September 29, 2022 Show with Dr. Ernest J. Zarra III on “America’s Sex Culture: Its Impact on Teacher-Student Relationships Today”

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 29th day of September 2022.

I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest someone who

I was so thrilled with as a guest the last time that I interviewed him, which was the first time

I interviewed him, that I know, or should I say that I knew, that I needed to invite him back and I know that he has an open door here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to promote and to discuss anything he wishes.

His name is Dr. Ernest J. Zara III. He is an author, a blogger, educator, and member of the

National Association of Scholars. Today we are addressing his book, America's Sex Culture, Its Impact on Teacher -Student

Relationships Today, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Ernest J. Zara. Good afternoon, Chris. It's great to be back with you, too.

You're a busy man, and I'm just so pleased to be able to be part of your busyness here, and I look forward to our discussion today about a very prominent issue in our culture.

Well, before we even go into the topic of the book, America's Sex Culture, Its Impact on Teacher -Student

Relationships Today, tell us how you became involved in education to begin with, and perhaps through your experiences, became qualified to write such a book.

Well, the term qualification probably doesn't fit because you compare that with a bit of humility.

Any teacher knows in front of the classroom, if you feel qualified, you're probably not humble enough to be teaching, but my story begins way back as a college sophomore, college junior, and between the two years,

I was challenged to go teach in a Sunday school class, and I never taught before, and I had no idea what to do or how to prepare a lesson.

They just said, here's a Bible verse I'd like you, we would like you to prepare something on that. So in the preparation part of that in college,

I came to find a few nuggets, you know, you look at Scripture and find a few nuggets, and you get a few creative ideas on how you can talk to young people or children about it, and so I presented it, and lo and behold,

I was shocked that students, people, adults, sat and actually listened to me.

I mean, to think about having a captive audience with something to say, that's one thing, but never having done it before in a captive audience, that sort of appealed to me,

Chris. To make a long story short, I switched majors, and I went into education at the college

I attended, Northeastern Bible College in Essexville, New Jersey, and I spent five years there getting credentials in the state of New Jersey, and I began to fall in love more deeply with the emotional connections, spiritual connections, the informational sharing, the working with other human beings in ways that didn't just allow me to stand in front of a group and talk.

I found that my natural inclination was to connect with people, and what better way to connect with people than to be in front of them and being alongside them, as well as serving the community and the family in that way.

So God used that experience to prompt me to move a different direction, to become an educator, and I spent over 42 years teaching in Christian schools, administration, teaching in public schools, professional development leader for a district of over 40 ,000 high school students.

I spent 20 -some years teaching secondary students. I've taught in colleges for nearly two decades, both part -time and full -time, teaching teachers how to teach, what to teach, and how to understand their students, and I began to see generational shifts, which gets to the second part of your question.

I began to see that much more loose, shall I say, strictures and requirements and states, shortages of teachers, shortages of people who want to teach usually cause the loosening of things to gain the greater population of teachers to be in the classrooms, and I began to see in the last decade much more of a signal of a problem.

And what became much more notorious with the Internet is that people post things now that weren't posted 15, 20 years ago, so I began to see a lot of incidents occurring between teachers and students, and I said to myself,

I want to write on this. I think this topic is very important in my professional development. How do I get teachers to open their eyes to see what they're doing with the

Internet and with texting, eventually, and with the emotional aspects of what they're dealing with in the classroom, and why are they so connecting on levels that I never saw before?

And so I began to research this, and I became quite shocked at the number of people who were being reported who were having to register as sex offenders, and on and on it goes.

I have such a comprehensive list since 2013 of teachers, students, administrators, coaches.

The articles, the websites have all of that research from my first book, because the first book was called

Teacher -Student Relationships, the emotional, physical, and sexual contacts that teachers would have.

The second edition is what we're talking about today, American Sex Culture, and it's also the impact. It's the updated version, a little abbreviated version, a much more targeted version to see if we can help teachers.

But I do want to say, there are a couple of verses that really stuck out to me when I was in college that prompted me to move forward in education, along with the experiences

I shared. And one of those verses is James 3 .1, and, you know, not many of you should be teachers, knowing that you'll receive a greater judgment.

And so when you say qualifications, and I say humility, boy, do

I ever realize standing in front of a group of people, whether in church, or whether in a school, or whether at a college, wherever it is, that there's certain judgment that's going to be incurred upon me, my words, my actions, not just in front of the classroom, maybe outside the classroom, too.

And the reason I say that is because one day, while jogging, this was about 15 years ago,

I was with a colleague who was also, I was mentoring for a teaching position, and we were jogging, and I heard this call from the parking lot, you know, hey,

Dr. Zahra. And I turned and looked, and it was a student of mine at the time, he was a senior in high school, and he was in the parking lot with his father, and I heard him say, that's my teacher, to his father, because his father said, who's that?

And I realized at that point that the greater judgment doesn't have to be in the classroom necessarily, but if I was doing something in front of that student at that moment, that his father and he saw, and I was that student's teacher, that certain judgment would have been passed upon me as that teacher, not just as Dr.

or Ernie Zahra. So James 3 .1 became very real to me at that moment. From college,

I remember that verse, and I applied that verse a few times along my life, specifically at that point about 15 years ago.

A second verse drives home the importance of working with children, and not causing them to stumble in Mark 9 .42,

but if anyone, the Lord says, causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and thrown into the sea.

Now that imagery, that contrast, that imagery, is real in my mind,

I'm thinking to myself, in our culture today that is post -Judeo -Christian, do they have any idea the consequences that they're going to realize by leading children down these other pathways, ideologies, and practices that are post -Christian?

And that's why I think for the Christians out there in public education, we need to support you.

You need support to understand you are raising a generation in competition with ideologies that are raising them very differently.

So I mean, I can go on to talk about what the Lord said about your eye and your hand and all of that, but that's a big graphic at this point,

I'd rather get into the book. So those two verses mean a lot to me, my experiences meant a lot to me in shaping my direction as an educator, and as I worked with students,

I began to see that they took a liking to me as a person, that I could transfer values and truth and love into their lives as a conduit of the

Holy Spirit, even in public education, because I felt called to the classrooms that I taught.

Now what are the problems that you examine in America's sex culture regarding teacher -student relationships, and what would be the age groups, are you talking about minors all the way through college years, or is it more of a specific age group that you are examining critically?

Well, Chris, that's a big question for a long story answer, but let me just say that in my research,

I analyzed the K -16 group, right, kindergarten through college. I looked at professors, because professors and their students used to have a very different kind of set of policies on campuses, but then, you know, with the

Me Too movement and with other aspects of young women and men speaking out about their experiences and posting them anonymously or maybe with lawsuits for colleges, colleges have begun to move toward restricting teachers or professors from having relationships, even with the students as adults, because of the position of power that they have over their grade and over their graduation, if you will.

