I'm Not Going to Write About Mark Foley

As seen on PRrag.com!

A lot of people have been pressing me to write an article about some of the implications of the Mark Foley sandal.

I'm not going to.

This public relations guy prefers not to dive into the pool of swarming political tigers and mass media birds of prey vying for a piece of this guy as they carve their way through Washington, people's lives and the upcoming elections. I wish not to wait on line with liberals who are ordered up taking turns firing at the Republican party as they smell blood. Or with the conservatives who dig defensive trenches and draw a line down the aisle among the "other issues."

Because that's the best we can do as a society.

A Congressman resigned because he allegedly propositioned teenage boys, and the best question we can ask as the media is: "how do you think this will play out in November?"

How this will play out in November is meaningless compared to where we are going as a society lately.

So no, I'm not going to write an article about Mark Foley. Because if I did, I would say something controversial like: "when you live in the most sexually repressed culture in the modern world, this is what happens."

Americans need to examine their surroundings and start asking critical questions. Do our current social policies work? Does our current educational model work? Is it proper to stigmatize alcohol, sex and videogames as the root causes of our societal problems?

Our current policies are mainly buzz words:

• Zero Tolerance
• Abstinence
• Just say no
• D.A.R.E.

None of these work. It saddens me to ponder my degree in criminal justice, (more so than the one in Journalism) knowing that these programs are generally not accepted in the field, yet continue to be implemented due to political pressure.

Zero tolerance, removing judicial discretion and forcing mandatory sanctions for rule and law violations, is perhaps the biggest aberration to modern criminal justice ever crafted by the bureaucrats that think they're "solving the crime problem," with the sole intention of rallying votes to win re-election to continue the vicious cycle of patchwork policy-making.

Professor David Hanson, PH.D., is professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Potsdam. I first spoke with him last year when he contributed to a piece I wrote about alcohol education techniques. His website is a widely read reference in the academic world. He has written extensively about zero tolerance and its effects on society. Some of the results of these policies can be read here.

D.A.R.E. was founded in Los Angeles in 1983 and has expanded to the vast majority of American school districts and more than 50 foreign countries. It has cost millions of dollars, and it has been proven ineffective in nearly all peer-reviewed studies. In 2000, six years ago, the Future of Freedom Foundation published a report questioning the effectiveness of such a program. Hanson too has beenquite critical of the program. In fact, his research shows that D.A.R.E. may actually be making the problems of violence, drugs and alcohol abuse worse.

Yet it still remains widely popular and implemented in virtually all school districts.

Conservatives and liberals alike enjoy arguing with me when I criticize abstinence as a social teaching. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't work. Children and teenagers are told not to have sex--and thus they are not told how to have sex safely. They are not properly educated in sexuality and sexual feelings as a normal part of human development. The problem with all that is that sex is one of the base instincts of all animals and it simply can not be suppressed.

This week alone, Cambodia, the Amish School Shooting, Bailey, Colorado and Mark Foley have made world-wide headlines as sexually charged crimes and scandals.

These incidents are cultural problems with root causes, not an abstract explanation of "evil people doing evil things."

So, the natural question I must ask is, is this the best solution we can propose to respond to a cultural problem? Does anyone seriously believe that putting more guns in schools--arming teachers whose job it is to build trust with and self-esteem for our children?

The issue here is not the election season, and it is not Mark Foley. Mark Foley is just another product of a failed system--a system that he was a part of.

Instead of uncovering these problems and challenging it, journalists settle for hype and headlines. If it bleeds, it leads, but who else is wondering why it bleeds in the first place?