ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609300030
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
YOU THOUGHT a kiss is just a kiss? Not when a 6-year-old laid a peck on the cheek of his classmate in Lexington, N.C. As reported this week, a teacher saw the crime and reported it to the authorities, who proceeded to enforce the school district's sexual-harassment code.
The boy's suspension goes to illustrate the claim by Philip K. Howard, in his book "The Death of Common Sense," that anything resembling human judgment has been evicted from decision-making nowadays by our increasingly rigid reliance on rules.
We know a 6-year-old's kissing a girl on the cheek is different from a 14-year-old's grabbing a girl, but it's difficult to write this knowledge into law. In our quest for total fairness and equity, we have wandered into a strange place where teachers fear to hug students, every dispute goes straight to litigation, and the exercise of common sense gets harder to find as time goes by.
COCAINE smugglers used religion as a tool to smuggle cocaine into Lorton prison, the FBI alleges. Claiming to be members of a Muslim sect, 38 suspects visited the prison, supposedly for religious services in a private room set aside for that purpose.
Such chicanery hardly need be allowed to happen inside prison walls, no matter what some jailhouse lawyer may claim about religious freedom. Don't deny prisoners the benefits of religious practice - but don't forget that, in committing crimes, they gave up many of their rights. Including the right to privacy.
LENGTH: Short : 36 linesby CNB