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Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 3/3

04 Jul

Jada Pinkett Smith launched Don’t Sell Bodies.org because Willow Smith (her daughter at age 11) educated her mother about slavery today. It was only then that she decided to become involved and educate the world about the horrible modern-day crime of slavery.

Don’t Sell Bodies.org says, “83% OF CONFIRMED TRAFFICKING CASES IN THE UNITED STATES ARE AMERICAN BORN CITIZENS …

“It’s hard to believe, but more humans are being used as slaves than ever before. …

“Between 700,000 and 4 million women and children will be trafficked this year, with the majority being forced to work in the sex trade. In America, there are an estimated 40,000 men, women and children enslaved at this very moment. If everyone who cares takes action, we can end slavery once and for all. It is time.”


Jada talks to CNN about how she was inspired by her daughter to take action.

Jada Pinkett Smith joined Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in the fight against human trafficking, after her 11-year-old daughter Willow Smith decided, “These girls need me.”

“She did her own research and realized that there were young girls her age in this country being trafficked for sex,” Pinkett Smith told USA Today. “She was like, ‘Mommy – you don’t know what’s happening!’ I was like, ‘Hold up, pause right there!’ And, she was like, ‘I’ve got to give my voice to this. These young girls out there need me.'”

Jada and her band Wicked Evolution also recorded the song “Nada Se Compara” and produced a music video directed by Salma Hayek. In the video, a teenage girl is seduced by an attractive boy, who sells her to a sex trafficker.


Jada’s music video of human sex-trafficking/slavery

Anti-Slavery International was founded in 1839, as the world’s first and international human rights organization. They reported in mid-2003 that today, “Millions of men, women and children around the world are forced to lead lives as slaves. Although this exploitation is often not called slavery, the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their ’employers’…Women from Eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries and men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.” …

In fact, “In India, Nepal and Pakistan, millions of men, women and children are used as forced and bonded labor in these countries. Most are dalit or from a low caste, or are from indigenous or minority groups. Laws against the caste system and against bonded labor exist but are not enforced.” Source: Religious Tolerance.org

In addition, National Geographic says, “There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.”

Return to Slavery is ALIVE – Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on July 4, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

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Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 2/3

03 Jul

Dan Rather, writing for the Huffington Post, said, “The girls, sometimes as young as 12, often 13-16, are lured by a ‘front man’ in his mid-to-late teens. He becomes her ‘boyfriend,’ taking her to dinner, buying her nice things, sometimes meeting her parents. The girl eventually moves in with him. Then he says they need money to continue being together. First, she’s enticed to sleep with his friends to pay the rent. Soon she’s turning tricks for what police say is an endless supply of older men willing to pay top money for sex with very young girls. … There is, and has been for a long time, a national ‘War on Drugs.'”

However, Rather says, “There isn’t one (a war) on child prostitution and what amounts to a slave trade. Only feeble efforts at best.”

That causes me to question how many of our political leaders and wealthy Americans take advantage of this form of slavery in the United States.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center reports, “An estimated 12 – 27 million people are caught in one or another form of slavery. Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States. Nearly three out of every four victims are women. Half of modern-day slaves are children.”

In fact, KUHF.fm (88.7) reported, “Houston has a huge commercial sex industry and there’s some quotes that say that there’s more SOBs, which is sexually-oriented businesses, in Houston per square mile than there are in Las Vegas. … According to the Department of Justice, Houston is one of the most intense human trafficking regions in the country, with one out of five trafficked persons passing through this city.”

What does this say about the GOP (Republican Party)?  Texas has been a Republican stronghold since the mid-1970s.

This horrible crime is not new—it is as old as civilization as we know it. However, America’s hot button political issues focus on abortion, illegal immigration, the Iraq War, pay as you go budgeting, tax cuts and supply side economics, teachers’ unions and public education, the value (or lack of value) of college education, and universal healthcare while ignoring slavery. It seems that no one with a high-profile public image has stepped up to focus on this issue that is all but ignored—until now, and she has been both criticized and praised publicly for doing it.

