Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003) s08e04 Episode Script
Teen Sex
PENN: OK, Teller, you go first.
- Uh, Goudeau? - 16.
- Excuse me, Tim? - 17.
- Patti? - 19.
- Phyllis? - 16.
- Bert? - 18.
Hi, I'm Penn Jillette, and this is my partner, Teller.
Those numbers were the ages we all were when we had sex for the first time.
- Uh, Gene? - 17.
- Vera? - 16.
So exactly why the fuck do we Americans get so fucking uptight about teens having sex with each other? Because, let's face it, we were all teens the first time we had sex.
Teens were fucking before you were born.
And they'll be fucking after you die.
So why are we getting our granny panties in such a bunch? Trying to stop teens from fucking is bullshit! "Teen Sex" PENN: Lock the doors.
Board up the windows.
Hide your children under the bed.
Some people think technology, the media, and even homosexuals are turning our otherwise angelic young people into sleezy, sex-crazed sluts! So we thought we'd check.
Are the media and sexy new technology really making today's teens more sexual? Tonight, we'll hear from this dapper radio personality Things are going on now that are disgusting and vile.
And it brings about the decline of our society that we're watching.
This concerned mom Do I think that the media perpetuates teen sexuality? Absolutely.
This guy who says technology is dangerous Every single action you're taking is potentially public and permanent.
And this 12-year-old boy who some are calling a sex offender.
It was scary 'cause you didn't know what was gonna happen.
We'll meet some high-schoolers who've experienced anti-gay bigotry I heard about it, and I saw it all the time.
And a whole bunch of teens who'll confess their true feelings about sex Teenagers are having sex, and they're having a lot of it.
Yep, tonight it's all about out-of-control teen sex! We're not gonna talk about those issues.
Oh, we're going there.
We are definitely going there.
The producers and director of "Bullshit!" live in California.
We live in Nevada.
When it comes time to shoot the standups, we work here on the Nevada/California state line.
Now age of consent for sex in California is, uh, 18.
In Nevada, it's 16.
So this lovely couple can have-- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Where you going? You cannot be together in California.
You can't do that, the age-- What, what, what's-- Huh, that's still legal, that's fine.
That young woman has reached-- No, no, no! If you go to California, he goes to prison.
Let me check.
Yep.
Fine, legal.
Gay sex at 18, California, fine.
Ok, now this gets confusing, girls.
Listen, listen, listen.
In Nevada, the heterosexual age of consent is 16, but you have to be 18 to have gay sex.
Hey, where--where you going, girls? Where you going? BOTH: Maine.
Anybody can legally fuck there at 16.
Well, have fun.
If you get any extra time, try the lobster.
The current generation of parents in this country are the worst generation of parents in America that have ever existed.
Bill Cunningham here.
Heard everyday on 700 WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, and every Sunday night on premiere radio networks.
What's happened is that now girls, because of messages from cell phones, from iPods, from this disgusting rap music that talks about bodily functions, oral sex, backwards sex, upside down sex, sex, sex and sex.
And so everything they see, everything they read, and everything they hear tell them, "become sexual.
" And so there is not a family structure.
There aren't churches around telling girls "quit doing that.
" So girls are reverting to their primordial ooze form of having sex when they're 13, 14, and 15.
And their purpose is to, uh, recreate, have fun, dance, drink, and probably fornicate unnecessarily.
PENN: Absolutely! That is exactly the-- Oh, wait.
You think those are bad, don't you? Keep the girls locked up till they're about 22 years old.
PENN: Sounds like Bill blames the "girls.
" I wonder if he wants to tie them down and spank them while he locks them up.
We should talk to some parents for a second opinion.
For parents who are raising kids in this society, it's oversexed.
It's-- They're--they're bombarded by it everywhere they turn.
Hi, my name is Cindy Rushton.
And I am a wife, a mom, and a speaker and a writer.
PENN: And Cindy also hosts her own radio show, which she calls "Mom to Mom.
" My heartbeat behind "Mom to Mom" radio show has been to encourage and equip and inspire moms to keep on keeping on.
PENN: No, Cindy's not calling the police about our "Bullshit!" crew's inappropriate behavior, she's using the phone to do her show.
Their temptations, their concerns at this age are very real.
PENN: This may look like a couch potato's dream job, and it is.
Still, Cindy says over a million people access her podcast from 55 countries.
Cindy's kind of an international nervous Nellie.
One-on-one dating is so dangerous today There are too many kids, I believe, that they're left alone A parent would have to be blind or not care to think that the media is not a threat I was praying that my children would not sexting or post pictures on the Internet I-I find it alarming There are real dangers of date rape That, that alarms me.
PENN: So how did Cindy-- a mother herself-- deal with all those fears? My children were home schooled from the time that Matthew was 5 and Elizabeth was 2.
And they continued all the way until they graduated.
So sweet.