So I began looking at the college level, and I began then to take that down to the lower levels and I began to take a look at K -12 below that, and some of the reasons that I found that were very important to examine were, what's the question

I had? Well, why are teachers and students having these relationships, and what does relationship mean, and what are the policies, and why are they crossing boundaries?

I began to ask myself these questions. So in the book, I do analyze the

K -12, of course, but I also have a separate section on the college level, too, and the thing that is interesting and is much more broad in terms of an answer that I can go into for a couple of hours is that the ages of consent differ by state or sexual and emotional relationships between adults and teachers, okay, because teachers have an authoritarian or authoritative,

I should say, relationship with the students, so it's a little different. So consent with adults having sex with children, a consent with a teacher adult, and a consent with professors and students, it's all over the map.

So what I wanted to find out is, is there a standard, you know, a national standard for colleges, or is there a national standard for schools?

And I found out, no, there's 50 or more, depending on what state and territory and what college you're talking about, standards that are applied.

And so don't you know that the flip side of this, sexual predators know what states are much more lenient than other states, and professors that have a problem with their reputation know these states and what private schools and public institutions have at stake for that.

In addition to that, you've got these folks who get fired or let go and go to a different state and get hired because the standards are different.

I began to see that mist, if you will, of all of that, and beginning to answer the questions, why are they having relationships?

And I began to dig down more deeply, and we can talk about some of those, why teachers are actually lured into these relationships, why teachers overlook the boundaries and do they even know what they are from their teacher education, or do we just assume that teachers have a moral compass today to know what's right and wrong?

I mean, the latter, the last question probably answered in the negative by most folks, but those that are older teachers have a bit more of a moral compass from their experience in working with families and having their own families, knowing that they wouldn't want teachers to do things to their kids that are being done to other people's kids.

But the new generation today doesn't have the same moral parameters or compass that the older generation has, and I started analyzing all of this by age group, by teacher age group, by generation, if you will, and I wrote another book about the entitled generation, which deals with Generation Z specifically and why they're having so many problems today navigating the morality issues within schools and within culture.

So to make a long story short, which I could go into in great detail here, I'll give you those nuggets to chew on and we can maybe talk about some of the reasons why they cross generational boundaries in terms of relationships, like 50 -year -olds have sex with a 14 -year -old student, why more men than women are having it, but more women are now are being arrested than in the past, and maybe why more women are not held to the same kind of like penalties as men are.

There's a lot of things in our culture that are needed to be examined, and I found these things and I was quite shocked by the inconsistency of this.

And even in Christian schools, Chris, these things happen. Now, when you say the inconsistency, you mean the inconsistency in regard to how many, if not most,

Americans, and we might even say globally, have an instinct or an instinctive reaction, for the most part, toward an older man somehow taking advantage sexually of a much younger woman or girl, and when it happens in the reverse, when a woman sexually takes advantage of a much younger man or boy, people really don't respond viscerally with horror and anger and fury, and you're typically not bubbling up and boiling over with vengeful thoughts over this.

Correct. And I'll include myself. I'm not saying that that's correct to react in a less severe manner.

I'm just saying I think that is a part of the way, in some cases, in some ways,

I think that it is a healthier mindset to view females as those who are to be protected.

Our culture seems to want to erase that element, and I would bet everything that I own that most feminists in the recesses of their minds and hearts, secretly, want to be protected by men as well, but as far as the mores of culture, it is more and more, the concept is more and more being viewed as antiquated, and even in our movies that we see, our action movies and our movies with heroes and heroines, you see more and more heroines who are in no need of the protection of a male figure, and they are kicking rear -end right and left and saving the day.

But how wrong, and is it wrong to begin with, but how wrong if it is, for us to view those things differently when we react through a gut reaction, when we hear about an older woman, especially when you're talking about taking advantage of a younger male, and I'm not talking about pedophilia here,

I'm talking about, I mean that would be from the bowels of hell no matter what gender is molesting the other, but I'm talking about something that would involve teenagers and so on.

Is it wrong for me to think less seriously about a woman having a sexual relationship with a teenage boy?

It's sin, of course, it's damnable sin, but I'm just saying is it wrong for me to think less severely of it than when a man takes advantage of a younger girl?

Well, let's put it this way, you're missing a couple components there as well, how about a woman taking advantage of a girl and a man taking advantage of a boy.

Right, right. That's into the equation as well, so now we have, not only do we have to consider the minor attracted persons, the

MAPs today, or we call pedophiles, they don't want to be called that, but how do you know a pedophile when you see one?

Is it because it had sex or a relationship with a minor, or does it have to be more than one of those?

Well, chances if you have one already, the chances of having more than one are out there easily, you know, to be assumed, and that doesn't mean the case, but easily be assumed, but to answer your question, yeah, it's wrong, it's wrong for anyone to be having sex from a power position, an adult, consensual, outside of marriage, outside of the ability to consent as an adult, not just by law, but by maturity as well, which is the issue in schools today.

Some of the reasons people are teaching sex education, they're saying, oh, the kids can handle it, well, maybe they are consensual in terms of permission slip, but they're not emotionally there yet, so what

I'm thinking is there has to be a limitation of an adult's emotions to connect with a child's emotions, and hopefully they elevate them a little bit, and they connect together.

There are some serious emotional and psychological problems with adults who see that they can have a deep, intimate, emotional, sexual relationship with a child or a teenager.

There are some issues there that are not resolved. The causes of those issues are plentiful,

I'm sure, and we can talk about some of those, everything from pornography down to abuse, down to the grooming of things, you know, grooming of relationships between adults and children, or the conquest aspect that the masculine, you know, the masculine side would say, man, you hooked up with your teacher, man, you should go to home run, but the girl, see, has a sullied reputation, and so if we were to say that girls should be protected, we should really mean it, and we should make sure that the laws are written to protect the women and the girls.

If the Me Too movement has done anything, and if there's any vestige of it left at all, they should be speaking out, not empowering girls to take their sexuality to the next level, but empowering relationships that are protected between the male and the female, and including the marriage relationship.

So, I mean, it's a situation today, again, where the more you look into this, Chris, the more there are things you really can't answer except for the issue of sin, and if we start at that point where men and women are sinful, children are equally as sinful, but they're not as schooled and knowledgeable about the sin that the adult knows in his or her mind and heart, there's where a major problem lies, and in training teachers you have to bring these issues up today to say, look, what you're feeling from that student may not be the same thing he or she's feeling toward you, you know?

