By Mark David Blum, Esq.

It is fashionable of late to target the sex offender as society’s whipping boy du jour. A decade ago, it was drug users and drug dealers. Five years ago, it was terrorists. Today, it is the sex offender. Tomorrow – hopefully, Republicans. “Sex offenders” conjure up the most evil and vile of images in our minds. Relying upon that human frailty, candidates and public servants have been focusing their re-election and straw man energies upon sex offenders to keep our attention off real issues. Who, after all, is going to defend a sex offender or advocate they should be allowed to live near schools, churches, and parks?

I am.

No, I am not defending sexual misbehavior nor violence visited upon children. But, I am going to stand up for those most innocent victims of this current sexual frenzy.

Recently, an Upstate New York Family Court Judge told a father that his son could no longer visit him because a “level 3 sex offender lived nearby”. The Court turned a blind ear to the father’s plea, "I'm being punished for someone else's crime. I've done nothing wrong for my son not to be here with me, nothing at all. I don't like the fact that this man lives here either. But I have the right to live somewhere, too. I have the right for my son to be with me where I live, not to have to take my son like a gypsy and go somewhere else, just to spend time with my son."

It is shameful how we feed upon ourselves as a society because of the demons created out of straw. We should all shed a tear for this poor father and his son and how they have been victimized not by the criminal, but by TheoCons and Republicans seeking to maintain political control. The argument goes that a level 2 or level 3 sex offender constitutes a high risk of re-offending. So too might a murderer re-offend. A thief might steal again, an abuser might abuse again, and an alcoholic may drive drunk again. We cannot know what is in a person’s heart and mind. Though advocates of these sex laws claim to protect children from predators. It appears they care not one whit about the murderers, thieves, or drunk drivers prowling about Town. Where is the legislation restricting where those people can live?

We are a nation “conceived in Liberty”. Bile rises in my gut every time I hear a politician argue that a law should be passed because of what someone “might” do. Argued as the fundamental principle behind these laws are the assumptions that a convicted sex offender “might” re-offend. Self designated Saviors consider the danger of such re-offending to be so high, that they furiously work to assure no no sex offender lives within so many feet of a school or park. This restriction supposedly will reduce the threat posed by sexual predators as if to say an evil minded person cannot walk the extra couple hundred feet to pick off a victim.

But who speaks for the silenced? What is it about these laws or the assumptions about sex offenders that prompts judges to agree with parents who argue that, “my main concern as a parent is the safety and well being of my son and the fact that, at this point in time, this registered sex offender could get to my son and hurt him. Besides the safety and welfare of him, it is just as a parent, having that feeling inside, that at any point his father or anybody wasn't watching him, that sex offender would be able to have contact with my son." Is the Mother here being honest or just using the presence of the sex offender to continue the assault upon her ex-lover?

Dad never left his son unsupervised and took every precaution to keep his son safe. Still, the family court judge ruled that unless Dad or the sex offender moved, the child would not be allowed to continue his weekly visitations. Remind me again how society benefits by these laws.

So today I too shed a tear as I share a father’s pain. Made to be a vagabond just to see his child; the innocent suffer for the sins of the politicians. I cry for the lost privacy and family rights. My heart is sad and heavy for how we accept this abuse we heap upon each other. Ultimately, if we keep going down this path, we will all be mourning the loss of our freedom and liberty because a boogeyman might be living down the street.

Respectfully, the Judge made a serious mistake. These sex offender laws need to be struck down. We need to reprioritize society’s needs and assure the equal protection of the law to everyone. It is not the neighborhood that we leave to our children; but the legacy of how we treat each other is what they take into the future.