What’s slippery about this slope?
It was announced that a judge upholds underage teens’ right to post racy photos to social media sites (oh yes, Facebook and MySpace). Evidently, these young people were disciplined by their high school administration and suspended from a sports team. The judge agreed with the ACLU that it was their right “to post slutty photos of themselves online.” See the full article by clicking here.
The ACLU represented these students arguing that their First Amendment rights were violated. When you ponder this, several things are fascinating …
In many states, “looking” at these pictures is against the law. In recent legislation, states are not allowing educators to follow “friend” or follow underage students. So here is the question … is there a hypocrisy here? Someone can post them legally. But it is not legal to view them? Think about this. So if it is illegal to commit murder, but it would be legal to view it and not report it?
The second thought is more perplexing and thought provoking. Very often the ACLU uses the “slippery slope” principle. This approach usually involves the statements … “If you ban this behavior, what will be next? Therefore, this is a slippery slope.” I find it interesting and very distrurbing that a different approach could not be conveyed. “Gee, if you allow this type of behavior, what will be next? Therefore, your honor, do you believe that this is a slippery slope?”
I hear many parents complain about where “things are going” … but many of these parents seem to believe that behavior like this … especially when initiaited as a teen or pre-teen, is quite dangerous. The scary part … is that their parents obviously agreed to have this litigation be argued by the ACLU.
So isn’t the slippery slope … where will it be in five years? I do not want to ponder that.
BTW, are these the same parents that support local school committees to regulate homework given by public school teachers? Limited homework during the week and NO homework on weekends. Amazing!