The Sharing of Opinions

Today I would like to share a comment I found on the Minnesota Public Radio site.

Wrong path on MySpace

What a scary place signing the new bill into effect regarding the ban of sex offenders. [MPR News: Bill declares MySpace and the like off-limits to sex offenders] There are a couple of issues that come to mind regarding this and other bills that have recently been signed into effect. Who is a "sex offender"? Convictions carry sentences, it is illegal to add to a sentence after it has been fulfilled. Will this bill effect sex offenders already in the system? Why do we need this bill? Who gains from this bill?

People labeled sex offenders are in very large part not child molesters. The word "sex offender" is scary, just like the word "terrorist". Just like the word "terrorist", "sex offender" is thrown around and used without thought. Crimes such as statutory rape are included. This means that a man or a women of 18 years of age that has sex with a girl/boyfriend under that age and is convicted will be considered a sex offender. "Sex offenders are many times registered as such for 10-20 years or more.

Second, any conviction carries a sentence. The sentence is given by either peers or an appointed judge. This sentence is carried out by the convicted person. Here we have a new bill ready to be signed into effect that prohibits rights of people that have fulfilled their debt to society. The bill is a continuation of punishment beyond the prescribed sentence that has been fulfilled.

This can easily be likened to any person convicted of any felony currently. It is currently legal to deny a job to any person that has been convicted of a crime. It is also now almost mandatory for any person to sign a waiver for a background check for any position. This makes finding work for felony convicts impossible. This is another form of unusual punishment beyond the prescribed and fulfilled sentence. Not only does this effect the person but the community and economy as a whole.

Why is this bill going into effect? There is not a jump in rapes, child molestation, child pornography etc. In fact the numbers have been going down consistently for over a decade. Why would it make sense to increase penalties?

Politicians love to make a name for themselves. Generally these people don't care about the consequences of their actions. Really who can argue with "tougher penalties for sex offenders". Before we act, we must take a hard look at what and why we are doing such things. Is this beneficial for anyone. Children, no. Community, no. Sex offender, no. Economy, no. Mrs. Swanson, ahh yes. [MPR News Archive: Swanson joins call for names of sex offenders using MySpace] If parents can't teach their kids what we all learned when we were kids, "don't talk to strangers," we're in for some bigger problems. Can our politician deal with real problems? Maybe bureaucratic waste?

Finally, this one step by itself is not bad. Great, we will have 1 or 2 less sex offenders using their real names on Facebook in Minnesota. LOL. Though, what are the second, third and fourth steps? A complete ban on Internet usage? I don't know of one job available anywhere that doesn't use the Internet for some part of it.

I'm not advocating sexual offenses, not even a little bit, however we should be wary about where we are going.

Geoff Halls
Bloomington, Minn.

Mr. Halls raises several good points.

• Are such bans effectively additional punishments imposed on sex offenders, thus violating our constitutional rule against ex post facto laws?
  
• Does anyone really benefit from these bans?
  
• If they are effectively useless, why waste taxpayers' money and public resources on their enforcement?
  
• Are politicians really interested in the public good or are they just out to make a name for themselves by passing "sounds good" legislation?

Questions like these are fundamental to our activities and policies as a nation.

• Does the policy or law we are thinking about violate the basis of our free and independent society?
  
• Does the policy or law actually address the issue we need to work on?
  
• Could the policy have undesirable consequences that we have not anticipated, perhaps doing more damage to our society than good?
  
• Does the person advocating the policy or law have alterior motives for supporting it that might be clouding their judgement, making their advocacy suspect, and have they considered the previous three questions?

Before we jump on the bandwagon on any policy or legislative idea, we need to answer these questions. Only then can we make reasonable and responsible decisions. Many times we pass laws without thinking about their consequences.

In the past there have been many examples of this.

In the 1910s Federal legislation was passed on the premise of protecting the banking industry and expanding its economic potential. The results? The Great Depression. Enough said.

In the 1930s, responding to The Great Depression, legislation was passed to regulate the investment industry and the fundraising of corporations. The result? It costs companies between 10 and 20 percent of their desired funds just to register their intended stocks and changes nothing about the potential risk of investment in new (or even pre-existing) corporations. It also did nothing to address the actual causes of The Great Depression. The answer? More legislation to help finance small businesses through debt-enslavement agreements.

Again in the 1930s, responding to The Great Depression, the welfare program was started, guaranteeing all citizens (supposedly) the basic necessity of food, medicine, and in some cases shelter. The result? Generations of welfare recipients that have been trapped in dependence upon the government. The answer? More legislation to impose arbitrary limits on all recipients as to how long they can be dependents in their entire lifetime.

Yes, those are examples of old legislation, but they are ones we are still reeling from today. And there are plenty of more recent examples, up to and including our so-called USA Patriot Act which has all but stripped us of any assumption that we have a right to privacy and anonymity in our society.

Can we undo the damage caused by these mistakes? Yes. Will it be easy to do? Hell no. It is never easy to undo damage. There is the cost of eliminating what is causing the damage. There is the cost of repairing the damage done. And there is the cost of replacing the damaging policies or laws with better considered policies or laws.