PENN: But, Cindy, wasn't home schooling kind of a drastic step just to keep your children sheltered from the outside world? I was concerned that home schooling might make my kids kind of a social retard.
And I was really interested in them being involved in things.
But also I really do believe going to a public school would have opened them up to a lot of things that they wouldn't of had me right there beside them along the way to kinda discern, is this truth? Uh, Cindy, saying "social retard" is, uh, socially unacceptable.
So how about an example of you helping your children discern the truth? "I kissed a girl, and I liked it.
" You know that--that-- I was listening to that song and I was, like, calling my kids saying, "You do not sing this song, do you?" That's your example? Fuck! I kind of like that song.
Shock-jock Bill won't be playing Katy Perry or any other music on his Run-for-the-Hills radio show.
Nope.
You'll hear only the passion of his voice.
News organizations are essentially lazy.
All great cultures rise and fall.
And America's now at the top starting to decline.
I see America becoming the new Rome, with the naked Roman baths and these naked gay clubs, and sexting and all this.
We've become the new Greeks.
While those gross Greeks and rotten Romans were sitting in baths and fucking, they were also conquering and civilizing the world, inventing democracy and the idea of a republic, revolutionizing mathematics, astronomy, medicine, agriculture, architecture, and philosophy.
Oh, so you think a floating object displaces its own weight in water? Did you tell Archimedes about this? We'll, uh, we'll test it in just a moment.
Wild sex didn't start when Greece and Rome were in decline.
It was a hallmark of their golden ages.
We don't give a damn if Pythagoras used dicks for sides of his triangle.
He kicks your ignorant ass, Bill Cunningham.
Oh, you, uh, squared the hypotenuse.
Good thinkin'.
So what about sexting? A lot of people are saying it's corrupting our teens.
Should we worry about the hysteria? Teens can absolutely ruin their life by being irresponsible with digital technology.
My name is Richard Guerry, executive director, IROC.
PENN: Richard says "IROC" is an acronym for the "Institute for Responsible Online and Cell Phone Communication.
" Not to be picky, but that would actually be tif-row-ack-puh-cah.
Just sayin'.
Richard conducts seminars around the country about the dangers of technology.
He calls them IROC concerts.
'Cause they're so out-of-control! Let's get 5 examples of responsibility.
I'll start off, OK? Showing up to school on time.
PENN: How about accurate acronyms? Ok, maybe not.
If IROC didn't exist, teens would find out about the dangers of digital technology the hard way.
They would learn after they've made a mistake.
They would learn after they've already made something that has potentially altered their entire life.
PENN: By digital technology, he's talking about things like Facebook, MySpace and, yes, sexting.
We define sexting as simply a sexual explicit picture, video, text message-- Any form of communication of a sexually explicit nature through primarily a cell phone.
PENN: What's so scary about sending naked pictures to each other? It's not like it can harm your future.
It can harm your future, and here's how, OK? First of all if we look at minors-- Minors already right off the bat are looking at a legal liability.
Let's say a 15-year-old is sending another 15-year-old a picture.
They've never been told upfront, "Hey, that's child pornography.
" PENN: Sadly, he's right.
That's the law.
If you're 15 and take a picture of your own naked body, you're a child pornographer.
And if someone else sees it, they'll be joining you in the holding cell.
No kidding.
So are children actually being arrested? Unfortunately, yes.
Well I was with my friend and my brother and my dad at the YMCA.
And we were just playing basketball, you know, having fun.
And my phone vibrated, and it said "New picture message.
" I'm Riley, and I was caught in a sexting incident.
PENN: Riley is 12 years old.
The picture he received was of a naked 12-year-old girl, a former classmate.
A picture he didn't ask for, and didn't even want.
I looked at it.
And then the kid who had sent it to me told my best friend that I had it.
So my best friend said he wouldn't be my friend anymore if I didn't send it to him.
And he kept saying that.
And so I gave in and just finally sent it.
I was uncomfortable.
It made me feel awkward.
PENN: So awkward that Riley deleted the picture.
His father Craig picks up the story from there.
Off we go Tuesday morning to school.
Life is normal.
And by 2:00, things changed quite a bit.
Security cameras at the school had captured a cluster of boys looking at their cell phones.
In total, 25 boys were interrogated by the school resource officer, and their cell phones were confiscated.
By the time I got there, felony charges were pending.
The end result of this will be if convicted of this charge, they will--these boys will have to register as sex offenders.
PENN: A registered sex offender? Jesus Christ, the kid's 12! Well, it scared me.
I mean, I'm not going to lie.
I cried for a second 'cause I was scared.
PENN: Damned fucking straight, skippy.
We cried when we "heard" about it.
There are 700,000 people on sex offender registries in the United States.
My name is Judith Levine, and I'm the author of "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex.