My next question—Why would anyone criticize Jada Pinkett Smith, the mother of Willow Smith and wife of Will Smith, for producing a video about modern human trafficking and/or slavery unless the critic benefits from that slave trade?

Continued on July 4, 2012 in Slavery is ALIVE – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on July 3, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

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Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 1/3

02 Jul

Africans are not the only slaves in history. We mostly hear only about the African slave trade but slavery is much older than that. In fact, slavery existed in Africa among Africans long before African slaves were sent to the Americas.

For example, In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.

Slavery is as old as civilization. History World.net says, “Slavery enters human history with civilization. Hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers have no use for a slave. … War is the main source of supply, and wars are frequent and brutal in early civilizations. When a town falls to a hostile army, it is normal to take into slavery those inhabitants who will make useful workers and to kill the rest.”

Although the West boasts of the benefits of democracy, there were slaves in the Greek and Roman republics thousands of years before the establishment of European colonies in the Americas.

If you study American history, you know that from 1861 – 1865, the United States fought its bloodiest war—a war to end slavery. At least 618,000 Americans died in that Civil War. Some experts claim 700,000 died. The cost of the war was more than $11 billion. In today’s dollars, that equals almost $155 billion.

The British Empire abolished slavery in 1833, and the British government paid about £20 million in compensation to the slave-owners that lost their “property”. In pounds, that £20 million would be about £1.5 billion today using the retail price index ($2,340,728,996.00 USD).

That sacrifice made by the United States (1865) and the British Empire (1833) in lives and money was made in vain because today in the 21st century slavery is far worse than it was then.

CNN reported, “The modern-day slavery expert explained to CNN that the current $90 rate for a human slave is actually at an historic low. Two hundred years ago, a slave cost about $40,000 in today’s money. The reason for this price slide: a massive boom in the world’s population, especially in developing countries, has increased the supply of ‘slaveable’ people.”

In 2010, Dan Rather, writing for the Huffington Post, said, “Over 300,000 U.S. Children Fall Prey to Sex Trafficking. … Child prostitution has become a national problem in this country.”

Continued on July 3, 2012 in Slavery is ALIVE – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

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The Good and Bad of America’s Continuing Cultural Revolution – Part 1/7

04 Jun

One could argue that America’s transformational Cultural Revolution started in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War which ended slavery in the United States in 1865.

In addition, the way the average American parent raises his or her children today, and how the public schools operate and the character of the average American child are all affected by this continuing revolution.

Several significant changes track this Cultural Revolution and metamorphosis—some good and some bad. After all, America’s leaders and citizens are only human. To understand this ignored revolution, one should know a few facts about US history first.

Good changes are in bold print showing improvement.

If the print is gray, the change is questionable.

If in italics, it means BAD things happened!

1. In 1800, about 6% of the US population lived in cities and more 94 % lived on farms and/or small rural communities. By 1990, almost 70% of the rural population had migrated to cities.  This change took place due to the US Industrial Revolution (1820 – 1870), and America needed more educated citizens.

2. In 1850, life expectancy by age in America at birth was 38.3 years. By 1900, life expectancy at birth reached 48.23. In 1990, it was 72.7, and by 2012 (according to the CIA Factbook, life expectancy for all races and both sexes had reached 78.49 (ranked #50 globally).

3. Although critics of public education harp on the so-called low high-school graduation rates in the US, in 2007 the national graduation rate was almost 70%. However, to put this into perspective, in 1870, the high school graduation rate was less than 5% and by the turn of the century in 1900, thirty years later, only 7%. Forty-five years after that at the end of World War II, the rate was up to 55%. It wouldn’t be until 1970 that we would see the highest graduation rate at 76%.  After that, it leveled off and hasn’t changed much and fluctuates a few percentage points up or down.

4. The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law on May 6, 1882. This act was one of the most significant restrictions on immigration in U.S. history and focused on all Asians.  The act also affected Asians that had already settled in the US before it became law.  This Act would not be repealed until December 17, 1943—sixty-one years later.

