Moonage SpaceDream

This whole story is bizarre!

Here’s how it starts.  Instapundit pointed me to Ernest Miller, who writes:

Last week I wrote a post about a claim in the LA Times that of the more than one hundred arrested in the past four years by the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit Child Exploitation Section "all but one" were "hard-core Trekkie[s]". I thought the claim was improbable, so I called and spoke to an officer in the unit, who denied the specific accuracy of the claim, but not the high percentage of pedophiles arrested who were Star Trek fans

Now, you have to understand, this is who wrote this:

Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues.

This isn’t some loony, this is a lawyer!  He then does an excellent job verifying the content of the story. Now, I personally tried to verify the LA TImes version of things, but this is what I got:

Sorry, the page you requested is not available.

It’s probably in the archives now.  I didn’t feel like looking all that much.  The Toronto Sex Crimes unit now states that a majority of offenders had some interest in Star Trek.  Not quite as over-the-top as the LA Times story.

The Huffington Post takes the concept and runs with it:

• "This does not mean that watching Star Trek makes you a pedophile. It does mean that if you’re a pedophile, odds are you’ve watched a lot of Star Trek."
• "This is not the first time Star Trek has been linked to bizarre sexual practices. Those involved in the Heaven’s Gate mass suicides in Rancho Sante Fe in March 1997 also purported themselves to be avid Star Trek fans. One may recall that the cult forced its members to wear unisex clothing, had a strict policy of celibacy, a ban on all sexual thoughts, and eight of the members had surgically castrated themselves."
  ( That one is easy to explain.  They were emulating Spock, who sought perfect wisdom. It had nothing to do with sex. )
• "It has something to do with a fantasy world where mutants and monsters have power and where the usual rules don’t apply," Det. Constable Warren Bulmer told the LAT. "But beyond that I can’t really explain it."  ( The fantasy part I believe, but ALL space shows deal in fantasy.  Care to guess why? )
• After reviewing a bunch of episodes from the original Star Trek series, what became apparent is that sexuality on the Enterprise is pretty peculiar. At first blush, the crew might seem kind of sexy — big-breasted, scantily clad female crew members, men in skin-tight uniforms, and Captain Kirk ripping off his shirt at the slightest hint of heat — but the features of their sexuality are exaggerated in the manner of a comic book, creating a hygienic distance from anything to do with real sexuality. ( Nope, I don’t think this is it either.  A lot of cartoons enhance sexual organs. )
• The male crew members demurely ignore the sexually enticing (if antiseptic) female crew members. There seems to be a tacit agreement that any sexual relationships would destroy the unity of the crew. In one episode, Mirror Mirror, the crew members are confronted by their evil, mirror counterparts in a parallel universe and discover that the parallel Starship is a hotbed of sexual activity, with no moral code. ( Now, I think we’re getting somewere. )

This is a good point to jump off the Huffington blog for a moment.  Think about this point for a moment.  Most of the crew are stuck in an enclosed environment with sexually appealing members of their desire that they are not allowed to touch or even acknowledge in any way.  If they do acknowledge their sexuality, their whole world is destroyed.  In the meantime, their leader is running around bagging creatures of any race, as long as they are something he desires.  While repressing the crew, he is throwing their repression in their face.

I can see how one could draw a parallel here.  I really can.

Don’t worry folks, I’m more of a cross between Spock and Bones than a sexually repressed crew member.

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