" And so we have hundreds of thousands of names and faces, some of them of children as young as 10 years old, on sex offender registries in this country, who are called sexual predators, who may be on that registry for 10 years or as long as life.
They will never be able to get a job.
They won't be able to live where they want.
They may not be able to have a family.
It's irresponsible to put them on a sex offender registry and we ruin their lives.
That's irresponsible.
PENN: While they wait for their day in court, poor Riley already feels like a criminal.
Well, my life-- It's changed a lot.
Like I've--I still feel like I've let my family down and that I've let a lot of people down and I've made a big mistake.
What Riley's going through isn't even close to the worst case we've heard of.
There are several cases pending right now where young girls are on trial for child pornography for taking pictures of their own bodies and sending them to their boyfriends.
They couldn't be on this show.
They have enough problems without a prosecutor saying, "And you were also on a show called 'Bullshit!'?" So how did we get to the point where we're willing to call any child with a cell phone a sex offender? Where does this hysteria come from? Your password's a joke.
These are the people that are looking for your content.
Every single person you'll see is a convicted sex offender.
PENN: Fuck! You're making it a lot easier because you're serving yourself up on a silver platter.
PENN: Double fuck.
And you would be shocked at how many people get mugged, raped, abducted and so on and so forth.
PENN: Mugged? Raped? Abducted? And so on and so forth? You're adding to the fear and paranoia.
Say something reassuring or we're gonna call you a really bad word.
Sexting is a digital disease.
Cyber-bullying is a digital disease, malware and the-- PENN: Asshole! Hey uh, what about sexting anyway? Sexting is just the latest iteration of things that lovers have done for a long time.
Now we have cell phones.
Cell phones are gonna ruin children's morality.
Before that, we had television.
Before that was rock and roll.
Each one of these was going to ruin children morally forever.
The best thing parents could do would be just to try to remember what it feels like to be a kid from time to time.
PENN: As if it's not tough enough being a teenager dealing with common insecurities of wanting to just "fit in," imagine being a gay teen.
When you look at the language people use at schools, what you see in our popular culture, this is still the language of disrespect-- Faggot, dyke, sissy, lesbo.
My name is Eliza Byard, and I am the executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
PENN: GLSEN? Even the good guys have lousy acronyms.
As long as we think it's OK to call someone a sissy or a faggot, we leave the door open for more serious forms of behavior.
PENN: Is that kind of hate really still out there? Not only were many of my friends bashed and harassed or humiliated and made fun of, but I was as well.
- My name is Hannah Page.
- My name is Jacob Brock.
BOTH: And together we started the Yulee High School Gay-Straight Alliance.
PENN: What's a gay-straight alliance? It's all about ending discrimination and harassment in our community.
JACOB: It's pretty much just a safe place for people to go to and to discuss the problems, not to discuss sex.
PENN: So jacob and hannah were excited to start a GSA at their Florida High School.
We actually found a lot of support from the students, from most of the students in the school.
JACOB: They looked up to us for standing up for what we believed in.
PENN: Well, there you go! Just when you think everything involving teen sex is awful news, along comes a positive story like-- And then it got shut down by the superintendent of the school board.
PENN: Oh, fuck! I was, you know, angry and personally hurt from it.
You know, 'cause we had really worked hard to put this together and then it felt like everything we had worked hard for was just taken away from us.
PENN: The ACLU took the school board to court.
The court sided with Hannah and Jacob.
And their GSA is now up and running at their high school.
So the courts have said it's time for schools to accept teens the way they are, not the way they'd like them to be.
Not everyone got the memo.
I think a lot of times people like to push an agenda, and set up gay-straight alliances in-- in the guise of, "We're stopping bullying, we're stopping bullying.
" Bullying happens on campuses, really everywhere.
I'm Stacey Campfield, District 18, Knoxville, Tennessee, state representative.
PENN: That's right.
He's a professional bully.
Hey, queerbait, isn't Stacey a girl's name? Although Mr.
Stacey has been forced by the courts to accept the legal right of GSA's to exist, he's proposing a bill that would prohibit teachers from having any discussion about homosexuality in classrooms below 9th grade.
Once you broach the issue, then you start talking about the issue.
And then you may have someone pushing a direction, and I don't think that's something our schools need to get into.
I think we need to let the families decide when it's age appropriate for the children and not some teacher.
PENN: Of course the parents should do it! But didn't you ever go to school? There isn't a 6th-grader in the US who hasn't been called "fag" a thousand times.
Couldn't we at least define that for them? If you have an authority figure saying, "Hey, that's OK! Give that a try!" Uh, a lot of times a child may go in a direction they're not ready for, isn't appropriate for them even, but they're just so unsure of themselves, they may say, "Well, maybe I am gay.
" PENN (mocking): Stacey said he was gay! Stacey said he was gay! What is your problem with gay-straight alliances? A lot of times, gay-straight alliances sometimes they press separation of people and creating special classes of people, where I think we should be having everybody should be treated fairly.