5. The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920 establishing a woman’s right to vote. This movement started in 1848 and took 72 years to achieve.

6. For more than one-hundred-and-sixty-two years, Children in the United States could be sold by their parents into servitude to work in coal mines and factories up until the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

7. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese-Americans lost their homes and businesses when they were rounded up and sent to dozens of prison camps where they languished until the war ended (February 1942 – 1944; the last prison camp closed in 1945.)  This act was challenged in the courts but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. Government.

8. In 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 ending segregation in the US armed services: “”It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”

9. From roughly 1950 – 1954, McCarthyism was the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. This movement was so popular that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy’s vigilante witch hunts.

10. On July 2, 1964, President Johnson sings the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction prohibiting discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

11. The Spread of American Imperialism: the war with Mexico (1846-48) where the US seized New Mexico and California; the US Indian Wars (1865-1891), which cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians; in the Spanish-American War (1898) the US gained Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico; Philippine-American War (1899-1902); Banana Wars (1898-1935); Moro Rebellion in the southern Philippines (1899-1913); Vietnam War (1955-1975), and the Iraq War (note: this is not a complete list). In addition. to maintain this empire, according to the US Department of Defense, the US military maintains 662 foreign sites in 38 countries around the world. Other sources claim that number is more than 1,000.

Now, just as America need smarter people, the average US citizen is going in the other direction from dumb to dumber, and this change is a continuation of the American Cultural Revolution that has been taking place since 1861.

However, this revolutionary change has to do with how the average parent raises his or her children, and it had its roots with John Dewey in 1886. It would take 82 years for this negative element of America’s Cultural Revolution to reach critical mass when by the late 1960s self-esteem was a fashionable and influential idea and that movement, which spread to the schools by the 1980s  led to grade inflation, an end to rote learning in addition to dummying down the curriculum.

Continued on June 5, 2012 in The Good and Bad of America’s Continuing Cultural Revolution – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

 
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Posted by on June 4, 2012 in family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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Not a Pedophile by a Long Shot

19 Apr

James Hooker’s poor judgment (he could have waited a few months until after Jordan Powers graduated) cost him his job and now he has been accused of having a sexual affair fourteen years ago with a 17 year old (this is an alleged accusation and may not be true although the details are compelling).

However, Jordan Powers is 18 and in California 18 is the age of consent (the average age of consent in most states in the US is 16). Regardless of opinions that she is still a child, she hasn’t been a child since probably the age of 13, and her mother doesn’t have to like her daughter’s choices of who to love, but she should drop the pedophile accusations. A 41 year old man having an affair with an 18 year old is not being a pedophile. The definition for pedophile is: The act of fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children. Powers stopped being a biological child four to six year ago and I’m sure she has a mind of her own regardless of her judgement falling in love with a man more than twice her age.

I taught middle and high school for most of thirty years, and believe me, once a young girl becomes an adolescent capable of being pregnant, most are not the so-called innocent child we want to believe in.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

Stacy Lynn Kingsley's avatarBazaar Daily News

MODESTO, CALIF: According to Yahoo News,  18 year old Jordan Powers is stupid enough to have actually taken James Hooker back as her boyfriend even though he was arrested for oral copulation of a minor from back in the 90’s.,

Yahoo notes that the two have moved back in together despite the wishes of her mother Tammie Powers, whom I might add is knowingly soaking up the attention she’s received on Facebook.

I don’t condone this kinds of relationships, but this mum just irks me. She’s loving every bit of attention she’s getting.

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Posted by on April 19, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 6/6

16 Apr

There may even be a benefit for an older man or woman to marry a younger person.

For three examples of famous relationships that have survived the test of time, there is Woody Allen, Celine Dion and Rupert Murdoch.

In 1991, when Allen’s relationship with Soon-Ye started, she was 21 and he was 56, and they are still married even with a 35 year age difference.

