But Christine McCallum Was In Love

‘OBSESSED’: Abington elementary school teacher Christine McCallum leans in to hear her lawyer during her arraignment in Hingham District Court yesterday. She is accused of having a two-year sexual relationship with a 13 year-old.

From the Boston Herald comes this story Teacher allegedly seduces boy, 13:

A married South Shore teacher was living a disturbed double life for nearly two years, police said, allegedly seducing a 13-year-old boy, plying him with booze and having sex with him on kitchen floors and couches, sometimes right under the nose of her husband.

Christine A. McCallum, 29, who is on leave from her job at an Abington elementary school, was charged yesterday with seven counts of statutory rape for the serial liaisons in Rockland and Abington from February 2006, when she allegedly took the boy’s virginity, to November 2007.

In today's permissive society, this type of news story hardly gets attention anymore. Male teachers abusing female students is frighteningly too common. The less common female teacher abusing male students seems to have cleared the hurdle of the taboo to become mainstream. (See Dangerous Liaisons from the Boston Herald.)

Besides the odious fact of statutory rape, besides the fact that McCallum is married, besides the fact of her position of trust as a teacher, this type of incident is symptomatic of the larger problems that attack the moral core of our society.

The Abuse of Love
In our all-permissive society, a lot of evil is blamed on love. The police record about McCallum stated that at the final "love" fest between her and her student: "She was crying. She kissed him and told him she loved him. He told her he loved her."

What? Is that supposed to make everything all right? All it does to me is give me the willies.

According to "modern" views, that should make everything all right. Haven't we learned from the Beatles "all we need is love, love is all we need"? Wasn't the promiscuous sex of the Sixties couched under the egregious expression "free love"? (We'll throw in free pregnancies and free STDs too!) Don't teen girls get in too much trouble with the excuse "because I love him"? Aren't homosexuals trying to hijack marriage for the sake of "love"? (Which reminds me of that dubious diatribe of Keith Olbermann's "Gay Marriage Is a Question of Love".)

Love is a strong emotion. It can lead to all sorts of good in this world. Corrupted by selfishness, lust and greed, it can also lead to all sorts of evil. Christine McCallum, if she did indeed have sex with a 13 year-old boy, has fallen into the perilous pit of selfish love. Love based on self. Love based on sex. It's shameful how society can take such an edifying emotion, such a good ideal as love and twist and bend it until it is a warped monstrosity of its former self.

If the story proves true, Christine McCallum is a weak, self-centered, lustful, selfish woman but not a loving woman. She's marred a 13 year-old. She's marred her husband and the sacred trust of marriage.

And what about the myriad other abuses served in the name of love? Ed Cole said it this way: "The desire of love is to give. The desire of lust is to get."

If convicted, McCallum deserves what she gets for her perversion of love.