Everybody should be not bullied.
There should be no bullying against anyone for any reason.
PENN: Excellent.
You turn the word "bully" around so you can play the victim.
We'll make that easier for you by calling you an asshole, asshole! Nice try, politico compasionista.
But the fact is gay teens get exposed to all kinds of vicious hatred all the time.
When we look at the experience of students who specifically identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, more than 86% of them have been physically, verbally, or sexually harassed at school.
86%?! 86 per-fucking-cent "were" harrassed? That means 14 per-fucking-cent weren't harrassed?! What?! At my school 100% of the children, gay, straight, transgendered, bi, sell, or trade were harassed.
She's saying that 14% of the gay students were "not" harassed? That seems impossible.
At my school, any one of us would have sucked Elton John's cock at a mandatory school assembly for a 14% chance of not being harassed.
14% chance of not having something bad happen isn't that bad.
In many cases, 14% is pretty good.
Look, here's Teller with 14% of a pie.
Would I take it? Watch me.
I'll tell you, 100% of the kids in school feel harassed.
And it's 86% worse for the gay teens.
Right now, I'd take a 14% chance of Teller not verbally abusing me the second that camera goes off.
It's one thing to hear about teen sex from a bunch of adults.
What we really need to do is talk to teens.
So we invited a bunch of 'em to sit down and be as open and honest as they could about their own sexuality.
Nothing was off limits.
For those under 18, we made sure to get their parents' permission and we promised to keep their identities private.
99% of teenagers have sex.
That's right Louise Stevens from Oak Ridge Jr.
High in Baton Rouge, Lousiana.
Ha ha.
Just kidding.
I'm sorry.
[chuckles.]
I think I'll shut up now.
Honestly, I've only met probably like three girls who are virgins at the age of 16.
Only three.
I have only had one male sexual partner, and, um, two female sexual partners.
I have been sexually active with two people in my life.
And both times, it was oral sex.
My first time was with this boy I fell in love with It wasn't as exciting everybody made it sound.
It was, like, boring.
PENN: Next, we wanted to know just how common sexting is, and what they thought of it.
I would say probably about 98% of teenagers sext each other.
Sending sext messages is kind of like flirting.
I don't think its things that I would say normally if I were just talking to somebody.
It's easier to say stuff like that in a text message.
The first sext that I ever got was a guy and he sent it of his genital area.
And I thought it was kinda funny, 'cause he was proud, and if I was him, I wouldn't have been proud.
If you can't actually have sex, it's something you can do instead that has the facade of intimacy but not actually doing it.
PENN: And what about homosexuality and gay-straight alliances? Some people, like, bag on gays or think being gay is wrong.
But there's a lot of straight people that's cool with gay people.
I'm cool with gay people.
I don't believe that GSA's are gonna make people gay.
You can't "make" people gay.
My high school had a GSA, a gay-straight alliance, but nobody was in the club because they knew they would've gotten so much flack from everybody.
PENN: I'm glad someone mentioned that.
And finally, what do they think parents should do? If your teenager is having sex, you can't sit there and look at them like they frickin' went and shot somebody or killed somebody or went around stealing.
I mean, sex is not considered a bad thing no more.
So you have to be able to talk to your child.
And be able to hear what they have to say.
The best thing that they can give to these teens is information.
You have to teach them about contraceptives.
You have to teach them about using a condom.
You have to teach them about the possible pregnancies.
And you have to just have the information available or you're just going to breed more ignorant teens.
PENN: Thanks, guys.
You're great.
And uh, next time, we'll bring more lights.
When we try to protect kids from what could be a wonderful and normal part of their lives, which is having relationships that involve pleasure, love, happiness, and also sturm and drang and pain and heartbreak and all the rest of it.
When we try to keep that huge part of growing up out of kids' lives I think that we're depriving them of a great part of what it is to be a teenager.
Sex is a great part.
You'll never have sex like that again.
So let's educate them.
Let's help them to be safe instead of making them feel bad and scared about, about sexuality.
We've got some good news for you.
12-year-old Riley will not be facing any criminal charges for that sexting incident.
So Riley can go back to being a child again.
He's OK.
But there are some children still facing serious charges, and that's just wrong.
It's creepy to think about our parents fucking.
And it's creepy to think about our children fucking.
But we have to talk to our children about sex.
And we have to warn them that as great as sex is, there's danger, too.
We need to inform them, not confuse them with hysterical bullshit.
It's a wonderful world.
Most anything is possible.
We might find a clean, free source of energy for the whole world.
We might fix the economy and get peace in the Middle East.
But we are never, ever, ever ever, never, no way, ever gonna ever stop teenagers from having sex.
And why would we want to? Let's just make sure they know what they're doing, and then get the fuck out of their way.
Believe it or not, we're not that dumb.
We do understand what's going on.