So, moving toward a physical or emotional relationship, adult, what are you battling inside?

Let's talk about this, because if you connect with a student like you don't with other students, then there is an issue, it's a relational thing in your life, don't cause the same problem in the student's life that when they become adults, they don't have any clarity about their relationships either.

Now, I'm going to ask you something that may get me in a lot of trouble with listeners, but it's something that has crossed my mind a lot.

Do you agree with me that in our day and age, the broad brushing of the term pedophilia and pedophile is dangerous because it diminishes the seriousness, the grotesqueness, and the depth of satanic behavior that actual pedophilia is?

And what I mean by that is people have been labeled in the media as pedophiles when they, and please,

I'm not justifying anybody having any kind of sexual attraction or relationship outside of the confines of marriage, but to say that a man who is attracted to a 17, 18, 19 -year -old girl, to label him as a pedophile, number one,

I don't even think it fits the technical description of that, and number two, as I said,

I think when you mix that in as being in the same category as a seriously disturbed and evil person, a predator who molests truly helpless, fragile, and innocent, prepubescent children, when you combine those two things under the same label, you actually, as I said, lessen the severity of the actual pedophilia actions.

Am I right? Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think today the guard rails have been widened in terms of what we use in definitions today for things, and I think, you know,

I'm going to make a statement too that may get me in trouble, but I used to love my students. I loved them to death, but I know the four different types of loves here that Lewis talks about, and I'm not focusing on the erotic.

Where we get this feeling, this fleshy kind of connection, this erotic kind of,

I'm thinking of you at night wishing I could text you, or I do text you and email you, I've crossed the line.

The guard rails are widened today so that more people can get away with more things and not have the label applied to them.

I think in the past it was much more strict, and so we use it maybe inappropriately at times, but just being simply, you know, and loving toward people doesn't make you any kind of celia, okay, in my opinion.

You don't have to be labeled a pedophile to love children. I love my own children. I love children.

I see them and they fall down. I pick them up. I love them at church, but I don't want to have a relationship with them to the point where my authority over them is the controlling factor, that I use that authority as an emotional connection, and they look up to me in the same way, and I'm thinking they're getting from me what

I'm getting from them. That's inappropriate. So, where we have the repeat offenders, if you will, the recidivism rate being pretty high for pedophiles of those that are sexual offenders, if we start there, that's pretty clear what the guard rail is.

Where it's insidious is where you are tempted, and you are feeling lust toward a child.

It's crossed the line, and what I need to ask you is, is there any room in your definition to understand, not condone, but understand maybe the cause of some of that is they were abused as well, the cycle has not been broken, and I think some of that is the cause of some pedophilia today, and I do think it's a sickness.

I really do. I think it's a sin sickness, but it's also a sexual addiction, I think, on their part.

Is there any room in your definition for that, or do you think it's lumped all in the same category?

Well, obviously, I'm assuming you agree with me that this new movement, it's interesting how liberals for decades were claiming that the homosexual rights movement, the gay rights movement, and then the

LBGTQ plus movements, they were saying that they equally despise the grotesque and wicked behavior known as pedophilia.

Now, you have those representatives from the LGBTQ plus community actually saying in public that, oh, we should not be cruel and labeling these people as pedophiles, as if they are evil, they just have an alternative sexual desire that we should call it

MAPS, Minor Attracted Persons.

Now, that is as vile and satanic as it could possibly be.

When you're talking about the promotion of that activity and the participation in that activity, to me,

I can barely distinguish it from the seriousness of murder. It is that evil.

So, it's interesting how we are in a society that on one end of the spectrum is publicly identifying people as pedophiles.

And it might even be, you know, the age difference of a young man, for instance, might even only be two or three years, but it just so happens that he's in his early 20s and the girl that he had been romantically involved with was in her late teens.

And they're labeling that pedophilia. And on the other end of the spectrum, at the same time, in our media, they are allowing these insane and wicked people to promote an idea called

MAPS, where you even have teachers in schools promoting this idea that, oh, we shouldn't be so cruel and nasty to use a pejorative like pedophile.

We should call these people minor attracted persons. This is kind of a bizarre oxymoronic thing that's happening, isn't it?

Yes, it truly is. I do have a question. I mean, a rhetorical question for the listeners is, how does one know he or she is homosexual or pedophile?

How do you know without having the experiences? Simply to be attracted to something doesn't make you that thing, but attracted to it on a lustful, sexual, promiscuous level without the act, now you're crossing into it.

And the Lord would say probably something like, you know, you don't really have to do the act to have committed the sin already, because it's already in your heart, you know?

That's right. That's what Jesus said about adultery. Exactly, exactly. So can we say the same thing in terms of principle then today for people who are using the

MAPS acronym instead of the term pedophilia? And that is, because you're attracted and you're thinking about it, you haven't acted on it yet, first, how do you know you are that?

And secondly, have you crossed the line in your heart and mind, and automatically now you are in category, as Christ would put it, the adulterer.

So I'm thinking the latter is the case, you know, the culture still begins to shift and change, and they say that the desire and interest and attractiveness and all of that stuff is not actually the thing, but, you know, they're willing to go in other categories and say that the thing exists even before you act on it, such as your skin color is your racist, because the thing is prior to your action.

So on the one hand, the liberal progressive side uses this sex thing as a sort of a tool to get further into the lives and minds of the community and to, you know, to move their agenda forward.

But on the other side, they're not going to be using the race thing the same way. So the inconsistency, again, is obvious in terms of both of these issues, except they're both joined at the hip in terms of the progressive agenda.

I mean, LGBT, what do bisexuals have to do with homosexuals or with transgenders?

Not too much. So, you know, when you lump everything together and then you have the intersectionality that goes with it, because a person of color is now

LGBT, you know, so you've got all of this in the mix here, and so they just want you to think that identity is so important today.

So let's not misidentify someone by a pronoun or by an acronym, because you'll be offensive.

Well, you know, the offense really is you thinking about my child in sexual ways.

That's the offense, but I don't know you are because you haven't acted on it. Well, I just want to make sure that everybody knows, okay, that these things exist in our culture today, and they're in teachers, they're in the classrooms.

You know, some teachers are trying to act this out. They're becoming emotionally and socially and intellectually connected with students.

They may be, you know, inclined to move the next step, except that they get fired if they do, but they're still inclined.

And then I have other people coming out saying this and that about their gender and about, you know, their pronouns and their sexuality and their practice over the weekend without...with

impunity. And so our culture today, again, it's not consistent. Our public schools in some states allow things to be protected, and others don't allow to be protected.

