"Teechur tuchd mi brest"

Oregon school kids have a new BFF in the state legislature. Teacher’s mean? School’s boring? Dog ate your homework? No problem. Just say “He touched me there.” (Or, alternatively, “She touched me there.” We celebrate diversity in Oregon). That’ll show teacher who’s the boss, get you off the hook for any under-performance issues (spelling, for instance), and, with any luck, produce a tidy cash kickback for mom, dad and the family lawyer.

For this you can thank Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis) and the other poodles down in Salem who have bravely put aside the effort to salvage the state’s wrecked economy in order to rescue Oregon school children from a menacing horde of randy teachers. They’ve cooked up no less than seven new bills to broaden the reach of the sex police and prescribe “appropriate” behavior for the rest of us (example: “Don’t invade their personal space”). They also plan to raise the age of consent to infinity and do away with any pesky policies intended to protect teachers from having their lives ruined by unsubstantiated accusations. No more of that nonsense if this legislature has its way.

It’s a big problem. According to The Oregonian (don’t you love the way They capitalize the article?), a whopping .0002% of Oregon’s 35,000 licensed teachers were convicted of “crimes involving sexual or physical contact with a child” last year. Sexual or physical contact being rather broadly defined these days, that could include anything from sodomy to a sly wink. Of course the sleuths at the O, who have been dogging this issue for several years now, believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we start monitoring teacher’s emails and dissecting their Facebook pages, we might be able to get that number up to .0004%.

Imagine what these people could do if they turned their guns on a real problem. Does it really make sense to be sermonizing about the need for quality teachers while making the profession toxic to any sane person? Or screaming incessantly for more money for schools while opening the floodgates to a tsunami of costly litigation? As they used to say in Oregon, that dog don’t hunt.