Opposing views: Let them do porn

When you turn 18-years-old, you’re legally an adult.

You can join the military and die for your country. You can vote in elections, local or national. You can go to jail for breaking the law.

And though it isn’t necessarily a staple of turning the big 1-8, you can legally participate in pornographic productions without facing the repercussions of the law.

Which is why it’s ludicrous a Florida high school would suspend an 18-year-old student because he did porn.

While the school dances around the porn topic — claiming the student was suspended because of “possible threats” he made — the principal and the school spokeswoman make reference to the student’s alternative lifestyle.

I suppose the word alternative here means a high school student had sex. Because, gosh, that’s probably never happened before.

Sixty-two percent of high school seniors in the United States have had sex. The only difference between every other sexually active high school senior in the U.S. and the student at this Florida school is he decided to get paid for doing it in front of a camera.

So essentially, we’re punishing this guy for being a capitalist.

Now, it’s understandable high school teachers and administrators may feel that a student participating in the production of pornographic materials may lead to unnecessary disruptions in their learning environment.

After all, I don’t really want to see the girl I sit next to in my 11 a.m. Monday and Wednesday class having sexual intercourse online.

But this aversion and apprehension is clearly a product of our society’s need to pretend like sex doesn’t happen, let alone happen between people just leaving the pastures of adolescence.

We don’t kick pregnant girls out of public schools for being with child. They’ve clearly had sex, too. We just don’t get to hop online and watch the evidence for ourselves.

Not to even mention that viewing pornographic material online is illegal unless you’re 18 years old or older. A vast majority of the people who saw this student doing porn were more than likely viewing it underage and, therefore, illegally.

Minors watching this student’s porn were doing so illegally. The 18-year-old student participating in the porn was not doing so legally.

He was fully within his rights to be in porn, let alone to do it in order to help his mother pay the bills.

I’m not under the impression that every mother or father in the U.S. dreams of one day raising their little boy or girl to have sex in front of a camera. But the fact remains that if a person of age decided to do so, more power to them.

It isn’t anyone else’s place to punish them for what they decide to legally do on their own terms.

­— wdmcdona@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Dane McDonald on Twitter @W_DaneMcDonald.