And there was where the parents need to speak up in communities. That's one thing that they can be doing is speaking up to the board, bringing examples to the board.

Most often the board is in the dark about some of the things that are happening within their classrooms in the district, especially large districts.

And yet parents have to go about it the right way to make sure they protect children and inform the public about it.

Maybe sometimes more explosively, verbally explosive than they'd like to be, but that gets the attention of some people.

Down the road, if this goes any further, you're going to have a whole host of Generation Z teachers in the classroom, 30 to 40 percent are involved in LGBT issues, and you're going to have a whole group of young people who are dysphoric and have concerns and confusion about their sexuality and gender.

And parents are not going to know what to do when this happens. And we have to go to our first break.

If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question for Ernie Zara, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the second time is

Ernie Zara, and I just love interviewing Ernie. This is my second interview with him.

He's a fascinating and brilliant guest, and we are discussing his book,

America's Sex Culture, Its Impact on Teacher -Student Relationships, today. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, as always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I can understand a topic like this perhaps evoking questions that are personal and private.

You may have had a child who is a student in a school or was a student in a school who was sexually molested, and maybe even you when you were a child, and you're still suffering to this day from the nightmares of that, and it may have radically even changed your own behavior in life.

Well, we understand things like that would compel you to remain anonymous, perhaps even if you're a teacher and you want to ask something that would compel you not to draw attention to your identity.

You have seen things, witnessed things in the school where you work. It could be a host of other reasons, but if it's not a personal private matter, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Before I go to any of the listener questions that are waiting for you already, can you go through some of the ways of how specifically

America's sex culture has had an impact on teacher -student relationships today?

Is it just because of the fact that sex has become so saturated in every realm of life and in the media that it is something that is basically brainwashing everybody, that even the most seasoned of Christians may have been seriously negatively affected by the sex culture of America because it's just blazoned everywhere that we look and so on?

Well, Chris, let me just answer your question briefly by saying we humans strive for affection.

We like to be liked, and teachers as a group are definitely in a category of liking to be liked, and I've had some teachers say,

I'm here to teach you not to be liked by you, but you know what? It makes it a whole lot easier in the future when students like you.

But I do want to mention before I get any further in that, and we will talk about that, is that in church too, if there are any listeners who've been, who experienced this in church or Christian schools, they should maybe write you an email when we talk about that as well because, you know, we have a problem within our churches with this same issue with pastors, priests, and others who are committing this same kind of thing.

And I wrote a book, my very first book back in the mid -90s called It Should Never Happen Here, and it's a way to screen volunteer workers in churches so that you can be a little more confident in knowing who you have working with your children while you're up sitting in the pew.

And so that book has been around for a while and been useful, and a lot of churches have told me they've used that in their initial screening process.

So that being said, churches and Christian schools are battling this, you know, as well as public schools.

So there are some reasons why this allurement for teachers is so,

I guess, so prominent today, Chris. And so one of the reasons would become because of the basic immaturity that young adults have today in finding the connection with someone who gives them the validation they're looking for.

And it may be a student with a personality or an intellect, or a student who has looks, or a student who gives them the feedback they need, but the affection today is more than just an emotional thing.

It is almost as if they feed off of that. There is sort of a symbiotic relationship between the two of them.

That's one aspect. That's one reason why teachers are allured. Another reason would be is that teachers seek popularity.

In order to be popular with girls or guys, they may dress a certain way, talk a certain way, and that sort of connects with people.

In other words, they want to be as youthful as their students to connect on a level to be a good friend versus a good teacher.

And the third reason we see here is that they cross the boundaries, basically because they enjoy the sexual feeling they get.

Now, the lustful sexual feeling that's provided for them is something that makes them feel validated as a human being.

If you look at the internet today on Reddit and other websites, you see teachers talking about things that they would fantasize with their students, and they write about the sexual fantasies that they have.

They discuss with their colleagues. Some teachers discuss who they're already having sex with. And so there's the internet that's out there that we don't know if it's fantasy or real, but they claim that some of these are real in terms of the way they write the actual stories.

And I have so many stories I could tell you. In a minute, I'll talk about one such story.

Another reason, fourth reason, I would say here is because we have such a sex -saturated society that it's impossible to avoid it.

It's impossible to feel it. It's impossible to not know that children are experimenting with their sexuality with adults in ways that they never would have before.

I mean, everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to sex tools and BDSM and restraints and sex toys and things that are all over the internet in terms of pornography and all, it's so prominent today that you could do all you could possibly do and still you get exposed to this, whether it's television or it's cable or it's the movies or it's in literature or whatever.

So there are four areas. Chris, let me just tell you that the first half of this year alone, from January to June, at least 181

K -12 teachers were charged with sex crimes. Let that sink in.

That's an average of about one a day in the nation that's arrested for a sex crime, everything ranging from child porn to raping of students.

There were principals included, school principals, teachers, teachers' aides, and substitute teachers in that mix.

Of the arrests, at least 140 of them involved direct crimes with students.

Made up the majority, about 78 -79 % of the arrests, and many of them involved specifically heinous crimes.

Some were homosexual, some were heterosexual, some were bisexual, some were recording pornography on the phones of students.

One story that I have for you, I came from the community in a high school district that this story came from, and that was a teacher who was moonlighting as someone who was shooting her own adult films and her husband was directing them, and they were posting them on the internet.

And lo and behold, she comes to school one day, and her pictures are posted all over the school campus.

And she knew right away what had happened. Well, number one, who found this out is the question.

And number two, what happened to her? Well, they eventually let her go, and she became a full -time personal trainer for people in the community.

So you can see... Personal trainer? You mean fitness trainer? Fitness trainer, yeah.

I talked to people who were her clients, yeah, and they said they were shocked by this. So she lived a double life.

And so the question I have here, Sanakay, is when you're at work, is there a possibility of something in you that has this other life that you are splitting between the two, so that one of them is more of a dark, you know, aspect to your life and much more, shall

I say, lent to the lustful side, while the other one is pure and, you know, pristine in the appearance of one thing or another?

What we have today is our culture is allowing this to occur, where you can have this outside life and inside life.

And the argument goes for teachers is, you know, I get paid to teach, and I'm under contract.

What I do on my own time is my own, you know, my own life, which again gets back to the...

Do you want the community to be embarrassed by your actions when you're under contract? Or do you want to have yourself just live the way you want to live and split yourself between, you know, two different characters?

There's no doubt we have a hypersexuality in our culture today. There's no doubt that teachers want to come across as sexy, the way some of them dress, you know, and some of them talk.