Everyone needs to just calm down.
Just chill.
- Uh, Goudeau? - 16.
- Excuse me, Tim? - 17.
- Patti? - 19.
- Phyllis? - 16.
- Bert? - 18.
Hi, I'm Penn Jillette, and this is my partner, Teller.
Those numbers were the ages we all were when we had sex for the first time.
- Uh, Gene? - 17.
- Vera? - 16.
So exactly why the fuck do we Americans get so fucking uptight about teens having sex with each other? Because, let's face it, we were all teens the first time we had sex.
Teens were fucking before you were born.
And they'll be fucking after you die.
So why are we getting our granny panties in such a bunch? Trying to stop teens from fucking is bullshit! "Teen Sex" PENN: Lock the doors.
Board up the windows.
Hide your children under the bed.
Some people think technology, the media, and even homosexuals are turning our otherwise angelic young people into sleezy, sex-crazed sluts! So we thought we'd check.
Are the media and sexy new technology really making today's teens more sexual? Tonight, we'll hear from this dapper radio personality Things are going on now that are disgusting and vile.
And it brings about the decline of our society that we're watching.
This concerned mom Do I think that the media perpetuates teen sexuality? Absolutely.
This guy who says technology is dangerous Every single action you're taking is potentially public and permanent.
And this 12-year-old boy who some are calling a sex offender.
It was scary 'cause you didn't know what was gonna happen.
We'll meet some high-schoolers who've experienced anti-gay bigotry I heard about it, and I saw it all the time.
And a whole bunch of teens who'll confess their true feelings about sex Teenagers are having sex, and they're having a lot of it.
Yep, tonight it's all about out-of-control teen sex! We're not gonna talk about those issues.
Oh, we're going there.
We are definitely going there.
The producers and director of "Bullshit!" live in California.
We live in Nevada.
When it comes time to shoot the standups, we work here on the Nevada/California state line.
Now age of consent for sex in California is, uh, 18.
In Nevada, it's 16.
So this lovely couple can have-- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Where you going? You cannot be together in California.
You can't do that, the age-- What, what, what's-- Huh, that's still legal, that's fine.
That young woman has reached-- No, no, no! If you go to California, he goes to prison.
Let me check.
Yep.
Fine, legal.
Gay sex at 18, California, fine.
Ok, now this gets confusing, girls.
Listen, listen, listen.
In Nevada, the heterosexual age of consent is 16, but you have to be 18 to have gay sex.
Hey, where--where you going, girls? Where you going? BOTH: Maine.
Anybody can legally fuck there at 16.
Well, have fun.
If you get any extra time, try the lobster.
The current generation of parents in this country are the worst generation of parents in America that have ever existed.
Bill Cunningham here.
Heard everyday on 700 WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, and every Sunday night on premiere radio networks.
What's happened is that now girls, because of messages from cell phones, from iPods, from this disgusting rap music that talks about bodily functions, oral sex, backwards sex, upside down sex, sex, sex and sex.
And so everything they see, everything they read, and everything they hear tell them, "become sexual.
" And so there is not a family structure.
There aren't churches around telling girls "quit doing that.
" So girls are reverting to their primordial ooze form of having sex when they're 13, 14, and 15.
And their purpose is to, uh, recreate, have fun, dance, drink, and probably fornicate unnecessarily.
PENN: Absolutely! That is exactly the-- Oh, wait.
You think those are bad, don't you? Keep the girls locked up till they're about 22 years old.
PENN: Sounds like Bill blames the "girls.
" I wonder if he wants to tie them down and spank them while he locks them up.
We should talk to some parents for a second opinion.
For parents who are raising kids in this society, it's oversexed.
It's-- They're--they're bombarded by it everywhere they turn.
Hi, my name is Cindy Rushton.
And I am a wife, a mom, and a speaker and a writer.
PENN: And Cindy also hosts her own radio show, which she calls "Mom to Mom.
" My heartbeat behind "Mom to Mom" radio show has been to encourage and equip and inspire moms to keep on keeping on.
PENN: No, Cindy's not calling the police about our "Bullshit!" crew's inappropriate behavior, she's using the phone to do her show.
Their temptations, their concerns at this age are very real.
PENN: This may look like a couch potato's dream job, and it is.
Still, Cindy says over a million people access her podcast from 55 countries.
Cindy's kind of an international nervous Nellie.
One-on-one dating is so dangerous today There are too many kids, I believe, that they're left alone A parent would have to be blind or not care to think that the media is not a threat I was praying that my children would not sexting or post pictures on the Internet I-I find it alarming There are real dangers of date rape That, that alarms me.
PENN: So how did Cindy-- a mother herself-- deal with all those fears? My children were home schooled from the time that Matthew was 5 and Elizabeth was 2.
And they continued all the way until they graduated.
So sweet.
