UK teacher given slap on wrist for gay porn career, U.S. teacher fired for same offense
Image via WikipediaWhile homosexual activists have made significant inroads into American school systems, a school district in Miami has drawn the line and fired a supply teacher after it discovered his raunchy past in the homosexual porn industry. At the same time, a teacher in the U.K. was given a slap on the wrist after he was discovered by his students to be moonlighting as a porn star, stripper, and naked butler, and told that he can carry on with his position teaching sex education.
Shawn Loftis, a former supply teacher for the Miami-Dade district, has gone public with his story in an attempt to force the school district to admit wrongdoing for firing him. Before becoming a teacher Loftis, using the pseudonym “Collin O’Neal,” performed in homosexual porn videos and went on to become the director of his own porn film company.
Former US teacher Shawn Loftis
“I really don’t understand the issue,” said Loftis on the Dr. Drew Show last Tuesday. “It seems like they’re equating somebody from the adult industry as a child molester.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), America’s self-proclaimed guardian of rights and liberties for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people, has refused to take Loftis’ case.
“Your case would be stronger if your job did not involve supervising children. It’s clear that you had a career in pornography,” said the ACLU to Loftis, calling his situation a “difficult hurdle in view of the state’s role to protect children.”
Loftis says he believes his pornography career should not affect his teaching career.
“I walked into that classroom and I left my past behind,” he told the show’s host, Dr. Drew Pinsky. “I went in there as a teacher, and was I ever going to bring any of this into the classroom? No way.”
Even as Loftis was busy taking his case on the road in the U.S., a similar case involving a teacher at a U.K. high school came to a head. Benedict Garrett, who headed the personal, social, and health education program, was suspended from the classroom after he was discovered by students to be moonlighting as a stripper and homosexual porn entertainer in July of last year.
After an investigation Benedict Garrett was charged earlier this month by a disciplinary committee with “unacceptable professional conduct,” and punished with a reprimand.
The committee acknowledged Garrett’s “involvement in the adult industry” and his intent of continuing to “advocate the morality and acceptability” of a teacher working “as a stripper or in pornographic films.” However, they said that they were satisfied that he would not return to working in the adult industry if he returned to the classroom.
“The committee is content that you recognise the widely held public view that such work is not acceptable conduct for a teacher,” said Derek Johns, chairman of the panel.
“Therefore, in relation to risk of repetition, the committee considers it is unlikely that you will seek to return to the teaching profession whilst working as a stripper or in pornographic films.”
UK teacher Benedict Garrett
The teacher was also chastised for setting up a Facebook account, adding his students as his “friends,” and regularly communicating with the students about matters unrelated to school. The Beal high school in Ilford, Essex has a policy stating that teachers must never befriend a student on a personal social networking site, reported The Guardian.
After the ruling, Garrett boasted on his website that “recent events” have provoked him to “unashamedly demonstrate the art of pleasure in the realms of fitness, sex and entertainment.”
Norman Wells, who is with the Family Education Trust, a pro-family advocacy group, criticized Garrett’s attitude towards his other career. “Benedict Garrett is being naive if he imagines that performing as a stripper and appearing in porn films is compatible with teaching responsible attitudes towards sex and relationships as a teacher of personal, social and health education,” Wells said, according to the BBC.
“The vast majority of parents would be uncomfortable, to say the least, to have their children taught by someone involved in the sleazy world of the sex industry.”
Dr. Judith Reisman, an expert on the relationship between pornography and the spread of pedophilia, told LifeSiteNews.com that she believes children are put “at risk” when they are managed by individuals who have worked or do work in the porn industry.
Neuroscience has shown that “emotionally arousing images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail,” she said. The reason why parolees “repeat their crimes and increase the level of abuse,” she said, is because the “brain is changed by experience.”
Reisman suggested that because of the nature of the permanent “cellular connections” formed in the mind of someone working in the porn industry, that individual “puts children at both moral and physical, sexual risk and the administrator who employs such folks is similarly implicated.”
