It's overkill

We all want to protect our children from child predators, but as with every anti-crime effort, there is a point where zealous enforcement goes to far. That is the case in Greensburg, where a half-dozen Greensburg Salem High School students are facing child pornography charges. Did this gang of teens take pictures of themselves having sex with young children and post them on the Internet? No. Three girls, ages 14 and 15, took nude or semi-nude cell phone photos of themselves and sent them to three boys, ages 16 and 17. All of the people involved in this case are kids. What you have here are three slutty girls sending naked pictures of themselves to three very thankful guys. In a non-hysterical world, the photos would have been deleted from the guys’ cell phones and they would have gotten a good talking to, or a greater punishment if they spread the pictures around. The girls’ parents would have punished them severely for their stupidity. You could say that the guys should have immediately deleted the photos, but if you say that, you were never a typical teenage boy. We did not have cell-phone technology when I was in high school, but I can assure you that if a girl had snapped a Polaroid of herself in a state of undress and graced me with it, I would have guarded that snapshot as if it were the Holy Grail. It is a cliché, but kids will be kids, and kids will do stupid things. Some punishment is clearly in order, but in this case, that should be the domain of the parents or the school district. We shouldn’t turn a bunch of teenagers into criminals because their hormones got the best of them.