The Louis Freeh Report , released this past week, reveals that Joe Paterno and administration officials at Penn State University buried reports of child sexual abuse on their campus in order to protect the image of the institution and of the football program. While this decision was deplorable, Paterno's willingness to participate in the cover-up was, to some degree, a reflection of his personal discomfort with sexual matters; indeed, his graduate assistant, Mike McQueary, testified that he didn't want to disturb the coach with the graphic details of what he had witnessed.
Joe Paterno came from a generation of American men who are/were not comfortable with the open discussion of human sexuality; this is/was especially true for those raised in Catholic or Conservative Christian families. Topics such as domestic sexual violence, homosexuality, premarital sex and aberrant sexual behavior were avoided, if not totally banished. The sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies, which has had a significant impact on the views of their children, did not change human sexual behavior; rather, it brought this aspect of our lives into the open, forcing us to deal with the realities and ramifications of our nature.
This social shift has improved our understanding of human sexuality, including the natural incidence of homosexuality; while their rights are yet to be fully realized, gays now openly participate in all aspects of human society. At the same time, our enlightenment regarding deviant behavior, such as pedophilia, allows us to deal with its threat and develop safeguards to protect the innocent. Clearly, in the case of Penn State (as in the case of the Catholic Church), those safeguards failed.
