Frankly Speaking

Okay, they handed out fliers depicting a male classmate kissing another boy. If that's all it takes to get arrested, I would never have made it out of elementary school.

You have a daughter right? Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that some kid got a hold of pictures of your daughter undressed or in an embarassing situation. Now, lets say that same person decided to make fliers out of those images and had them out to all the kids in her school. Would you still feel the same?

This isn't an attack on freedoms. This is attempting to prevent the kind of grade-school hate that stems from discovering information that you don't fully understand.

This piece of shit clearly meant to incite others to action by creating those fliers. C'mon Frank, clearly you can see how instituting harsh penalties for such antagonistic and hate-oriented behavior.

found you through Dawn...

First, I agree with you in that society today is training a generation of kids to think that everyone is equal and that we don't need to compete with one another. Not only is that foolish, it goes against the most basic credo of "survival of the fittest". We are doing our children a great disservice if they grow up thinking that life is one big funtown where everyone gets along and is smiling every day...BUT (and the truth always comes after the word but)

I gotta agree with e on this one. You can't allow this type of hatred to go unchecked. This was just a malicious act you can't condone it. Yes, back in the "old days" you could have beaten the crap out of the other guy. These days this would result in your expulsion and a possible criminal charge.

Hi Steph, welcome to the party.

I agree that something should be done. I just don't know that putting a 16 year old in jail for handing out fliers is a proportionate response to the offense. Suspension, expulsion, community service, etc., would all seem to me to be better options than sticking a kid in juvenile detention, where she will only learn to be an even bigger drain on society.

thanks for the welcome.

i'm assuming the reason she got "time" is because of her other run ins with the law.

i actually was a volunteer mentor for two years at a juvenile detention facility. it wasn't as bad as you'd think...but obviously it wasn't good either. that was a view changing experience for me because I discovered that people who do bad things aren't always bad people...but that's probably a subject for a post sometime that I feel like being serious (which usually i'm not).

anywho i'm looking forward to reading your blog and the "civilized debates" between you and e.

Hi Frank,
If this had happened to just one girl in isolation, you could say it was because of her previous record. However, it's happening all over the free world. An 11-year-old boy and his family were harassed by the police because he called some kid 'gay' in an email. Others have been expelled from college for not going along with a 'day of silence' pro-gay day. Why this particular group in the community? Jail is harsh for pamphlet distribution. She didn't hire a hitman.