Can't we just take the time to do it right the first time?

The Cost of Standing Up

Most people don't consider the effects their actions have on others. As advocates and activists, we have to consider everything. Every idea we generate, every cause we fight for, will have effects far beyond our simple circle.

Take for example Colorado's institution of the CICP (Colorado Indigent Care Program). Initially the program was to be a safety net for those who for one reason or another were indigent, unable to pay for their medical care.

I have been speaking to a young lady who's experience tells another tale.

Recently she broke her arm when she fell while running for a bus. It was a homeless man who helped her up and out of the street to prevent her getting run over. Chalk one up for a marginalized citizen being there for another when needed, first of all.

The problem is this, she was turned away from several facilities because her broken arm was not life threatening, thus in their definition, not an emergency condition.

Excuse me?

They went further by stating the would not treat her without prepayment.

Say what?

That's right, she was turned away because she did not have insurance, cash up front, or a CICP card. Education time, boys and girls.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (42 U.S.C. § 1395dd, EMTALA) is a United States Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. As a result of the act, patients needing emergency treatment can be discharged only under their own informed consent or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

This law is not abrogated or mitigated by ANY state or subsequent Federal law.

Of course, in at least one case, it doesn't surprise me. University Hospital (one of the above guilty parties) had another incident years ago. A man was working for the hospital and had a heart attack. His supervisor from the hospital came to his INTENSIVE CARE room and informed him he could either take early retirement from the hospital or he would be fired immmediately.

Understand, University Hospital is a part of the University of Colorado educational system. If student nurses and doctors are seeing their instructors and residents making illegal decisions like there is nothing wrong with them, they too are learning to ignore the law. This is not the kind of scenario I would want my niece to learn from, and she wants to be a pediatrician.

God help us if this kind of criminal conduct is allowed to pass unchallenged.

Talk About a Typo!!!

According to the Associate Press, Arkansas lawmakers are in deep dodo.

Recently they passed a law that was supposed to set the age of marriage as 18 unless the girl was pregnant. The problem is, someone forgot to proofread it before they past the law. As passed, the law sets the age of marriage as 18 unless the girl is not pregnant!

This opens the door for me to talk about a very controversial trend that has been taking shape for more than 100 years. Until the late 1800s, the age of consent in most states was 14 or less (some as low as 9, I believe). In the 1890s a group of well intentioned Christian activists began a campaign to raise the age of consent in their states. The good intention was a simple one. They believed that by raising the age of consent that fewer young women would end up involved in prostitution. Yes, they are the same ones that convinced most states to ban prostitution completely.

Over the years, the age of consent has slowly been pushed higher and higher. Statutory rape laws were passed to punish anyone who violated the new edicts. The punishments over the years have also grown, from at one point the crime being considered little more than a misdemeanor in some jurisdictions to one that can land an offending party in prison for decades.

The problem is, no one has really considered whether these laws are truly effective in addressing the problems they claim to, nor are they alone. Patterns of behavior that were once considered potentially romantic (a man pursuing the woman of his dreams incessantly for example) now result more often than not in charges of sexual harrassment and/or stalking. Now, mind you, I am not saying there are not serious nut cases out there that women need to be defended against, but I am asking if we might have over stepped the bounds of reasonability.

Let me give an example. I cannot remember where I read it (I believe it was in a law review magazine many years ago), but there was an article where the author argued that the more strict our laws on such sex and lawful relationships become, the more likely we are to have lovers who choose to elope, hiding the true age of their relationship, in an effort to pursue their hearts' desires. Literally, they would rather be fugitives than to be without each other. Sounds a bit insane to anyone who has never felt irrational love for someone.

I can understand our desire to protect women and young girls from abuse and exploitation, but should we truly be outlawing the potential of true love?

Please understand, I am not advocating any adult/child or forced relationships. What I do question is holding people criminally liable in cases where no criminal intent exists or where the age difference is negligible (say, within 3 or 4 years).

Allow me to give some examples. A while back two young teenagers were arrested and put into juvenile hall for engaging in mutually agreed upon sexual relations and charged with molesting each other. In another case, two children (under the age of twelve) faced similar charges in another state over what was essentially a 'playing doctor' incident. In still another case, two older teenagers ranaway from home, falsified their age on a marriage license application, had a judge perform the marriage, and went on to consumate that marriage. They are both facing charges for the falsified application and for the mutual sexual relations afterwards.

This is what I mean when I ask, have we gone too far on this issue. Understand, I am all for protecting our children. I have a 13-year-old niece that I hope is being looked after properly and taught to respect herself and her future potential enough not to give in to sex before she is truly ready. I do hope that if she does find the right person that they do not end up victims of an over-reactive system like in the cases above.

The fundamental fact is: We spend so much time on cases like these that too often the real situations that need intervention and criminal prosecution end up slipping through the system. The more resources spent on unnecessary cases, the less there is to spend on the real cases. I am, essentially, calling for a little common sense in the application and creation of our laws.

I hope I made my position on this crystal clear.