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, who adopted Soon-Ye, had a son outside of marriage, and Ronan Seamus Farrow said of his biological father, “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent… I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”


Robert Murdoch (81) and Wendi Deng (44)

Then there is Celine Dion (born 1968), who married René Angélil (born 1942), her manager—a twenty-six year difference.

By all accounts, these marriages are doing well even with the age disparity and when a relationship doesn’t work out, there is always divorce, but a “UK study showed that while marriages between older men and younger women were more predominant in 1963, overall numbers have increased, including the number of marriages between older women and younger men. Although divorce rates continue to rise in the UK, divorce rates among married couples with an age difference do not show a disproportionate increase.”  Source: eHow.com, divorce rates age differences.

However, how can a relationship such as the one between James Hooker and Jordan Powers stand a chance when there is so much media attention and public pressure condemning this couple? When love is true, it transcends age.  When it is false, it doesn’t matter what the age is of the man and woman involved.

Internet and Psychiatry says, “An interesting study by German experts revealed that men who marry younger women enhance their chances of longevity, and those who tie the knot with older women meet a premature death. The analysis was carried by a research group at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. The researchers looked at the deaths of the entire population of Denmark between 1990 and 2005. Danish men who marry women much younger than them live longer.

According to research, if a man marries a woman 15 and 17 years his junior, his chances of dying early are cut by one fifth. Also, it suggests that men cut the risk of premature death by 11 percent if their wives are seven to nine years younger. Another aspect highlighted by the study was that men who opted for older wives have an 11 percent higher chance of dying earlier.

Return to Part 5 of the Mob’s War Against Teachers or start with Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on April 16, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 5/6

15 Apr

According to the New York Times (2009), “An analysis of census data on age difference in marriages showed that the number of marriages between women who are at least 5 or 10 years older than their spouses is still small, 5.4  percent (about 6.5 million people) and 1.3 percent (1.6 million), respectively. But both rates doubled between 1960 and 2007, according to Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, who conducted the analysis.”

If these statistics are true, then why did the police conduct an investigation of James Hooker discovering that fourteen years ago, he may have had oral sex with a 17 year old (when he was 27)?  His accuser is 31 today.  The police must have done a lot of digging to come up with this alleged victim of statutory oral sexual rape, which may have been illegally consensual.

If the police are going to investigate one relationship between an older man and younger woman, why not investigate them all—why was James Hooker singled out? In the US, millions of older men are having intimate relationships with younger women.

If the alleged oral sex did take place, was Hooker married at the time?  Did he meet the 17 year old in a bar and did she have false ID?  Did he meet her at all and is this woman lieing because she wants to break up Hooker’s relationship with Powers and punish this man by sending him to jail because he doesn’t live by her moral standards?


Breezy – Directed by Clink Eastwood and starring William Holden and Kay Lenz

Directed by Clint Eastwood, this is the story of a May-December romance between divorced middle-aged Frank Harmon (William Holden) and ditzy teenager Breezy (Kay Lenz). Frank finds Breezy sleeping on his porch, and eventually a friendship develops that leads to an affair. All goes well until Frank’s friends put pressure on him, and he ends his relationship with Breezy. But, when a friend dies, Frank realizes how important Breezy is in his life. He apologizes, and they live happily ever after.

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No matter what the verdict may be if this alleged crime goes to court, we will never know if this claim is true. What we do know is that Hooker has bad judgment, and he was a public school teacher. Falling in love with his former student before she graduated from high school and moving in with her was not a crime but it is turning out to be a nightmare for him and maybe many future teachers that fall in love with consensual adults that were once a student.

By the way, “alleged” means that Hooker has not been found guilty of what may have happened fourteen years ago. He claims he is innocent. In fact, if it is just his word against his accuser, how do we know the accusation is true?

In fact, if a judge and/or jury find Hooker guilty and send him to jail for twenty years to life, he may still be an innocent man. Innocent people are convicted of crimes all the time. The Innocent Project.org says that since the year 1989, two hundred and eighty nine convicted criminals serving prison sentences were found innocent due to DNA evidence… In addition, “False confessions and incriminating statements lead to wrongful convictions in approximately 25 percent of cases.”