PENN: But, Cindy, wasn't home schooling kind of a drastic step just to keep your children sheltered from the outside world? I was concerned that home schooling might make my kids kind of a social retard.
And I was really interested in them being involved in things.
But also I really do believe going to a public school would have opened them up to a lot of things that they wouldn't of had me right there beside them along the way to kinda discern, is this truth? Uh, Cindy, saying "social retard" is, uh, socially unacceptable.
So how about an example of you helping your children discern the truth? "I kissed a girl, and I liked it.
" You know that--that-- I was listening to that song and I was, like, calling my kids saying, "You do not sing this song, do you?" That's your example? Fuck! I kind of like that song.
Shock-jock Bill won't be playing Katy Perry or any other music on his Run-for-the-Hills radio show.
Nope.
You'll hear only the passion of his voice.
News organizations are essentially lazy.
All great cultures rise and fall.
And America's now at the top starting to decline.
I see America becoming the new Rome, with the naked Roman baths and these naked gay clubs, and sexting and all this.
We've become the new Greeks.
While those gross Greeks and rotten Romans were sitting in baths and fucking, they were also conquering and civilizing the world, inventing democracy and the idea of a republic, revolutionizing mathematics, astronomy, medicine, agriculture, architecture, and philosophy.
Oh, so you think a floating object displaces its own weight in water? Did you tell Archimedes about this? We'll, uh, we'll test it in just a moment.
Wild sex didn't start when Greece and Rome were in decline.
It was a hallmark of their golden ages.
We don't give a damn if Pythagoras used dicks for sides of his triangle.
He kicks your ignorant ass, Bill Cunningham.
Oh, you, uh, squared the hypotenuse.
Good thinkin'.
So what about sexting? A lot of people are saying it's corrupting our teens.
Should we worry about the hysteria? Teens can absolutely ruin their life by being irresponsible with digital technology.
My name is Richard Guerry, executive director, IROC.
PENN: Richard says "IROC" is an acronym for the "Institute for Responsible Online and Cell Phone Communication.
" Not to be picky, but that would actually be tif-row-ack-puh-cah.
Just sayin'.
Richard conducts seminars around the country about the dangers of technology.
He calls them IROC concerts.
'Cause they're so out-of-control! Let's get 5 examples of responsibility.
I'll start off, OK? Showing up to school on time.
PENN: How about accurate acronyms? Ok, maybe not.
If IROC didn't exist, teens would find out about the dangers of digital technology the hard way.
They would learn after they've made a mistake.
They would learn after they've already made something that has potentially altered their entire life.
PENN: By digital technology, he's talking about things like Facebook, MySpace and, yes, sexting.
We define sexting as simply a sexual explicit picture, video, text message-- Any form of communication of a sexually explicit nature through primarily a cell phone.
PENN: What's so scary about sending naked pictures to each other? It's not like it can harm your future.
It can harm your future, and here's how, OK? First of all if we look at minors-- Minors already right off the bat are looking at a legal liability.
Let's say a 15-year-old is sending another 15-year-old a picture.
They've never been told upfront, "Hey, that's child pornography.
" PENN: Sadly, he's right.
That's the law.
If you're 15 and take a picture of your own naked body, you're a child pornographer.
And if someone else sees it, they'll be joining you in the holding cell.
No kidding.
So are children actually being arrested? Unfortunately, yes.
Well I was with my friend and my brother and my dad at the YMCA.
And we were just playing basketball, you know, having fun.
And my phone vibrated, and it said "New picture message.
" I'm Riley, and I was caught in a sexting incident.
PENN: Riley is 12 years old.
The picture he received was of a naked 12-year-old girl, a former classmate.
A picture he didn't ask for, and didn't even want.
I looked at it.
And then the kid who had sent it to me told my best friend that I had it.
So my best friend said he wouldn't be my friend anymore if I didn't send it to him.
And he kept saying that.
And so I gave in and just finally sent it.
I was uncomfortable.
It made me feel awkward.
PENN: So awkward that Riley deleted the picture.
His father Craig picks up the story from there.
Off we go Tuesday morning to school.
Life is normal.
And by 2:00, things changed quite a bit.
Security cameras at the school had captured a cluster of boys looking at their cell phones.
In total, 25 boys were interrogated by the school resource officer, and their cell phones were confiscated.
By the time I got there, felony charges were pending.
The end result of this will be if convicted of this charge, they will--these boys will have to register as sex offenders.
PENN: A registered sex offender? Jesus Christ, the kid's 12! Well, it scared me.
I mean, I'm not going to lie.
I cried for a second 'cause I was scared.
PENN: Damned fucking straight, skippy.
We cried when we "heard" about it.
There are 700,000 people on sex offender registries in the United States.
My name is Judith Levine, and I'm the author of "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex.
" And so we have hundreds of thousands of names and faces, some of them of children as young as 10 years old, on sex offender registries in this country, who are called sexual predators, who may be on that registry for 10 years or as long as life.