I can tell you that there's a story, and I'll call him Coach M. He was a physical education teacher in the district

I worked at. I worked at. He had tenure. He was a varsity girl soccer coach. He was 33 years old at the time and really loved his work.

He was personable and fun. The girls loved him, and he coached the team in the rural areas.

So, it was not uncommon for him to take the van and routinely transport girls home after practices and games.

It was in an area where vehicles, some of the families were in poverty. So, during the course of the season,

Coach M is accused that some players are playing favorites. So, you can see now there's a possibility of false accusations arising because you're giving special attention to some people, which also happens in classrooms and also may happen in churches and church schools.

One of the allegations is made that the coach is having an affair with this player. There we go. The administration checks, and they don't see anything, but they pay close attention.

Everything seems really settled until after one game. Coach M is transporting players home, and he's left with one 16 -year -old girl in his vehicle while in transit.

He's a district van now. Okay, it's paid for by the district, not his own personal vehicle. He stops at a liquor store, and he buys some condoms.

The female clerk notices this and sees the girl sitting in the passenger seat and the district logo on the van.

So, she calls the authority. The school district contacted the next day. Coach M is arrested, put on trial for a variety of sexual molestation charges, including sexting a minor, and is found guilty.

This is what I'm talking about with a double life. In the classroom, he may not have done anything, but given the private time away from the classroom, sure it was something, you know, that was part of the district, but he was alone, and he didn't think he'd be seen.

Another example occurs where... I'll call her Mrs. J. She's a newer addition to the high school and really engaging, very personable.

Sophomore girls spend more time with Coach J after practices, get more practice. The coach drives her home on occasion.

So, over the course of the season, they begin to chat online in the evenings, texting, phone messages, and photos are exchanged, and suddenly there is a particular affinity between the two of them that's greater than the sport that they play.

And one evening, the player and the coach were kissing and fondling each other in the coach's car while in a park in what

I'll call a dimly lit area of the school parking lot, and they're caught. The coach is dismissed from teaching and coaching, subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted of sexual assault.

I can tell you that I can't look at the headlines from any major news source today online and not find that someone else has been arrested for a sex crime with a child or a student, whether you're an adult with a child or a teacher with a student.

I'm looking specifically at teachers and students, and here's why they're not called pedophiles, because it's an event thing at a school where you work.

Pedophiles, the adults that are not at school having sex with children, oh, well, that's a different story. You must have been lying in wait for these people who are planning this thing.

You see, you must have, in the old days, you had to go up and knock on the door, and how ludicrous would this be, Chris? Knock on the door, the father answers, and you have to say as a teacher or an adult, hi, my name is so -and -so, and I'm here to have sex with your daughter.

Could she come out, please? Well, there's no way you could have contacted that child in the old days, right, before cell phones and computers.

Now you have instant access, and anytime you want, you can make a contact call or a text message or send a photo or an email, or you can stay in contact with students during the summertime or vacation times, or you could even know where each of you are and meet up somewhere for coffee or whatever it is.

The guardrails are widened today for teacher -student relationships, and if there's no moral compass and teachers don't know where the lines are, or if they do, which makes it more insidious, if they don't know where they are, they need to be taught.

We can't assume that Gen Z today knows where the guardrails are at all, because some

Gen Z will come out as a different person within a month or two after hire than the one that you hired.

So now what do you do? And these are questions that we need to face today as teachers and teacher educators.

To what extent do you now have to deal with a brand new identity of a person you didn't hire, or is that the same person, or what are the laws protecting this new person who has an affinity toward same -sex that I didn't know about when

I hired them, or should I not know about that, or is it even an issue, or where are parents in all of this?

You see how convoluted and how confusing this is becoming, but this is all part of the sex aspects that are happening in our culture that are making their ways into schools and families, churches, and it's so prominent today in culture you can't go anywhere without hearing about it, reading about it, or seeing it.

Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, and please be patient with us.

This is longer than normal break, as it always is in the middle of the show, but we will be right back after these messages, and don't go away.

Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend. Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a freefall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

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Mark your calendars for October 6th through 8th as we fight, laugh, and feast to the glory of God in Knoxville, Tennessee.

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Before I return to my guest Ernie Zara and our discussion of his book,

America's Sex Culture, Its Impact on Teacher -Student Relationships Today, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, but I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to Ernie Zara about America's sex culture, its impact on teacher -student relationships today.

And we have an anonymous lister. The anonymous lister wants to know,

I know that doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists have a very strict rule that they are never to develop a romantic relationship with their patients, even if they are of the same age.

I was wondering what you thought of a college professor, perhaps, who begins a romantic relationship with a student who is near the same age.

Is that a violation of ethics because of the authority that teacher holds, even though there would be nothing wrong with that relationship outside of the fact that it should be in obedience to God, a chaste one outside of marriage?

Great question. And let me just mention two things that I think are important to consider here.

Although there's nothing illegal about the relationship in terms of laws, but the policies at the institution would supersede the law at that point.

And let me make it clear. Maybe the law says that you can have a relationship with a certain age person as an adult, and the other person is an adult, maybe 18, 19.

But the policy at the school says, uh -uh, we're going to be more tight than the law allows here because we don't want a conflict of interest to arise, because whether you are a student of that professor or not, there is a conflict of interest in a power position.

Now, all it would take is for a falling out of relationship on that college campus.

And you can imagine, let's say that the professor's a male and the student's a female. What would happen in the blowback, literally, toward the professor and the institution if somehow he picked up the relationship with someone else, or she became pregnant, or had an abortion, or her friends found out and wondered why she got a better grade in her class than somebody else?

The blowback on this thing, whether, you know, legal or not, is not the question, okay? There's a morality that's higher than legality in a lot of our states today because the legal thing is the least common denominator, in my opinion.

The moral thing is, if I do this, how will it look to my reputation with the rest of the students?

How will it look to the colleagues that I have? Is it honoring the parents of this student that I have?

And will it conflict in any way, shape, or form in my conscience or in my profession here?

Those questions need to be asked of everybody at the college level who's seeking or has current relationships with students.

If you cannot come out publicly with your relationship on the campus, then

I think you already have your answers to what should be allowed or occurring on my college campus.

So I'm not against relationships. Don't get me wrong. And single, you know, professors and single students who happen to hit off a relationship,

I would say that you want to wait until you're in the clear of the student being a student under or in your department and in the clear of your colleagues, you know, introducing it to them, letting them know what's happening, and then lay out a plan that if you still want to have a relationship with a student, don't rush into this.

Let it develop over time like you would any other relationship or a valid relationship. Because the bottom line is, if this professor is 28, 29, 30, and now has a 19 -year -old girlfriend, who's to say it hasn't happened before with others?