In Hooker’s case, there is no DNA evidence—only the accusations of one 31 year old woman for something that may have happened 14 years ago.  Any expert of human memory can tell you that over time, our memories are not exact and accurate and often change. However, when tried in the court of public opinion, it doesn’t matter what the truth may be. What counts is the mob’s opinions.

Continued on April 16, 2012 in Part 6 of  the Mob’s War Against Teachers or return to Part 4

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on April 15, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 4/6

14 Apr

The worldwide age of consent ranges from age 12 to 21.

The male-female age of consent to have sexual relationships in most of the United States is 16. In China—which is supposed to be a so-called brutal dictatorship that suppresses individual freedoms—the age of consent is 14 and in Taiwan it is 16.

However, in Angola the age of consent is 12/15, and in Argentina it is 13/16, which must mean when a woman starts having her period and is capable of having children between those ages, the age of consent applies. In Botswana the age of consent is 16 for girls and 14 for boys.

In fact, the most common age of consent around the globe is the age of 16—even in the United States where the age of consent ranges from 14 (one state, Arkansas) to 18, only seven of the fifty states have 18 as the age of consent. California is one of them.

In France, the age of consent is 15. In the UK it is 16. In Yemen there is no age of consent but the couple must be married to have sex. While it is legal for men to have sex with men and women to have sex with women in the US, there are many countries where this is illegal. Source: Avert.org, Age of Consent


“Harold and Maude” – 1971 cult classic movie – the sexual relationship between an 80 year old woman and a young man in his early 20s.

In the News: American Idol judge and superstar Jennifer Lopes (42) is dating a man that is age 25, and Chris Noth (57), the “Sex and the City” star,  married Tara Wilson age 30. When Noth started dating Wilson she was 20 and he was 47.

In 2010, Harrison Ford married Calista Flockhart. He was 67 and she was 45. Then there is Clint Eastwood, who has fathered at least seven children by five different women. Eastwood’s current wife is 35 years younger than he is.

James Hooker (age 41) and Jordan Powers (18), with 23 years between their ages, exercised poor judgment in acting before she graduated from high school. If the couple had waited a few more months until after she graduated from high school, the media uproar probably wouldn’t have happened and the politically correct mob led by Powers’ vengeful mother wouldn’t be supporting California’s Bill 1861whitch is threatening another American freedom that also discriminates against teachers.

Jordan Powers is not the first young woman to fall in love with an older man. In fact, younger men sometimes fall in love with older women.

Medicine Net.com says, “While no statistics are readily available, older man-younger woman couples have long existed and may be becoming more prevalent and more socially acceptable. In certain Hollywood and corporate circles, especially among financially successful men, the practice is so common that these younger women, usually second wives, have been given the disparaging nickname of ‘trophy wives’.”

However, MedicineNet.com was wrong. There are statistics.

Continued on April 15, 2012 in Part 5 of  the Mob’s War Against Teachers or return to Part 3

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
7 Comments

Posted by on April 14, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 3/6

13 Apr

According to About.com, eighteen is a magic birthday, a milestone into adulthood accompanied by great privileges as well as serious legal implications. At 18, a teen can vote, buy a house or wed his high school sweetheart (however, if Jordan Powers’ mother has her way, that list will not include former teachers). Once one is eighteen, he or she can also go to jail, get sued, gamble away his or her tuition via online poker, and make terrible stock market investments – just like anyone else that is the same age or older. That’s because an 18-year-old is considered an adult in nearly every state in the union (except for the mother of Jordan Powers).


Young Women – Older Men

To prove the fact that teachers are discriminated against, on Snopes.com message board you will discover comments that provide evidence of this double standard that has plagued teachers in the United States for more than a century.

It isn’t as bad as it was a century ago, but the discrimination against teachers still exists and may be getting worse.

