This quote in the WaPo has a lot to do with my resigned attitude:
Neil Smelser, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley, said Tuesday that the incident could be categorized as "bystander indifference."
"The questions become, 'Why didn't they do something moral to stop an immoral situation? Why didn't they behave morally by calling the police, telling school officials?'" said Smelser, who has written extensively on collective behavior.
Facepalm.
You wanna know why they didn't do something moral, Mister Doctor Sociology Expert? It's because an entire generation has been brought up to instinctively shut off its morality as soon as sex enters the picture. There can be no, repeat no connection between sex and morality. By order of our superiors in the education system and the media.
My generation learned from example that sex, love and children were totally separate things. We were children of divorce and cohabitation, those of us lucky enough not to be aborted at the outset or thrown away by parents trying to "find themselves." We knew there were rules about sex, but we also knew nobody really followed them.
The next generation is even more enlightened. They were never even told that there were rules. They learned that sex is always OK, that it's a personal decision. That there might be moral dilemmas about recycling or wearing fur, but there were none about sex. Anything goes, kids! Just make sure to wear a condom.
Well congratu-frimpin'-lations, social engineers of the sixties. You wanted a sexual revolution? Now you've got one. Nobody stopped those animals because on some level, they understood that animal was a perfectly okay thing to be.
Go tell that poor broken girl how lucky she is to be on the cutting edge of societal evolution. Go tell her that sex is no big deal, that all teenagers do it, that the kids who did this to her were just engaging in a little experimentation. That there is no right and wrong where sex is concerned. That virginity is a joke and marriage is antiquated. That the only sexual commandment is "use contraception."
Go on, tell her. Just like you would your own daughter.