They will never be able to get a job.
They won't be able to live where they want.
They may not be able to have a family.
It's irresponsible to put them on a sex offender registry and we ruin their lives.
That's irresponsible.
PENN: While they wait for their day in court, poor Riley already feels like a criminal.
Well, my life-- It's changed a lot.
Like I've--I still feel like I've let my family down and that I've let a lot of people down and I've made a big mistake.
What Riley's going through isn't even close to the worst case we've heard of.
There are several cases pending right now where young girls are on trial for child pornography for taking pictures of their own bodies and sending them to their boyfriends.
They couldn't be on this show.
They have enough problems without a prosecutor saying, "And you were also on a show called 'Bullshit!'?" So how did we get to the point where we're willing to call any child with a cell phone a sex offender? Where does this hysteria come from? Your password's a joke.
These are the people that are looking for your content.
Every single person you'll see is a convicted sex offender.
PENN: Fuck! You're making it a lot easier because you're serving yourself up on a silver platter.
PENN: Double fuck.
And you would be shocked at how many people get mugged, raped, abducted and so on and so forth.
PENN: Mugged? Raped? Abducted? And so on and so forth? You're adding to the fear and paranoia.
Say something reassuring or we're gonna call you a really bad word.
Sexting is a digital disease.
Cyber-bullying is a digital disease, malware and the-- PENN: Asshole! Hey uh, what about sexting anyway? Sexting is just the latest iteration of things that lovers have done for a long time.
Now we have cell phones.
Cell phones are gonna ruin children's morality.
Before that, we had television.
Before that was rock and roll.
Each one of these was going to ruin children morally forever.
The best thing parents could do would be just to try to remember what it feels like to be a kid from time to time.
PENN: As if it's not tough enough being a teenager dealing with common insecurities of wanting to just "fit in," imagine being a gay teen.
When you look at the language people use at schools, what you see in our popular culture, this is still the language of disrespect-- Faggot, dyke, sissy, lesbo.
My name is Eliza Byard, and I am the executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
PENN: GLSEN? Even the good guys have lousy acronyms.
As long as we think it's OK to call someone a sissy or a faggot, we leave the door open for more serious forms of behavior.
PENN: Is that kind of hate really still out there? Not only were many of my friends bashed and harassed or humiliated and made fun of, but I was as well.
- My name is Hannah Page.
- My name is Jacob Brock.
BOTH: And together we started the Yulee High School Gay-Straight Alliance.
PENN: What's a gay-straight alliance? It's all about ending discrimination and harassment in our community.
JACOB: It's pretty much just a safe place for people to go to and to discuss the problems, not to discuss sex.
PENN: So jacob and hannah were excited to start a GSA at their Florida High School.
We actually found a lot of support from the students, from most of the students in the school.
JACOB: They looked up to us for standing up for what we believed in.
PENN: Well, there you go! Just when you think everything involving teen sex is awful news, along comes a positive story like-- And then it got shut down by the superintendent of the school board.
PENN: Oh, fuck! I was, you know, angry and personally hurt from it.
You know, 'cause we had really worked hard to put this together and then it felt like everything we had worked hard for was just taken away from us.
PENN: The ACLU took the school board to court.
The court sided with Hannah and Jacob.
And their GSA is now up and running at their high school.
So the courts have said it's time for schools to accept teens the way they are, not the way they'd like them to be.
Not everyone got the memo.
I think a lot of times people like to push an agenda, and set up gay-straight alliances in-- in the guise of, "We're stopping bullying, we're stopping bullying.
" Bullying happens on campuses, really everywhere.
I'm Stacey Campfield, District 18, Knoxville, Tennessee, state representative.
PENN: That's right.
He's a professional bully.
Hey, queerbait, isn't Stacey a girl's name? Although Mr.
Stacey has been forced by the courts to accept the legal right of GSA's to exist, he's proposing a bill that would prohibit teachers from having any discussion about homosexuality in classrooms below 9th grade.
Once you broach the issue, then you start talking about the issue.
And then you may have someone pushing a direction, and I don't think that's something our schools need to get into.
I think we need to let the families decide when it's age appropriate for the children and not some teacher.
PENN: Of course the parents should do it! But didn't you ever go to school? There isn't a 6th-grader in the US who hasn't been called "fag" a thousand times.
Couldn't we at least define that for them? If you have an authority figure saying, "Hey, that's OK! Give that a try!" Uh, a lot of times a child may go in a direction they're not ready for, isn't appropriate for them even, but they're just so unsure of themselves, they may say, "Well, maybe I am gay.
" PENN (mocking): Stacey said he was gay! Stacey said he was gay! What is your problem with gay-straight alliances? A lot of times, gay-straight alliances sometimes they press separation of people and creating special classes of people, where I think we should be having everybody should be treated fairly.