And when that hits the fan and others come speaking about the same thing he might have done to them that he did to you and dropping you, then there may be a problem with that.

So other issues have to be thought about here other than we love each other, we're of age. Yeah, you even have that rule in the military that officers are not supposed to fraternize with those who are not of the same rank and so on.

And you have, even in businesses, I am personally aware of businesses that I know that forbid anybody in a leadership position in the business from having a romantic relationship with another employee of a lesser realm of authority.

In fact, I know we saw the Boston Celtics just released or put their coach on hiatus for a year because of that type of relationship.

Yeah, and I know personally a couple where they both left a company because they had a desire to begin dating and it was against the rules.

So they left the company and not only began dating but got married. Let's make this perfectly clear too.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. It's all right. Let's make it perfectly clear here that even if pedophilia becomes legal or teacher -student relationships become legal, there's a higher morality at stake here.

And schools need to make sure that they are clear on that higher morality even if the laws begin to go the other direction.

And as far as any red flags, let's say you are a parent or even a student, are there any red flags that people should be on the alert to see if these things are manifesting even if they start innocently or at least

I should say even if they start as appearing to be innocent.

Things that might be out of the ordinary for a teacher to be doing even though the thing may be in and of itself pure and wholesome, it may be masking an ulterior motive.

Do you have any ideas on that? Oh, I sure do. Glad you asked the question.

And in terms of being interpersonal with students, first thing

I would say is how much attention are you giving that person? How much time are you spending with that person both online and in person in the classroom or during class time or at whatever?

And how much are you communicating with that person through all the different media or medium, if you will, to stay in touch with that person?

Those are red flags because if you're singling out a student or two to spend more time with personally, giving more attention to and communicate more often both at school and at home on vacations or weekends, then you're setting yourself up for what

I will call teacher boundary violations because they don't have to be sexual. They can be non -sexual misconduct and you can be fired for that.

So that if a parent sees the child or their kid's cell phone and they see text messages from a teacher that are somewhat flirtatious, now you've got a problem on your hand because that has crossed the boundary.

You know, romantic and flirtatious stuff in the classroom. There are students that I've talked to, let's say online and in person, including one from Wisconsin I'll tell you about, who said they just felt creepy.

Like a teacher walked by and gave them a look or maybe looked down their blouse. They thought if it's a girl or, you know, look under the desk if they're wearing dresses.

They just felt creepy when they touched them in class and they just felt like something was wrong.

Well see, that kind of attention that students are picking up on emotionally because teenagers especially are much more hyper -emotional, hyper -sexual, hyper -aware of things, that these things become, they come across as much more problematic in them than you would be as a teacher because you're matured hopefully beyond that hyper -state of emotional arousal.

So flirtation and romantic kind of like winks and nods in the class are maybe miscommunicated or maybe communicated differently in their interpretation.

Be careful what technology you use to communicate with students. Be careful that you don't have the power to punish or reward a student for something in a classroom because now you have another authority that you can say, well, you know, if you do this,

I won't do that. And so that's a power play. You've got to be careful. The straight -out sexual things, you have to be careful.

The red flags if you're talking sex in a classroom. All I know is for the people who are in favor of this graphic sexual education or graphic sexual stories to children, do they even know what their brains and heart and feelings are going through by hearing these things?

And to what extent are you triggering a child who may be sexually abused at home when you're reading these things aloud to the children and they're not saying anything, but you're triggering something in the child that's going to damage them for the rest of their lives because they're already somewhat damaged.

Be careful of the physical touches you use in the classroom or outside the classroom. Be careful of your emotions that you share in the classroom that students will say, oh, he understands me.

I get it. I feel the same way he does. You've got to be careful of the psychological manipulation and the connections that teachers can utilize in the classroom so that everybody thinks that this teacher is so cool he gets me or she gets me.

That's a starting point for an emotional connection that you don't want to have with a student necessarily.

And if you're meeting with a student, make sure you're meeting not just in private but the door open with another colleague available that they can step in once in a while to see if everything's okay, to help validate because we're living at a time where students will use false allegations as well against the teacher because they don't like that teacher for one reason or another to get them booted.

And it's happened several times in the careers of people that I know personally. And be careful of loaning money or doing special favors for students such as driving them home, giving them lunch money, or buying them this or that, and other students see this.

Those are all red flag indicators that there is at least an emotional connection happening between the teacher and a student where you might have a physical connection next where hugging is happening and stroking of shoulders is happening and students see this, that leads to the other thing where time, attention, and communication have all been in the mix here towards the physical part or the sexual part.

Not saying all teachers at foot with students are sexual, no. I'm not saying that at all. But what

I am saying is the red flags that you see, please pay attention to those flags so that you can catch yourself as a teacher and not cross into the boundary that you would violate some type of code of ethics, some type of policy, or even the law with a relationship that is illicit with the students.

Well, obviously, we have to clarify something you said that not all teachers that flirt with students are being physically sexual, but at the same time, that's never appropriate.

That's correct. Yeah, correct. I mean, you can share, like if you talk to the football team, right?

You can share a story that happened and everybody, a female teacher might say, that was a really good catch and it wasn't a catch and she winked at the student.

That's the type of thing I'm talking about. I'm not talking about, hey, look at me, I'm special and let's flirt about something emotionally and sexually or something even sensual.

I'm talking about the connection that feels like it's flirtation, because it really is a way to get to the emotional side of a student.

It doesn't have to be sexual, but you've got to be careful of that too, because a student will misunderstand maybe what you're trying to say at that point.

And that's the whole point here. The brains of teenagers, brains of children are not like the brains of adults.

And by the way, I think I forgot to tell our listeners who have already submitted questions to our guest today,

Ernie Vera, you have all won a free copy of America's Sex Culture, its impact on teacher -student relationships today, which is actually the second edition of this book.

And this gift to you is compliments of Roman and Littlefield, the publishers, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who sponsor this program,

CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping it out to you free of charge.

So thanks to both Roman and Littlefield and to CVBBS .com.

And if you're unfamiliar with the publisher, Roman and Littlefield, this publisher, they really do a remarkable job with the binding and the covers.

I mean, I'm really impressed with their work. Yes, yes, I agree. I fully agree. They're a professional down the line, international publishers and a lot of subsidiaries as well.

And I just feel so blessed that I can work with Tom and Carly and others who are doing some editing for me as well.

I'm just blessed. The Lord has just opened the door for a lot of writing to happen and a lot of discussion and a lot of growth on my part.

So I'm just so pleased that God has used that publisher to bless my life in a lot of ways. Amen. We're going to go to our final break right now, because I'd rather not interrupt you in mid -sentence, and it's going to be briefer than the other breaks.

