What are society's rules about sex stuff again? Because nobody seems to know.

Just asking questions.

As a bona fide “social conservative” and card-carrying sexual prude, I am not ashamed to say that I am 100% a square when it comes to sex, and personal conduct, and all that stuff. It’s a great life and I wouldn’t want it any other way. But there are people—most people, really—who do want it the other way. So I have to say I am a bit confused when stuff like this happens:

Spectrum News NY1’s longtime weatherman Erick Adame said he has been fired by the news outlet after he appeared in an adult webcam website. The video of him participating in NSFW activity was sent to his employer and his mom, he said.

“I have recently been terminated from my job as the meteorologist at Spectrum News NY1 in NYC,” he posted on Instagram Monday. “I am taking this opportunity to share my truth rather than let others control the narratives of my life.”

He said that despite being a television personality who appears in living rooms across the nation’s largest media market, he felt compelled to perform on an adult webcam website.

“It was 100% consensual on both of our parts,” Adame said of himself and his co-star. “I wasn’t paid for this, and it was absurd of me to think I could keep this private. Nonetheless, my employer found out and I was suspended and then terminated.”

Now, I myself can understand the impulse to fire this weatherman for appearing in a tawdry, embarrassing gay webcam film. Well, sort of. I think over the past few decades we’ve become a much crueler and more heatless and essentially non-forgiving society, and I tend to err on the side of Maya Angelou’s dictate to “forgive everybody,” because the benefits therein seem rather obviously self-evident. And I mean, it’s not like the guy killed anyone.

Nevertheless, I sort of get the instinct to can this guy here. I wouldn’t really want my news station associated with any kind of smut, particularly that of “adult webcam websites,” which feels sexually perverse and personally pathetic on another level entirely. But that’s me: I’m one of those right-wing extremists you’re always reading about with radical, extreme, right-wing views about sexuality and human behavior. Of course I might want to fire that guy!

But the people running Spectrum News NY1 are almost certainly all progressives, or if they’re “conservative” there’s a decent chance they’re the kinds of “conservatives” who are actually just progressives, as is often the case in media. What grounds do they think they have to fire him? Hell, here’s the same news network a short while ago running a feature about “the stigma around sex work.” So, what, they think there shouldn’t be a “stigma” about selling your body to strangers, but if you do it for free you should be fired? Huh?

Nobody is talking about this weird cognitive dissonance and that’s very strange. I feel like there should be a major Internet mob frenzy going on right now. Ask all of your liberal friends and 90% of your cowed, confused conservative ones, and they’ll all tell you that there’s nothing wrong with appearing in a dirty little Internet porn film made in your living room. “Hey, if that’s what they’re into, and it’s all consensual, who am I to judge?” And that goes double when it involves gay men—as we’ve noted, people are really, really afraid to level any kind of criticism at gay men for any sort of profligate sexual behavior, ever. So it seems to me there should be a more robust response from much of the country over this firing. But why is everyone so quiet?

I don’t know. I suppose you have to pick your battles. But I for one would like to call a temporary ally-ally-oxen-free and have the rules re-clarified. Are we once again allowed to frown upon wanton and imprudent and sordid sexual behavior? Or is it only if you put that behavior up on an Internet site? Does it matter if you’re gay or straight? Are we now allowed to fire people over this sort of thing?

We should probably figure this out, if only because there are probably more than a few weathermen around the country appearing on porn webcams and they should be aware if they’re on the verge of losing their jobs. That’s only fair.