The sex offender registry regulations began by regulating the lives of sex offenders. It started in the late 90’s by making them register and by the mid-2000’s limited where they could live and just last year introduced a bunch more restrictions that impede travel, anonymous speech and more.

But lawmakers are not satisfied with punishing former offenders, they need to go after their family, friends, employers and associates.

Case in point; yesterday, in Iowa, a Mom was arrested for letting her sex offender boyfriend pick up her kids from school and daycare. Not only is she facing child endangerment charges, but her kids were taken from her! A couple weeks before, another mom was sentenced to two years in prison for leaving her children with her sex offender boyfriend with whom they lived! No claims that the children in either case were harmed in any way. So they not only restrict the lives of sex offenders, but those who date them too? As if, as a parent, their choice to date a registrant indicates they don’t have the sense to decide for themselves who can look after their own children?

It’s not only who you chose to start a family with, but whom you already have a family with also. If you live with a sex offender you are subject to the same residency restrictions they are. If they can’t have internet access in the house, you can’t have it either because apparently you can’t be trusted to regulate access to your internet. If you live with a registrant, your address is on the hit list and your vehicle is on the sex offender registry even if the actual registrant never drives it. Guilty by genetics!

Residency restrictions not only punish registrants who violate them but punish the landlords in restricted areas from renting to sex offenders or family who takes them in. Can you imagine a parent’s choice; let your registrant son sleep homeless on the streets or take them into your home and risk arrest? Or risk vigilantes?

Next up, Ron Book wants to pass a law that will add registrants employment information to the public registry, thereby making employers registrants as well. As hard as it is for a registered citizen to find a job; that will make it impossible! Why stigmatize businesses who give former offenders a chance? Absent anything showing that new crimes are being committed as a consequence of their employment, there’s absolutely no reason to punish the employer.

Registrants have a hard time standing up for themselves, but as non-registrants who have done nothing wrong and who still have their right to vote, it’s time you stood up and spoke out. Why should your rights be taken from you? Why should your vehicles have to be registered just because you are related to a registrant? Why should your business be shamed and shunned just because you chose to give a hard working, capable former offender a second chance?