If you have a question for Ernie Zara, send it in right now to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

or as soon as possible, anyway, chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Ernie Zara. Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend.

Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a free fall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

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Welcome back. We have Ted from Moundsville, Alabama, who has a question for you,

Ernie. The question is, about halfway through my teaching career, circa 2005,

I said to a colleague, you know I think we'll reach a point in the not -too -distant future when male faculty will be instructed to never compliment or comment on any aspect of a female student's physical appearance, even if it has to do with a pair of shoes or a suit jacket the student wears for a special presentation.

Sure enough, a few years ago, a well -known Christian academic who leans a little to the left went on record as saying that male academics should never, under any circumstances, comment on female students' appearance, even if it is in the form of a compliment, even if it has to do with special dress worn for a presentation.

Can your guest comment on this? Sure, no problem. I'm from a generation, the baby boom generation, where, you know, we were huggers, we were high -fivers, we were, you know, we were smilers, we were reconnected, and through sports, you know, you find the same thing with athletes.

Let me ask you a question, though. Does this same rule apply if a student comes to class nude? Are you able to make any comments about that?

Or how about a teacher who is distracting the educational process in the room because students, boys, 15 -year -olds, can't fight back the lustful thoughts of the teacher and can't pay attention because the teacher is wearing something that's so revealing?

There is such a thing called educational process, and teachers should be aware, okay, clearly, that if they're going to do something, wear something, it's going to interrupt the educational process, that they're counteracting exactly what they've been trained to do as teachers, and that is teach.

You're not teaching anything when you don't have the attention of the students and their minds are elsewhere. It's the same thing, too, if a student's using a cell phone in class to distract, the same kind of principle.

You need to make sure that you have a policy in place that considers these things going forward, and if there's a problem with that, then you need to find a new district because you may be in a very permissive district where you're in a place where maybe a lot of people are allowed to do this thing, maybe in a very liberal city, let's say, or in a place where the board is very far left.

Find a different district if you can. So consider the fact that someone comes to class and they've been bleeding and their clothes have blood on it.

You're required to report that, right, because of disease, but if you make a comment about the blood, now what are you going to do?

See, there are things here that are exceptions to the specific policies that you hear about in districts, and make sure you use common sense here because you'll be protected with your common sense over and against other things.

I mean, I'll compliment, I'll take the risk. I'll compliment someone and say, you know what, I really like the way you dress today, or you know what, you shine and glow in the classroom today.

I mean, I want to compliment people. I want them to feel good about being in my presence because that environment that sets the tone for them to receive the learning that I want to share with them, and if they know that they're accepted as people and not just treated as things sitting in a chair that I'm doing my job and you pay attention, then that's a little different game.

It's up to teachers to really move this forward and speak up at your staff meetings and go to the board meetings as teachers and say, look, we're not connecting with our students at all.

We don't have sex with them. We just want to connect with them. We want to be personal to the point where they respect us as people like we should respect them as people.

So if you're going to allow this to proliferate and to put the wedge and widen the gap between, get out of teaching altogether because we need humans connecting with humans for the sake of learning, not just people doing a thing and walking home with a check at the end of the day.

That's what I would say. Thanks, our listener in Moundville, Alabama, for that question, and you have also won a free copy of the book that we are addressing,

America's Sex Culture, Its Impact on Teacher -Student Relationships Today by Ernie Zara, published by Roman and Littlefield, and it will be shipped out to you by CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. I have a quick story that is in some way connected to that question, not really very closely connected, but it's either going to make our listeners chuckle or perhaps wince in dismay, one or the other.

But I know a woman, in fact, it's the woman who led me to Christ, Susan, who was taking college courses when she was already in her 50s.

She went back to school and was taking college courses, and there was a student, a male student, who was reprimanded by a teacher because he showed up at school with jeans that were just totally cluttered with holes everywhere, and he was dressed very shabbily.

He was told that he could never return to the class if he was dressed like that again.

The guy, and I emphasize the word guy, he showed up the next class wearing a dress, not because he was a transvestite, apparently, but because he was like really rubbing it in the face of the professor.

And guess what? Not one word of reprimand. He was allowed to continue attending classes wearing a dress.

That shows you the warped culture that we live in, where wearing holes in your jeans is a definite taboo.

That's a no -no, but come in drag, oh, that's fine. But, yeah, so I want to make sure, since this is such an important subject, before I go to any other listener question,

I want you to have several minutes of uninterrupted time to really get at the core of your book and summarize those things that you think are most essential for our listeners to walk away with by the time this program is over.

Yeah, I think I've hit a lot of those, but let me just put together what I think is the burgeoning problem in schools today, and that is

Generation Z being released on the masses of our students. I think in looking at America's sex culture, we have a driving force, not just something that is subtle anymore, but a driving force in Gen Z, and not all of them, of course.

There's so many wonderful Gen Z young people doing so many great things. Their entrepreneurial spirit, their dedication to things that they like to do, the way they connect on a human level, their use of technology in creative ways, so many great things they're doing, but there's some really caveats on the other side that need to be examined, and here are some things that I think that both administrators and principals and teachers and parents and even the

Gen Z folks themselves with candidates for the teacher pool should consider. The first thing is that Gen Z is more likely to come out as someone different than whom you hired, because most of the students today are in the

LGBT. I say most, 40 percent, most of the 40 percent are in LGBT and not afraid to be an activist toward social causes that maybe the community doesn't support.

So in your hiring and or in your being hired, are you willing to say, I can put that on hold, or is it that important you to be the activist towards a social cause?

Because, you know, if you're going to be hired, you represent not just the district, but you represent the community and all the students that you have, they have families.

And so, you know, you have to be aware it's not just you that's getting hired for a spot. You're being hired to do a lot of work within a community within that spot you're hired for.

And so Gen Z may be more likely at this point, this juncture in American history, to be against the status quo and advocate for fringe causes, as well as share their personal stories with their students in the classroom.

Their romantic, you know, engagements, their lesbian or homosexual relationships, or the fact that they're married to this person or that person.

They're more likely to share those things openly, whereas in the past teachers kept their private lives outside the classroom and focused on educating and connecting with students over the material.

But they're more likely too, Gen Z, to be online posting almost everything about their lives and TikTok and Instagram and other social media sites.

But even during work hours, we're finding some of them are doing that. And here's a general rule for all teachers that I think coming from this book would make a lot of sense.

You should be careful with your private online activities and after -hours work so that doesn't conflict with the values of the community.

That's a good teacher. Thinking about consequences, thinking about the what -ifs, thinking about how

I can become a better person for the community, not just show who I am and my identity.

