Finally, signs the frenzy over so-called “sex offenders” might be abating. A Florida official was recently brave enough to stick his neck out and interject some reason into the fear-based hysteria.
City Commissioner Alan Bildz said he is pushing for a resolution that would urge state legislators to “do their job.”
Bildz wants to add a third category that would separate sex offenders whose partners were willing from offenders who forced themselves on someone.
“I don’t want to change the definition of the sexual predator,” Bildz said. “But I think that the lesser one, the sexual offender, should be broken into two categories: those that consented and those that didn’t.”
Recent legislation in Florida, such as the Lunsford Act, is burdening public budgets with elaborate background checks and resident notifications, including demanding schools fingerprint and clear every visitor – even district school employees, food service vendors, and UPS drivers.
But the city council member cited here, who proposed making a distinction between 19-year-olds having teen sex with 17-year-olds, and 44-year-olds raping and torturing 10-year-olds, found some fellow commissioners opposed. These idiots want
…to mandate the number of times law enforcement officials go door to door informing residents of the presence of sexual offenders and predators in Treasure Island. The law requires law enforcement agencies to inform residents of the presence of sexual predators. Currently, the Treasure Island Police Department notifies the fewer than 10,000 residents of sexual offenders as a courtesy, on a case-by-case basis.
[Knee-Jerker] Collins said that is “totally unacceptable.” He wants police to go out at least three times a year to inform residents of sexual offenders in the neighborhood.
So far, the loonies are winning, and untold dollars are being spent to further fortress-ize schools (even though Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped from her home), and stigmatize for life people who aren’t perverts at all.
I’m glad my parents dated in the ‘50s. At the time they eloped, my dad was 20 and my mom 18. They started seeing each other over a year earlier so it’s quite possible, had they been caught, that the police would now have to knock on neighbors’ doors to inform them the man who celebrated his 49th wedding anniversary two weeks ago is a sex offender.
