For almost a year, Burton Snowboards' racy Playboy-themed designs have stirred up controversy in supposedly liberal Vermont. Now the story is back in the Boston Globe. The Burlington City Council recently discussed asking Burton to withdraw the boards, and the Girl Scout Council of Vermont may drop out of a Burton-sponsored charity. The story quotes Nicole Zarrillo, 38, a feminist-leaning office manager in Burlington, who is offended by the boards. "When you really think about it," she says, "It's a young man standing on top of a naked woman's body."No. When you really think about it, it is a young man standing on a piece of fiberglass and wood.
William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal notes that the media frenzy over a new sex study was biased. The headlines said, "Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," "Virginity pledges don't work," claiming that teenagers who take virginity pledges are "no less sexually active than other teens." The only problem? It's not quite true.
The study, McGurn says, only compared teens who take a virginity pledge with teens who are "just as religious and conservative as pledge-takers." In other words, abstinence pledges don't mean much, but only if you are already from a sexually conservative home. When you compare both groups in the study with teens in general, the differences are "striking." Teens from conservative and religious homes do generally have less risky sex and are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy.
We have no problem with abstinence-only education. We have no problem with being opposed to abstinence-only education. It's for individual communities to decide. We do have a problem with media who twist and cherry-pick medical research to make a political point.
A Tampa paper reports that Nature Coast Technical High School is without a band director. Timothy Brightbill, the school's band director for the last three years, was arrested for unlawful sexual activity with a minor on Dec. 31. According to arrest affidavits, the mother of the 17-year-old student found the 42-year-old teacher with the girl in her own bedroom. Both were clad only in their underwear.
Well, that's one way to spend a New Year's Eve. Here's an idea, dude. If you are going to break the law by sleeping with one of your jailbait students, maybe pick someplace that isn't her mom's house.
