Hawaii Man's Opinions on Sex Keep Him From Becoming Teacher

As Canadian as beavers

The University of Hawaii didn't violate First Amendment rights when it denied a teaching certificate for a Caltech-educated aspiring high school teacher who expressed views condoning adults having sex with minors, a panel of federal appeals court judges ruled Tuesday.

Mark Oyama earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and a master's degree in physics from the University of Hawaii. In 2010, he enrolled in the secondary education certification program at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus, which is the state's only nationally accredited institution that recommends students for certification as secondary school teachers.

"Oyama's statements concerning sexual relationships between adults and children were of central concern to the faculty," according to a ruling by the panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In a class assignment he wrote: "Personally I think that online child predation should be legal, and find it ridiculous that one could be arrested for comments they make on the Internet." He went on to write that "real life child predation should be legal" as long as it's consensual and that the age of consent should be "either 0, or whatever age a child is when puberty begins."  (more...)

Hawaii Man's Opinions on Sex Keep Him From Becoming Teacher