That’s not irrational at all. It wasn’t that particular thing i was talking about. If you want to deny this guy your business, go right ahead.
What is irrational is the continued insistence that every sex offender is inevitably going to reoffend, and the assumption that reform and rehabilitation are literally impossible, despite evidence to the contrary. I’m not arguing that sex offenders are nice people, or that we shouldn’t be vigilant when they’re around. I also concede that some are, in fact, irredeemable. But the indiscriminatory lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key attitude displayed by some is illogical and counterproductive.
Here’s what I think pedophiles should do to support themselves. Buy a house in an upscale family neighborhood, plant a big sign on the lawn: “Registered pedophile lives here. $100,000 cash will allow me to move elswhere” Lather , rinse, repeat.
If citizens lack the will to execute them, or to raise taxes build enough prisons to house them for life sentences, we deserve this outcome. Tight fisted, weak willed voters want it both ways, and they will be forced to accept distasteful practices such as I have suggested before anything will chage.
I must say that, the issue of pedophilia aside, i’m surprised that someone who generally appears so committed to the left and liberal social justice issues would argue that building more prisons is the answer to America’s problems. Hell, there are even a good number of libertarians and conservatives who think that the whole prison industry as it currently operates is counterproductive, oppressive, and in bad need of reform.
I didn’t mean to appear to advocate more prisons or executions; my point was, voters who don’t want pedophiles in their neighborhoods cannot expect them to simply disappear when they have served their time. Either they change the law (life sentences or executions) or they change their attitudes (convicted pedophiles living among us). Merely making their life miserable through boycotts and harassment will surely backfire, perhaps in the scenario I outlined.
He certainly has a right to earn a living - like most convicted cons he will find that more difficult than people never convicted of a crime. The reality of the sitution is that cons continue to pay for their mistakes long after we’ve released them from jail. But that is no different than many people who make mistakes - people who have their kids while still teenagers often (although they wouldn’t change it or give up their kids) pay the price - less time and energy to pursue college, less money long term. People who quit jobs or get fired don’t establish a stable work history for employement and theorectically won’t do as well as someone who has established a stable work history. Someone who declared bankruptcy is going to be seen as a bad credit risk - even after he has paid his debt. Your past follows you. You may not have a permanent record from elementary school, but you do have a past.
I have no problem with people refusing to patronize a business run by a sex offender. But I’d like to think that people would have enough heart to treat each offender individually, rather than saying, “They are a SEX OFFENDER!! OMG!!!”
I view a serial rapist differently from a one-time date rapist.
I view a molester of children differently from a seducer of teenagers.
I also think crimes committed in youth (under the age of 25) are different than crimes committed recently.
A one-time offender is also different from a multiple-offender.
I also think people can change. Even a child molester can realize the error of his ways and do a 180. Christians, of all people, should realize this is possible. I think it would be wrong to throw out all benefit of the doubt after someone has paid for their crime and formally made amends.
I don’t have a problem with people choosing to discriminate like in the manner described in the OP. I would probably refrain from going to a restaurant if I knew the owner had done something horrendous, like stealing millions of dollars ala Enron. I know I would boycott a place if I knew the owner was an unrepentent racist. But I don’t know if I would go to the extent of encouraging others, including perfect strangers, to do so unless I felt those people were in potential danger (for instance, if the owner had recently been convicted of credit card fraud) or exploitation (for instance, most of the owner’s clientele is black, but he regularly goes on radio shows talking about how stupid and lazy black people are). I don’t know why I would feel uneasy doing this, exactly. It just seems kind of mean to talk about people’s past sins when they don’t have any significance to today.
A 22 year old guy who sleeps with a 16 year old (consensual) doesn’t belong on the sex offender registry. If he rapes her? Yes. So many girls today, however, will lie about their ages and many of them look older than they really are. A guy shouldn’t be labeled a “sexual predator” for the rest of his life for having sex with a sexually mature person who, as far as he knew, was legal.
Depends on what we’re talking about. If you were 18 when you stole a car, I don’t think that means you are untrustworthy when you’re 40.
In fact in one of my law papers I argued that maybe a nonviolent felony record shouldn’t follow someone around for life. If you broke into a house 20 years ago, served your time, made financial restitution and went on the straight and narrow after that, maybe it shouldn’t be required to tell a potential employer. (Just a thought, I don’t have a firm opinion on this either way.)
Some crimes, though, are relevant regardless of how long ago it happened.
If we’re talking about certain crimes, yes, absolutely.
But sex crimes are different.
Take the rapist thing. We’ve got one guy who, one time, came up behind a woman in a parking lot, knocked her out, drove her to somewhere remote and raped her for 2 hours.
Then we’ve got another guy who has done it 10 times.
Now in the eyes of the law, the 10-time offender deserves more time in prison. I’m not going to be comfortable with the one-time offender if we were in the same parking lot, though.
I’m now going to channel every cop, lawyer, and law professor I’ve ever known: “show me one that did.”
God’s arm is not too short to save anyone. Are pedophiles willing to be saved, though – or have they been given over to a reprobate mind already?