So be careful you're not on OnlyFans producing, you know, sexual content for pay. Be careful of your hookups on weekends that you want to post and say, look what

I did. Or tell students or your alcohol and drug abuse and holding beverages in your pictures, you know, so your students can see you're inebriated or at least you're showing that you are.

And there's some questions I think that need to be considered and I put these out and I received some flack for it, but that's okay.

I think when you're being interviewed as a teacher candidate, I think we should ask the question of how your relationship's going.

I mean, are you presently in a relationship that could have caused a problem for our school district or our students in our classrooms?

Are you a prolific supporter of drug use? And are you taking substances, you know, as each and every day?

Or do you believe here in the state that you live in, let's say that recreational marijuana is something that should be, you know, allowed for students even 18 years old and while at school or, you know, before they come to school?

How do you deal with that issue as a teacher? How about tattoos and piercings? Anything that would, if revealed to the students or the parents or colleagues that would be offensive that we need to make sure that we keep it covered?

I mean, do you have anything that is from a previous lifestyle or a current lifestyle that would be offensive?

How about your interest or your participation in the adult film industry or the sale of sex toys or do you have films or movies out there that you did in a previous life or are you currently involved in that?

That could be a problem for you or are you hosting anything along the lines of a website?

Because these things would come up. They will come up. Students will find you. They will look for you and they will find you.

And when students find you, that means that they're scouring the pornography themselves to find you, which is not a good thing for their minds as well.

In the past, is there any sexual abuse that, you know, you have endured that may be a problem going forward?

And is there a cycle that you have seen in your family that maybe there's something that you could be caused in the life of a student or that will trigger a student because you're going to have your abuse and they're going to hear the same thing and not just feel an empathy towards you, but feel triggered by that.

In addition, how about addictions and things in your online media diet? All those things are very, very important for today's

Gen Z consideration, but some of them are against the law to ask. And I think the laws are the laws, but morally speaking,

I think schools should have a little tighter policy on some of these things because the law is the law, sure.

But again, I argued earlier, and I'm going to argue again, that moral things should be secure to some laws.

And for the sake of the next generation of students, we shouldn't treat them like we allow adults to live their lives.

They should be treated with protection and security and safety and the validation that parents can trust you with their child and that the schools are going to do the job they do to educate the children and not corrupt them at an early age through sexual carnality.

We have a listener. Let's see,

I was just looking at it. Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island. And Ronald says, earlier you were talking about red flags to put one on alert, whether they be a parent or a student, that there is something possibly not quite appropriate in the approach that a teacher is having towards a student.

I wanted to just add something that I think that you would readily agree with, that we must never, until something is actually confirmed, has sinister ulterior motives, we must never spread word about this to others, because it could absolutely destroy the life of an innocent person if we are guessing wrong about what their motives were.

Now, this sounds like that the questioner or the statement from the questioner comes with some baggage in terms of personal experience.

I've heard this before from several other people. I actually sat in the courtroom listening to a former colleague who was falsely accused and had to leave the district when he was acquitted.

So yes, this occurs, and we should not be about the gossiping parts of these things, but I can tell you, having my own children in the schools that I taught in, the radar was up a little bit higher for me than maybe some other folks would have been for my children.

And so when they're saying things that happen, it's worth checking out. And my philosophy is,

I go to the teacher and I address, I say, hey, this is what's being said. Anything you want to tell me about this?

And get the other side of the story. This way I can help straighten that out with my own children. But when children go home and talk online about this, and it begins to get blown out of proportion, and then teachers hear this, and then they take sides at school, and then, you know, all crazy stuff breaks loose.

But the question is right. We should not just jump to conclusions. And I say, when you do that without evidence, you jump to contusions.

You injure someone. And so doing that is not necessarily in anybody's best interest.

And you give students the weapon that they're looking for in power over the teacher, then, by having false accusations stick and spread, and then you get rid of someone they don't like.

Yeah, and that's especially that whole realm of accusing somebody of something that you haven't confirmed is true is especially devastating with a teacher.

I could think of few other realms, perhaps a pastor as well, but a few other realms where that would be so enormously devastating.

In fact, I am reminded, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Doubt about a

Catholic priest who is a new priest at a parish somewhere in the

Northeast. It might have even been in one of the five boroughs of New York City. I can recall at least one of the primary characters, a nun with a very thick

New York accent, was very reminiscent of my own upbringing because I was a student for all of my elementary school years at a

Catholic parochial school on Long Island, New York. But according to the whole plot of the movie, there is a priest that is accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student, but it was never verified or confirmed.

And in fact, you never even know throughout the movie whether this person was guilty.

But I remember there was a classic scene when this priest was telling,

I believe, a nun about a story, and I'm not sure if it was fictitious or real, according to the plot of the movie.

He was telling the story about how a woman in a parish with an

Irish priest was guilty of the sin of gossip, and she was confessing her sin in the confessional booth.

And he said to her, the first thing that she has to do to demonstrate she is really contrite and sorrowful and repentant over this is that she had to go up to the top of her apartment building on the roof and rip open a feather pillow and scatter the feathers to the wind.

And then so she did that, and the next time she went to confession and she said, I did scatter the feathers to the wind.

What is my next step that you need for me to do to demonstrate my contrition?

And he said, find every feather. And he equated that with how gossip works.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And the fact that you mentioned an inappropriate sexual relationship begs the question that there are appropriate sexual relationships to see past...

Right, right. Perhaps it was a clumsy way of saying it, or redundant way of saying it.

I understand. I'm just giving you a hard time. Yes, I know. I've already could tell from our last interview that you enjoy doing that.

Oh, it's a wonderful thing to share, brother. Well, we're actually out of time, and I want to make sure that our listeners have your personal website, and I think

I tragically forgot to give it the last time when we ran out of time. It's DrErnieZara .com,

and doctor is spelled with the abbreviation D -R -E -R -N -I -E -Z -A -R -R -A.

DrErnieZara .com, that's D -R -E -R -N -I -E -Z -A -R -R -A .com.

And if you want to find out more about his books, published by Roman and Littlefield, you can go to Roman .com,

and that's R -O -W -M -A -N .com. Not the identification of a citizen of Rome, but Roman, R -O -W -M -A -N .com.

And if you want to purchase the book, I would urge you to order it from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, since they sponsor this program,

C -V -B -B -S .com. C as in Cumberland, V as in Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com.

It has been a really extraordinary experience, once again, Ernie, to have you on the program, and that you definitely, as I've said before, have an open door here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

I would gladly interview you on every single book that you've ever written, and on other subjects you care to tackle.

I want to thank everybody who listened to the program, and I want you all to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater