Now we’re doing this again:

Teachers at a Des Plaines high school want students to leave some room for the holy spirit. They’ve instituted a policy at Maine West High School dances to keep students from getting a little too dirty with their dancing.

The school requires all dance-goers to wear a wristband. If they are caught “dancing in a way that simulates a sexual act” the wristband is removed. If they’re caught doing it again after that, they’ll be sent home.

Trib Local writes:

“We’re certainly not the only school in the country dealing with this issue. It seems to be becoming more mainstream and more the norm…and it certainly is not,” Assistant Principal Dave Berendt said of inappropriate dancing. “If we continue to turn a blind eye to it, we’re just condoning the behavior.”

I guess a suburban school principal wouldn’t stay in his job very long if he said something along the lines of:

“Look, your kids are fucking. Theyr’e fucking in the stairwell when they think the security cameras won’t pick them up, they’re fucking in your SUV when they’ve told you they’re going to the movies, they’re fucking at friends’ houses, they’re fucking underneath their Hello Kitty sheets when you’re on vacation, they’re fucking with or without your approval, they’re fucking all the time, and when they’re not fucking, they are either talking or thinking about fucking, because that’s what people that age do. Technically it’s what people of any age do, at least if they’re still trying to be human goddamn beings.

“Remember being that age? Remember that? It was like being a rabid squirrel nailed inside a paint can all the time. You were just banging around in there, all hopped up on your own adolescent energy and ambition, and only something as powerful as your very first orgasm with another human being seemed amazing enough to match the glory inside you. I know you fucking office park busybodies spend all goddamn day now actively pretending you were never like that (because then you’d have to question why you’re not like that now, and no, simple age didn’t make you a pussy, try again), but you were. Parents of kids in high school right now? Chances are you were backing it up against some be-bodysuited hottie while Salt-n-Pepa’s “Shoop” rocked the house party, and that’s how you GOT a high school-age kid in the first place. If nobody gave you any static about it then, what is your fucking problem?

“Yeah, yeah, you’re older and smarter now and you wish you hadn’t given chlamydia to half the football team. I get it. Guess what? That’s the world. You want to deaden your own nerve endings and forget who you used to be so you won’t have to think about who you are? Fine. But stop loading all that shit onto teenage girls and boys who haven’t done anything to deserve it but get up in the morning. Stop projecting your mistakes and how you’ve dealt with them (and by the by, have you ever heard of condoms, they’ve been around for like five hundred years) onto kids you don’t know and don’t care to know. It is not their responsibility to carry your feelings. That’s not their problem.

“I would not be a teenager right now if you put a gun to my head. If you put the cold metal barrel of a pistol to my temple and said I am regressing you to age 13 and making you do this all over again now, I would reach around you and pull the trigger myself. First of all, even if you’re lucky enough to have normal parents a double-digit percentage of them today are batshit insane and their insane kids are in class too. Second of all, they’re growing up in a culture obsessed with the end of the world, where every book and movie is about how we’re all going to die, so that’s soothing. And third, every time they turn on the TV or open a laptop, there’s some wadded-panty scold in front of them complaining about how their musical taste is invalid and nobody’s as good as old people were and the job market is hopeless but even if it wasn’t, their entire generation is lazy and entitled and hateful and stupid. And not one of these assholes has done anything more to get to know a teenager than ring up one’s purchase of Red Bull at a fucking Safeway.

“Speaking of the culture, the fucking earth is indeed caving in. There are schools within a bike ride of here that have kids whose lives make yours look like goddamn paradise. There are people lining up at food pantries whose kids you walk by the in hall every day. Our politics is about to criminalize being girls, we’re still at war even though we’re pretending we’re not anymore, and in an hour’s drive you can be in a neighborhood that looks like something out of Blade Runner. You want to talk about morality? Let’s talk about the morality of having a full metal freakout over kids touching each other to songs about ‘booty’ while all of THAT is going on. What on earth are we teaching teenagers when we teach them that?

“I’ll tell you what we’re teaching them: That there’s nothing on this earth so evil as kids having sex. That it doesn’t matter one bit what goes on in the world, or how it affects them, or what they think about it or what they could do. That what should get them riled the fuck up is two relatively well-off young people treating one another with physical affection. If this was a sensible discussion about rape culture that would be one thing. This is an “all sexualized behavior is horrible and must be stamped out” discussion. You’re teaching them that that’s the be-all and end-all of their existence, and by the way, way to not make them neurotic about sex or anything by talking about it all the time in dated terms, Mom.

“They’re going to grow up in that toxic mental petri dish and some of them will be okay anyway because they’re awesome, but some of them will turn into the kinds of parents and teachers who flip the fuck out every time some kid puts his or her hands on another kid’s ass to a song. And won’t that be fun for the next person in my job. Won’t that be a good time we’ve never seen before.”

A.