COMMENTARY: Kiss controversy: A glimpse of public morality at work

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at)interpath.com.) (UNDATED) Lexington, N.C., is known mainly for its barbecue, as well as a flamboyant sheriff who recently painted jail cells pink. Now Lexington is gaining its 15 […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at)interpath.com.)

(UNDATED) Lexington, N.C., is known mainly for its barbecue, as well as a flamboyant sheriff who recently painted jail cells pink. Now Lexington is gaining its 15 minutes of big-time fame because of”the kiss.” According to early news reports, two 6-year-olds were in class. A girl asked a boy to kiss her. He did. The teacher saw it. The boy was accused of sexual harassment and sent to in-school suspension. The school administration said rules are rules. The boy’s parents were outraged. The boy was perplexed. And now a lot of people are shaking their heads.


Players in”the kiss”drama will return to their lives. But a larger issue will remain with us. That is the issue of public morality, and how a strikingly diverse nation struggles to reach any consensus on what is moral and what isn’t.

Behind”the kiss”drama, of course, is fear of legal liability. If the girl didn’t welcome the kiss and told her parents; if they, in turn, determined the teacher had been lax and the school unresponsive, it would be tort time. Public morality, in this instance, is construed as what will keep an individual or institution clear of lawsuits. It’s a modern variation on an old theme: The good is whatever I can get away with. Bad means getting caught.

As if to counter a public morality driven by legal fears, the cry goes up,”Let’s return to common sense.”Or the somewhat more loaded,”Let’s get back to basics.”Problem is,”common sense,”if it ever existed, keeps changing and splintering, and some of yesterday’s”basics”seem outlandish today.

It wasn’t that long ago, for example, when”common sense”held that women existed for the sexual pleasure and domestic convenience of men. The”basic”job of women was to be alluring, compliant and dutiful.

Many find such an attitude bizarre, antiquated, or downright evil. Many others find that please-the-man still makes sense. Indeed, the fuss over Lexington’s kiss could well be people arguing indirectly over women’s roles, some saying that women have gone too far, and others saying that abuse is abuse. That’s a lot to load on a 6-year-old boy and girl, but such absurdities mark our occasional forays into public morality. Look at the way we allow frightened teen-age girls to be the Gettysburg of our abortion debates.

In fact, public morality has never been America’s strong suit. We remember great moments like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War, settling of the West and a postwar economic boom. But we forget that just off the page were rebellious farmers, race riots, brutal treatment of immigrants, whippings, lynchings, crazed mobs, armed thugs shooting miners, sweatshops, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and selective attitudes about whose rape is a crime.

We have wanted to see ourselves as a moral nation, God’s new chosen, whose destiny is to set people free. We have wanted to be a land of common vision, the noble and energetic fellowship of equals that was depicted on railroad terminal walls by Depression-era artists.


But we keep getting in our own way. And that, I think, is the point of”the kiss celebre.”A teacher, knowing as most adult women do the demeaning impact of unwanted sexual advances, saw too much in a classroom smooch. Maybe we should thank her for wanting to protect a girl.

A principal, knowing as most educators do the extreme vulnerability in which classroom teachers function, stood in solidarity with her employee. Maybe we should thank her for wanting to protect a teacher.

Parents, knowing the ways children get labeled, rallied behind their son. Maybe we should thank them for risking humiliation to protect their boy.

It now seems a question whether the girl wanted this kiss. But all agree that she has a right to determine such contact. That agreement represents a major change in attitudes about females’ right of self-determination, and we should be thankful.

A boy thought he was saying yes to a friend. Maybe he misread the situation, but all agree that his instinct was decent.

In the absence of common moral standards, we should look intently at situations like”the kiss”and see the human heart at work, not just a lawsuit to be averted. What”the kiss”cries out for is understanding, not judgment. Moral understanding, in turn, requires compassion and forgiveness.


Legalists won’t approve, of course. Some are always drawn to the Oz of perfect rules. But the heart of morality isn’t law, it is love.

MJP END EHRICH

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