Boys Beware!

[dude]

[Chris James]

Such a dated piece of propaganda, but it could have been produced by any of the radical right wing groups of today. Young people rarely hitchhike these days, probably because no one will pick them up for fear of being robbed. Years ago I used to give rides, but only if I knew the boy on sight from my neighborhood.

A man sitting alone on a park bench these days seems to scream pervert to the paranoia of modern parents. I had such an experience years ago in my thirties while waiting for a work crew to arrive on a job site. The police officer who approached me had a preconceived notion that my presence was a threat to the kids playing in the park. He asked for identification and I showed him my driver's license, then he asked what I was doing there and I explained the working crew was going to arrive any minute to set up the stage for the summer in the parks events.

I could tell he was still suspicious so I asked why he had chosen me and was told a parent had reported a single man watching the children at play. This was a public park with lots of people around and I was the suspicious character, it seemed absurd. Fortunately the crew arrived and then we had a dozen single men who set about unloading trucks and setting up the venue. Believe it or not, the whole time we were there the park police had an officer watching us.

[Cole Parker]

Don't you love the matter of fact way in the video that homosexuals are identified as being deranged? It was common knowledge, I guess.

C

[J.HunterDunn]

The voice-over in the video pronounces the word "homosexuals" as if it were a dirty word.

Scary to realize that this was made not so long ago.

[JamesSavik]

The voice-over in the video pronounces the word "homosexuals" as if it were a dirty word.

Or like a particularly loathsome species of insect.

Scary to realize that this was made not so long ago.

Meanwhile at Catholic charity hospitals, lobotomies were being administered to cure unrepentant homosexuals.

[colinian]

I sent the link to the video to my granddad. It looked like it was made around the time he was in high school. He wrote back:

"When I went to Wilson High I remember that we were shown either this video or one almost exactly like it in Health class (it was given the first week of PE each year). The car the police officer was driving looked like the car that the homosexual was driving. We hitchhiked because there was either very limited or no public transportation compared to today. And we were very careful about who we rode with. The older the better, and women the best. I was never propositioned. We could get our learners permit when we turned 15 and if we passed Driver Training class in high school and passed the driving and written tests at the DMV we could drive when we were 15 and a half. Then it was begging to use my mom's car or (less likely to happen) my dad's car. I got my first car on my 16th birthday, a Chevy Del Rey painted two-tone baby diarrhea green and urine yellow. I saved my money and had it painted white at Les Schwab for $49.00. Until then I had to live with the jokes about the colors, but that never stopped anyone from begging to get ride in my car."

I remember my granddad telling me that car color story. I even used a variant of it in a flash fiction story I wrote, My First Car.

Colin

[Lugnutz]

Stranger danger. Kids were smarter back then. Not coddled like today.

[JamesSavik]

I remember seeing a news story about a couple who lived less than a mile from school who let their kids walk to school.

Child Protective Services were called by the school and the kids were put in a temporary foster home.

It seems that the schools have become completely hysterical over the matter- and very authoritarian.

[Bruin Fisher]

It was irresponsible then and it's irresponsible now when people, let alone authorities, conflate homosexuality with paedophilia. It makes me very angry, especially since the vast majority of paedophiles abuse the opposite sex, not their own sex.

[colinian]

It was irresponsible then and it's irresponsible now when people, let alone authorities, conflate homosexuality with paedophilia. It makes me very angry, especially since the vast majority of paedophiles abuse the opposite sex, not their own sex.

"not their own sex" — except for priests.

Colin