Everybody should be not bullied.
There should be no bullying against anyone for any reason.
PENN: Excellent.
You turn the word "bully" around so you can play the victim.
We'll make that easier for you by calling you an asshole, asshole! Nice try, politico compasionista.
But the fact is gay teens get exposed to all kinds of vicious hatred all the time.
When we look at the experience of students who specifically identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, more than 86% of them have been physically, verbally, or sexually harassed at school.
86%?! 86 per-fucking-cent "were" harrassed? That means 14 per-fucking-cent weren't harrassed?! What?! At my school 100% of the children, gay, straight, transgendered, bi, sell, or trade were harassed.
She's saying that 14% of the gay students were "not" harassed? That seems impossible.
At my school, any one of us would have sucked Elton John's cock at a mandatory school assembly for a 14% chance of not being harassed.
14% chance of not having something bad happen isn't that bad.
In many cases, 14% is pretty good.
Look, here's Teller with 14% of a pie.
Would I take it? Watch me.
I'll tell you, 100% of the kids in school feel harassed.
And it's 86% worse for the gay teens.
Right now, I'd take a 14% chance of Teller not verbally abusing me the second that camera goes off.
It's one thing to hear about teen sex from a bunch of adults.
What we really need to do is talk to teens.
So we invited a bunch of 'em to sit down and be as open and honest as they could about their own sexuality.
Nothing was off limits.
For those under 18, we made sure to get their parents' permission and we promised to keep their identities private.
99% of teenagers have sex.
That's right Louise Stevens from Oak Ridge Jr.
High in Baton Rouge, Lousiana.
Ha ha.
Just kidding.
I'm sorry.
[chuckles.]
I think I'll shut up now.
Honestly, I've only met probably like three girls who are virgins at the age of 16.
Only three.
I have only had one male sexual partner, and, um, two female sexual partners.
I have been sexually active with two people in my life.
And both times, it was oral sex.
My first time was with this boy I fell in love with It wasn't as exciting everybody made it sound.
It was, like, boring.
PENN: Next, we wanted to know just how common sexting is, and what they thought of it.
I would say probably about 98% of teenagers sext each other.
Sending sext messages is kind of like flirting.
I don't think its things that I would say normally if I were just talking to somebody.
It's easier to say stuff like that in a text message.
The first sext that I ever got was a guy and he sent it of his genital area.
And I thought it was kinda funny, 'cause he was proud, and if I was him, I wouldn't have been proud.
If you can't actually have sex, it's something you can do instead that has the facade of intimacy but not actually doing it.
PENN: And what about homosexuality and gay-straight alliances? Some people, like, bag on gays or think being gay is wrong.
But there's a lot of straight people that's cool with gay people.
I'm cool with gay people.
I don't believe that GSA's are gonna make people gay.
You can't "make" people gay.
My high school had a GSA, a gay-straight alliance, but nobody was in the club because they knew they would've gotten so much flack from everybody.
PENN: I'm glad someone mentioned that.
And finally, what do they think parents should do? If your teenager is having sex, you can't sit there and look at them like they frickin' went and shot somebody or killed somebody or went around stealing.
I mean, sex is not considered a bad thing no more.
So you have to be able to talk to your child.
And be able to hear what they have to say.
The best thing that they can give to these teens is information.
You have to teach them about contraceptives.
You have to teach them about using a condom.
You have to teach them about the possible pregnancies.
And you have to just have the information available or you're just going to breed more ignorant teens.
PENN: Thanks, guys.
You're great.
And uh, next time, we'll bring more lights.
When we try to protect kids from what could be a wonderful and normal part of their lives, which is having relationships that involve pleasure, love, happiness, and also sturm and drang and pain and heartbreak and all the rest of it.
When we try to keep that huge part of growing up out of kids' lives I think that we're depriving them of a great part of what it is to be a teenager.
Sex is a great part.
You'll never have sex like that again.
So let's educate them.
Let's help them to be safe instead of making them feel bad and scared about, about sexuality.
We've got some good news for you.
12-year-old Riley will not be facing any criminal charges for that sexting incident.
So Riley can go back to being a child again.
He's OK.
But there are some children still facing serious charges, and that's just wrong.
It's creepy to think about our parents fucking.
And it's creepy to think about our children fucking.
But we have to talk to our children about sex.
And we have to warn them that as great as sex is, there's danger, too.
We need to inform them, not confuse them with hysterical bullshit.
It's a wonderful world.
Most anything is possible.
We might find a clean, free source of energy for the whole world.
We might fix the economy and get peace in the Middle East.
But we are never, ever, ever ever, never, no way, ever gonna ever stop teenagers from having sex.
And why would we want to? Let's just make sure they know what they're doing, and then get the fuck out of their way.
Believe it or not, we're not that dumb.
We do understand what's going on.
Everyone needs to just calm down.
Just chill.