Echoes in Eternity

First the Duke lacrosse story, now this.

Two middle-school students in Oregon are facing possible time in a juvenile jail and could have to register as sex offenders for smacking girls on the rear end at school.

Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, were arrested in February after they were caught in the halls of Patton Middle School, in McMinnville, Ore., slapping girls on the rear end. Mashburn told ABC News in a phone interview that this was a common way of saying hello practiced by lots of kids at the school, akin to a secret handshake.

The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior.

The local district attorney has since backed off -- the felony charges have been dropped and the district attorney said probation would be an appropriate punishment. The Mashburns' lawyer said prosecutors offered Cory a plea bargain that would not require him to register as a sex offender, which the family plans to reject.

But the boys, if convicted at an Aug. 20 trial, still face the possibility of some jail time or registering for life as sex offenders.

The boys' families and lawyers said even sentencing them to probation would turn admittedly inappropriate but not uncommon juvenile rowdiness into a crime. If they are convicted of any of the misdemeanor charges against them, they would have to register as sex offenders.

"It's devastating," said Mark Lawrence, Cory Mashburn's lawyer. "To be a registered sex offender is to be designated as the most loathed in our society. These are young boys with bright futures, and the brightness of those futures would be over."

Another example of our society circling the drain hole. Here is a video interview of the two boys and their families. The prosecutor here is the sick one. Mark Steyn chimed in on this case on Sunday in the OC Register. In his column, he states that this is another proof of the infantilization of our society. I would agree, but I think it also points to the symptom of another crass aspect in our culture: the sexualization of our children. First the intellectual left demanded that younger and younger kids be made aware of sex (to the point that Barack Obama recently called for sex ed for kindergarteners). Now, not only are they demanding that children intimately know about sexual issues, they also believe that kids should view everything within the myopic prism of sexuality. A century ago, had some schoolchildren started some silly fad of rump-swatting, the adults would have corrected them, but no one would have thought to bring the issue into the sexual realm.