sex offenders: The new threat to security.

Broken lives, broken homes, broken families. How could this occur in America? How can we, as a people, condone abuse? I'm speaking, of course, about the latest big problem in America: Sex offenders.

Sex offenders have become the latest political hot button. One can distract a detractor from nearly anything by invoking that specter of child abuse.. but is it really what we think it is? Are we buying our 'security' at the expense of all our freedoms, and gaining nothing at all? We talk of protecting our children, but what of the children of the offender? Some would claim that offenders have no right to family, no right to love, no right to live, even.

Are they not still human? Are their partners, their children still human? Think well before you answer this in the negative, as soon as any man can be said to be inhuman, and his rights and freedoms restricted by writ, all men can be.

But is this the work of a just and fair society? Indeed, what is perceived as a sex offense is not just and fair, but should we abuse to prevent abuse? Should we torture to prevent torture, murder to prevent murder?

This is what the sex offender laws lead to... since we have no right to police protection, and must police ourselves, would not an honest man justify many things in the name of protection? If such a man were to commit acts of vigilante 'justice', could he not claim he was condoned in such by the government itself? When we wrap a people, any people, for any reason in a label where they may be targeted, are we not, indeed, creating a situation where people will be targeted?

There is no fairness, in this world, nor in many cases recourse, but we ask, and demand only one thing, the right to be human. Should that right be denied, by any man, to any man, then the denier is guilty of fostering tyranny and slavery. We are a country based upon the rights and freedoms of men, based upon the ideal that all men are created equal, and that includes all of humanity, all genders, all colors, all creeds in the 'human'.

When you children cry out in the night, do you not fear for their safety? When the child of a sex offender cries in the night, who hears? When they sit at the schools, and are tormented, not for anything they have done, but the perception of what a family member has done, is that fair or just? Should they be torn from their homes, does that not deny their rights?

What have they done to deserve such a torment? How is this just or fair, that people judge them, judge their family, and judge their very existence, not even for their own acts? How is it fair that same law destroys those children, forever, in the name of their own protection? How is it just or fair that children are labeled as molesters and rapists, in many cases, simply for having a teenage relationship?

Is this the part of a wise and just government? Is it truly protection? Think about it. Look at the department of justice statistics. The greatest number of those approached by police officers, charged, and convicted of 'sex offenses' are between fourteen and eighteen. The ratio decreases over time.

And the greatest part of new sex offenses comes from those not on the registry. What protects you from those? Is it the destruction you visit upon those on the registry? Is it the vigilantes that call friends, neighbors, jobs? Is it forcing those on the registry from their homes, upsetting family situations, repealing the rulings of judges to place new trials upon them, trials, not by the court or by juristic right, but by the legislature without reviewing any kind of information on the offense or the situation surrounding it?

We, the people, of the united states, includes all the people. Young and old, rich and poor, felons, citizens, legislators, and even presidents and those that live on the edges of society.

How is it just or reasonable to press more, however, to those edges of society? How is such power for the protection of others, when it forces people into situations where no man can see hope, and where justice is a fading memory in the daily trials of survival?

Is a label such a good thing to give a man? Should a man rebuild his life from the ground up, and then be destroyed again, not for a new offense, but for being judged guilty of a future offense which may never occur?

That, friends, is the future you're creating... a future of guilt until proven innocence. A future of no rights, of no hope, of no security. When all are registered, who can say what the registry will be used for? Nobody will protect the children then... nobody can... for when the rights of any are limited, and the freedoms taken by writ... all freedoms have fallen, and all rights will be restricted.