By all means, they should seek forgiveness and enjoy God’s grace (if they’re so inclined). But they can do it behind bars as far as I’m concerned. The evidence of the likelihood that they will do it again is too overwhelming to risk putting them back in society after we’ve caught them the first time.
If we had a one-strike law for things like this, there’s a little girl in Florida who would be alive today.
I really don’t think you can make amends for something like that. Sitting in a prison cell isn’t going to give their victims what they’ve lost.
But that’s the thing … this particular thing is pretty damn significant regardless of when it happened.
Why? Is there an objective reason why we should believe a sex crime is different from any other kind of violent crime?
So very true. I wouldn’t be comfortable either, nor would I expect anyone else to.
However, I do think a sex crime can be the result of a singular lasp in decency and common sense. I do not think a sex offender, even if he does something bad to a little kid, is someone who should be branded for life.
I was flashed by a guy once when I was ten years old. (I don’t know what kind of crime he would have been accused of, had he been arrested.) While I abhor what he did and I believe he should have been punished, I don’t think he should carry a stigma with him for the rest of his life. It could have been a one-time incident. People do stupid, bone-headed things sometimes.
Now I have to ask you to provide a cite that no sexual offender ever goes straight.
I believe the pedophilia is a mental disorder and as such, a person who lusts after children cannot really help themselves. But I also believe there are many pedophiles among us in society–but they have a control over their impulses and do not act them out for fear of the repurcussions or because of their morality. If they can do it, I don’t see why others cannot.
I have no problem keeping child molesters away from children. Keep them out of schools, day care centers, the scouts, and baby-sitting jobs. Tell Johnny and Suzy to stay away from them. But beyond that, their freedom to a life should not be restricted post-imprisonment just because a small group of molesters will never be rehabilitated. That is unjust and unfair, and I don’t see how it would motivate anyone to change on their own (why change for the good, when everyone’s going to judge them harshly anyway?)
Why not keep all criminals behind bars? Once a thief, always a thief. Once a murderer, always a murderer. Once a prostitute, always a prostitute. We seek forgiveness from God, and in return He asks us to forgive others. This is what mercy is. A Christian like yourself is supposed to subscribe to this idea.
From the cite I posted above, non-sexual offenders reoffend at much higher rates than sex offenders. So if we’re basing our judicial decisions on evidence, then non-sex offenders should be indefinitely incarcerated as well.
I know it tugs at our heartstrings when cute little kids are brutally murdered, expecially when sex is involved. I know it makes me sad too. But it would be unfair to sentence a guy who fondles his nephew to life in prison just because some creep on the national news raped and murdered Jessica Lumsford. Now if a guy raped and murdered his nephew, keep him in prison and throw away the key. But don’t sentence people based on what you THINK they may do once they get out. A child molester may escalate to killing. Or he may decide to go celibate and live in the woods, far from temptation. Humans, even monstrous humans, still have free will.
You can’t make amends for most serious crimes. If you drink and drive and murder my entire family, nothing you could do–not even writing a check for millions of dollars–could atone for that crime. Not even you killing yourself will make amends, because you aren’t bringing me back what I lost. However, I’m not going to try to ruin your life. Keeping you in poverty and making your family suffer is not going to make amends for my loss either.
How is it significant to the daily operations of a restaurant, though? To spread it around town that this guy did a very bad thing a long time ago (that he’s already gone to prison for) does what exactly for the victims? And will it prevent future victims?
Where do you draw the line? Does everyone who commits a crime get stoned to death, or is it just the ones who were involved in sex crimes?
I have to say that so far, pizzabrat’s comment regarding the utility of such a boycott has made the most topical and practical sense to me. I would only add that every dollar I spend is not a political, philosophical, or sociological statement. I generally just want the world to work smoothly. Dollars are only equivalent to votes to [deleted by the Illuminati]. While I would not desire to take others’ inclination to make every penny count away from them, I would question the motivation, and wisdom, behind a scarlet letter, so to speak. Those kind of things have a bad habit of eventually biting everyone in the ass.
But if, after due consideration, one finds merit in the idea, by all means I’d suggest one supports it like one would support any other idea. And in the meantime, pray one never gets labelled.
If anything, I’d “boycott” the aquaintance who sent me the e-mail. Since there’s no point of me knowing that a local restauranteur was convicted of sex offences against minors, it’s something that I’d rather be ignorant of (because what the hell am I supposed to do about it? hate him?). There’s no reason to tell me about closeted skeletons of a near-complete stranger, so I can easily dismiss the founder of this e-mail campaign as simple-minded and vindictive. She’s just a worthless gossip who’s trying to stir up pointless animosity.
The person who started the campaign is the father of school-age children. After the restaurant owner moved into his suburban neighborhood, he did a bit of sleuthing and uncovered the info about the convictions. I can understand a father’s concern for the well-being of his kids, but turning this into a citywide boycott does not compute, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t feel resentment against this guy for starting the email campaign, under the circumstances. But that doesn’t mean I am going to be a vector for spreading vitriol.
