia 13-year-old was suspended for putting his arm around his girlfriend in violation of the school's strict no-touching policy. In 2004, an 8-year-old Virginia boy was suspended for ten days for carrying a butter knife to school with his lunch (his mother had packed his lunch so he could make his own sandwich at school). Also in 2004, a 10-year-old girl was handcuffed and arrested for bringing scissors to school, despite the fact she had not threatened anyone with them - they just violated the zero-tolerance rules about weapons. And now we have two McMinnville middle-schoolers being arrested and run through the legal wringer at great financial cost to their parents for having the audacity to swat some girls on the butt as they ran down the school hallway.

Excuse me for a moment while I scream and let the steam blow out my ears so my head doesn't explode.

Are we becoming the fucking Taliban in this country? Are we so unable to trust that human beings can manage their own behavior if given a little proper guidance that we are headed to a time when we will demand that for our own safety either women must be forced to wear burkas, lest the men be overcome with lust and rape them, or the two sexes must be kept entirely separate? Because that's the exact same mentality involved in so-called "zero tolerance" policies. I can't send an aspirin to school with my kid because it's a "drug." My kid can't draw a picture of a gun at school because Lord knows he might decide, as a result, to murder someone. It's patently insane and un-American.

God forbid one of my boys ever has a lapse in judgment and does something as immature as swatting a girl on the behind. Believe me, there would be repercussions and some serious discussion at home about respecting women. Granted, these boys admit they have grabbed girls' breasts in the past, something which I believe is a much worse offense than slapping a butt. They should have been suspended at the time and warned they would be expelled if they engaged in any such behavior again. But hell hath no fury like I would have if someone dared handcuff my kid and haul him off to jail at his tender age for something as relatively harmless as this. D.A. Bradley Berry ought to be arrested and charged with child abuse, as should the school officials who hatched the inane idea of calling the cops.

For a bit of irony, I would point out that on the very same page in The Oregonian as this story about boys having difficulty with proper contact with young women you find a little piece complete with photo about how the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center was able to get 68 gay men to dress up as women and dance together in Pioneer Square downtown. So we're making sure that our straight youngsters are locked up without any sort of positive instruction about healthy interactions with the opposite sex at the same time that we are setting homosexual youngsters free by encouraging them to consort with cross-dressing adult males in the town square. Call me a prude, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Posted by Becky at July 24, 2007 04:28 PM