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Dirty Old Men

Steve Russell
6 min readJul 11, 2019

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Public Domain Graphic From Needpix.com

Is Jeffrey Epstein an Outlier or is He Rich Enough to Live Fantasies Shared by All?

This country has had several debates in my lifetime about which sexual proclivities are hardwired and which are chosen.

Most Americans used to believe and a great number of Americans still believe that people choose a homosexual identity. The only motivation for that choice I can imagine is why The Rolling Stones went down to the demonstration: “to get my fair share of abuse.”

By the time the debate had moved to what we call “the trans community,” I was teaching undergraduates at state universities and it appeared to me that the country was going to age out of treating people badly on account of sex.

The lawyer part of my brain tells me that discrimination on account of sexual orientation is discrimination on account of sex. In both cases, the root of the hostility is failure to conform to gender norms. Regardless of whether the active judges agree with this retired judge, a lot of discrimination is going to go away as the students I taught take over governments.

Let me be clear about what I mean. State universities exist to produce future leaders in the states they serve. They educate the children of the ruling elite, at least the ones not admitted to the best private universities. In that cohort, there were not just a few but many…

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Steve Russell
Steve Russell

Written by Steve Russell

Enrolled Cherokee, 9th grade dropout, retired judge, associate professor emeritus, and (so far) cancer survivor. Memoir: Lighting the Fire (Miniver Press 2020)

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