I am getting so tired of that “uncommon sense” B.S. about pedophiles not being at risk for recidvism. That said, we don’t know that the guy is actually attracted to children; he might just be an abuser who enjoys dominating, and children are easy to dominate.
In conclusion, what erislover said. I think that the good done to the community by keeping a business with employees and suppliers afloat, outweighes the theoretical evil of giving money to a man who went to jail for being a diddler (for all you know, the actual money you spend might not even go into his pocket; he’d use it to pay overhead costs before he pocketed anything).
You’re certainly right that it’s silly to make inflated claims that sex offenders are not prone to recidivism. The fact is that some are.
But this is no more silly than making “uncommon sense” assertions that all sex offenders are inevitably going to reoffend, which is exactly what some people have been suggesting in this thread. What this topic needs is less knee-jerk emotionalism and more rationality.
You’re right, of course, and I would never say any such thing.
IMHO, the logic underlying the fear of pedophiles is this: Sex is one of the Big Three, the urges that are the basest and strongest among humans. If your preferred form of sexual release is illegal, then a significant portion of your very human nature is illegal. This makes pedophiles more dangerous than, say, bank robbers or gang members for example, since you can offer theives and wife-beaters alternatives that are just as good or better than their criminal behaviour of choice, but when someone has a hunger for prepubescent children… nothing else will be as satisfactory.
Also; if we give pedophiles a “second chance”, and they offend again, we can be seen as sacrificing our children and their innocence in the cause of freedom for someone who, in hindsight, never deserved it. That’s a monstrous thing to contemplate, especially for a parent.
Back on topic, I would be interested to hear other people’s opinions on whether this man committed these assaults because he is a “true” pedophile, or just an abuser. If it is one or the other, does that change how you see things? How important is his chance of reoffending to the facts of the situation?
I have a hypothetical situation in mind, and I’m not sure how likely this situation is to occur, but my experience leads me to believe that it is something that might happen. Feel free to comment.
Suppose that you have a pedophile. As some people have mentioned, pedophilia is a considered as a mental illness, and one that is rather hard to treat, in the sense that if you are sexually attracted to children, it is difficult to remove this attraction. However, I’m sure that many pedophiles realise that actually acting on their fantasies would be morally wrong, whatever the situation. So they use their free will to stay out of situations where they could feel the urge to molest children.
As I said, suppose that you have a pedophile, and suppose that this person is, as I said in the previous paragraph, sexually attracted to children but determined not to act on their urges. Suppose that this person has been successfully willing themself not to do anything inappropriate with children since puberty. But then, something happens in their private life and they fall in a depression. Depressive people often do things that they wouldn’t do otherwise, and in the case of this person, it takes the form of, let’s say, fondling a prepubescent child. This is plausible since the person already had pedophiliac impulses.
Now, suppose that other people find out about the incident and the pedophile gets arrested. They go though a psychological exam, they go to court, and the court orders a psychiatric treatment for their depression and some time in prison. When their sentence and their therapy are over, their psychiatrist says that they probably still feel sexual attraction towards children, but that as long as they don’t get depressed again, they will be able to prevent this latent attraction from manifesting itself.
Do you think this situation is plausible? And in this case, what would you do? Is it a situation in which it could be said that a convicted sexual offender was “rehabilitated”?
I’d just like to say something about the 16 year old girl. You see, I was a naive, lonely 16 year old girl in a small town once. I took dance lessons, ballet and jazz. The other girls who took those classes also took tap which I think came after the other two. At any rate, I’d wind up waiting during tap dance classes, alone except for the teacher’s father. He and I got to talking and, I thought, became friendly. I was a prudish virgin, naive, terribly self-conscious, and somewhat in need of a father figure. I don’t remember exactly how things started, but one night, I found myself sitting on his lap while he fondled my breasts! I didn’t protest; I was too shocked. I’d never even considered anything sexual – he was older than my father and I thought at the time that I was ugly and unattractive as sin.
Now, in my case, nothing happened to the guy. My father didn’t want to make trouble in the community. I kept up with the remaining few dance lessons, and I made sure the guy kept well away from me.
My point is that while 16 year olds can and do consent to sex, not all do and for some it can be pretty traumatic and scary. What happened between us wasn’t consensual; it was an old man taking advantage of a naive child. To this day, I’m a bit leery of men over 60, although I know this bias and I do correct for it.
In the case of the OP, I honestly don’t know what I’d do. On the other hand, there are a bunch of restaurants around here, and I’m sure I could find a better one to spend my money at. I’ve also got a brother who’s tended bar in a bunch of places. I’d probably ask him if he had any inside information on the guy. I wouldn’t be comfortable taking my niece and nephew there.
Yes, people do have a right to try to earn a living in my book, but not necessarily the living of their choice. A few years ago when I was laid off, I badly wanted a good programming job. So did, at a guess, a few thousand other laid off techies. When I wasn’t even getting interviews, let alone offers, I took a job as an administrative assistant. Yes, it stank, but it kept me alive. I’ll support the guy’s right to earn a living, but I don’t have to support him because he’s chosen to be a restauranteur, just as the companies which were hiring techies didn’t have to hire me because I’d chosen to be a programmer.