For example at Snopes.com (find the link in a previous paragraph), you will read: “When my grandmother married my grandfather in 1928, she resigned her position because ‘married women could not teach school'” … “A schoolteacher must never be seen patronizing a tavern or ale house.” … “Some of the articles I dug up quoted people who maintained that they had female relatives who, as late as the 1950s, had to resign their teaching positions when they got married.” Source: Snopes.com

In fact, when I first started teaching in 1975, the Southern California school district where I worked did not allow dating between teachers that worked at the same school, and if two teachers working at the same school did marry, one of them had to transfer to another school in the district. Later, in the 1980s, that rule was abolished.


Older women looking for younger men.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Lewis Country Board of Education in West Virginia adopted the following policy: “That no married woman will be employed by the Board to teach during the school year 1934-35, and if it is discovered that any lady teacher was married at the time of her appointment or gets married at any time during the school term, her position will immediately be declared vacant.” Source: wvculture.org

These examples prove that America has always had a double standard where teachers are concerned, and it is obvious that James Hooker is a victim of this discrimination, which is similar to how many loving gay/lesbian couples are often treated by many mainstream, average Americans (according to the latest US Census data, about 132,000 same-sex couples are married in the United States, while 515,000 are unmarried but live together).

Continued on April 14, 2012 in Part 4 of  the Mob’s War Against Teachers or return to Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

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Posted by on April 13, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 2/6

12 Apr

America’s Founding Fathers warned the American people about the dangers of the democratic mob when they created a republic (not a democracy), but we didn’t learn from them and allowed the United States to become a democracy early in the 20th century.

Now thanks to one furious mother that refuses to let her child have the freedom the law provides when a child becomes an adult at 18 years of age, California may join 23 other states where some may lose the freedom to fall in love with an older man or woman that is a former teacher.

Should falling in love with a consenting adult age 18 or older be a crime?

“Almost half of the world’s prisoners are in the United States (2.29 million), China (1.65 million sentenced prisoners), or Russia (0.81 million) – countries which account for just over a quarter of the world’s population…” Source: Prison Studies.org

The US is listed as # ONE with 743 prisoners per 100,000 people, the Russian Federation is # FIVE with 534 prisoners per 100,000 and China is # 117 with 122 prisoners per 100,000. Source: List of Countries by Incarceration Rate – Wiki

Since America is a country that often loudly announces it is the ‘land of the free’, being number one in this category should be an embarrassment casting a serious doubt on this claim.

It isn’t as if older men having relationships with a younger woman is anything new. These types of relationships may be rare compared to the average, but there are individuals that do find love with an older partner and it works.

How is this different from a relationship between two consenting adult gay men or women?

However, if Kristin Olsen’s Bill 1861 becomes law in California, 18-year-old high school girls or boys may still fall in love with any other older man or woman—no matter how old—as long as he or she isn’t a teacher.

If California joins the states that have removed this freedom of choice for legal consenting adults, 24 states may then send teachers to jail just because he or she had the audacity to fall in love (or lust) with a consenting 18 or older adult that was once a student.

I know of one teacher that worked at the same high school where I taught for almost twenty years. He married his wife soon after she graduated from that same high school.  He was in his late twenties when she was his student and they started dating the following year, with the parents’ consent (the parents also acted as chaperones—the two never went on a date alone), when she was sixteen. That was in the 1980s, and that couple has had several children and are still happily married almost thirty years later. In fact, that older teacher wanted his younger wife to stay at home and raise the kids so he worked other job besides teaching to pay the bills. He sacrificed for the younger woman he loved.

In addition, I knew another teacher at the same high school that married a 19 year old former student that attended the same school, and when they married a year or more after the younger woman graduated, the teacher was in his 50s.  A few years later, that marriage ended in an amicable divorce. The older man even voluntarily requested that the judge make the alimony higher.

Isn’t that what we have divorce for? If we make a mistake and/or fall out of love with someone we married (no matter what age they are), we have the option of divorce. Being age 18 or over means we have the right to make mistakes and learn from them without a parent interfering by pushing for punitive laws that will send more people to prison.

Continued on April 13, 2012 in Part 3 of the Mob’s War against Teachers or return to Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on April 12, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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