Ever considered keeping it in your pants?

Speaking as someone who used to spend lots of time in chatrooms about 8 or 9 years ago, I can say without equivocation that the story of Brian Doyle (the 55-year-old Homeland Security pervert who got busted soliciting an undercover cop who was posing as a 14-year-old girl) is equal parts alarming, unsettling, and disgusting.

I’ll come clean: I did my share of cybergroping in those days. And I also did my share of wound-licking after being told by some girls that I was too old to chat with them (I was in my early-to-mid 20s, some of those girls were anywhere from 16-19). Which makes me even more incredulous about the charges against that sicko DHS employee.

Never once did it cross my mind to try to hit up someone who was still 16 years away from being born. (Laugh, but that’s really the equivalent of what Doyle did, if he had done this when he was 25.)

And even if I weren’t married today, at age 31, I couldn’t imagine trying to “get with” (either virtually or in reality) a 14-year-old girl. Even if I were 21. There comes a point when you just stop having things in common with kids of that age. Did it ever cross Doyle’s mind – even for a second – that maybe something was up? That practically 100 percent of teenaged girls find any man over 30 disgusting? (Come to think of it, so do a majority of women over 30. But that’s another story for another time.)

Naturally, this scandal will add another to the list of black marks against the electronic environment as a place of sickos, weirdos, perverts and creeps. Jackasses like Brian Doyle give the rest of us who use the Internet for above-the-board reasons a bad name.

By and large, the Internet, chatrooms, and social networking sites are safe environments if you use some common sense (which, as noted before, isn’t nearly as common as one might think). Still, even if it weren’t a safe environment, don’t blame the medium for the failings of a few hard-up dirty old men. Perverts will find a way, regardless of the safety controls put on any of their methods of preying on kids.

Don’t blame the kids, either, for exposing themselves to the predatory practices of those worthless pieces of shit. Kids don’t know any better. (Would you blame a rape victim, after all? Would you blame a shooting victim who was murdered unprovoked? Yeah, they might have been in a bad part of town, or put themselves in a compromising situation in the first place, but regardless, they don’t deserve what other ill-meaning people might do to them.)

98 percent of the blame in these cases lies with those subhumans who prey on teenagers and younger. (That number might even be closer to 99; I have to check my math.) I can't spew enough vitriol toward them.

The remaining 2 percent of the blame lies with the parents of these kids. They have zero clue what’s going on with their kids anymore. There is a fine line between, you know, letting your kids do what they want so you can be their friend and – egad! – actual parenting. Too many parents don’t know where that line is, and I’ll even admit that I’m not sure where it is sometimes either, but I know that allowing your kids to get online and post photos and personal information isn’t on the right side of that line.

“But I didn’t know they were doing that – I like to give them their space!”

Idiot.

Yes, you want to give your kids their “space” or whatever, but my God – their turning 14 doesn’t give you the right to tear up your parent card! They’re not “little adults,” and we do them a great disservice by treating them as such. Too many parents want to be buddies with their kids, want to be the “cool parents,” and completely shirk their parenting roles as a result.

But take heart, parents – you’re still only 2 percent responsible for your kids getting in trouble with sexual predators. Maybe even closer to 1 percent – I have to check my math.