They fundamentally misunderstood the nature of impure thoughts and of the children who thought them. They failed to notice that as early as the first grade girls start to whisper about boys and boys show off in return.
They forgot that on the sixth day of genesis, God created glands.
They were desperate. They decided if they couldn’t eradicate sexual stirrings among 13-year-olds, they could at least scare the devil out of them. Across the country, millions of young teens were forced to take a pledge to avoid “impure thoughts, words and deeds.” Impure meaning sexual.
The Legion of Decency and Citizens for Decent Literature led the hysteria. It seemed so righteous at the time, and it felt so good.
They told the children that impure thoughts — not matter how innocent — could lead to eternal damnation. Imagine, girls and boys, holding your hand over of a candle and never being able to move it away.
Some time later the same Charles Keating, founder of CDL and defender against all things prurient, would be in the news again. He was indicted for running scams through his savings and loans, cheating more than twenty thousand people with worthless bonds.
Unlike the children he threatened with eternal damnation, Charles Keating was protected by the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. He served less than five years in federal prison, on a plea bargain.
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