FAC Weekly Update 2018-02-20
Dear Members and Advocates.
Florida Sex Offender News. Two posts on our site this past week received a significant response. The first was about the tragic school shooting in Parkland. The second, concerned a father being denied entrance to a hospital for his son’s surgery because he’s a registered sex offender.
While it may seem the Parkand shooting is unrelated to our cause, the politics surrounding the issue is not. The debate of Constitutional rights vs. “if it saves one child” has brought out the hypocrisy in many politicians. It also highlights the oppressive influence lobbyists have over lawmakers.
Since 1987, local governments in Florida have been banned from creating and enforcing their own gun ordinances. More significantly, in 2011, the Florida Legislature passed a law that imposed fines on counties and municipalities that do not do away with and stop enforcing their own firearms and ammunition ordinances. “Counties with 25 cities, it would be impossible to enforce different ordinances”, said Sheriff’s Association President and Walton County Sheriff, Mike Adkinson. “It would be confusing.” Really, Sheriff Adkinson? Cities and Counties apparently have no problem enacting and enforcing the patchwork of overlapping, conflicting and dramatically different sex offender restrictions, right?!?
No matter what side of the firearm fence you stand, what’s glaringly obvious when it comes to Florida politics, is that it’s not about research, effectiveness or empirical evidence. It’s certainly not about “if it saves one child”. It’s all about who is putting money into the politician’s pockets.
The second post to receive a significant response was about a registrant being denied entry at a hospital for his own son’s surgery. It received over 40 comments on our site and over 30 comments when reposted on the California affiliate site. One of the reasons it resonated so much is because this scenario will almost certainly impact all of us one day. We will face a day when a parent, sibling or child needs to be hospitalized. We will face a day when a loved one becomes ill and we will need to fulfil our role as a child, sibling or parent to be there and care for our family. This arbitrary, irrational rule prevents us from being there for our family.
For many registrants, we accept the restrictions imposed on us as punishment for our transgressions, but when the restrictions punish our families, especially our own children, it becomes intolerable. Denying a child access to their parent as they undergo surgery is inhumane! This does not, by any means, meet the objective of “protecting children”, it doesn’t even meet the objective of punishing sex offenders. This punishes children. This must stop!
In the coming weeks we plan to provide an update in some of our legal challenges. We hope to have good news to report. At the same time, the organizers of the out-of-state challenge are close to funding that challenge, but not there yet. If you’ve pledged but not sent in your donation or you are still interested in supporting this challenge, now is the time to act.
Sincerely,
The Florida Action Committee
SOME HEADLINES FROM THIS WEEK
Florida House refuses to debate guns, declares porn dangerous
The Florida House of Representatives was in session on Tuesday considering several issues. These included a motion to debate a bill banning the sale of assault weapons in the aftermath of the mass shooting that killed 17 people last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas…
Don’t allow yourself to be shut out of public meetings.
Two weeks ago we told you about Florida’s Sunshine Law, which provides (or is supposed to provide) open access to public meetings. Last week, in the 2nd District Court of Appeals, the Court decided The City of St. Petersburg v. Wright, which invalidated at St…
Registrant Denied Access to Hospital For Son’s Surgery
Father on Sex Offender Registry Barred from Son’s Hospital A member contacted us this week. He’s on the registry for an offense that took place over 15 years ago. He brought his son to Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando for surgery and was denied access at the…
More Than Half the Registered Sex Offenders in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida are Homeless.
News About Florida Registered Sex Offenders The City of Ft. Lauderdale’s ordinance has caused more than half of the registered sex offenders in the city to be homeless. The City ordinance, which banishes sex offenders from; “within one thousand four hundred (1,400)…
I see things getting worse all the time since I left Florida and after experiencing four different fed prisons around the country I wound up back in the mid-west where I was born and raised. It’s no rose garden up here in Illinois either, but few of us are actually homeless, and a number of lawsuits are proceeding well that have been mounted by Illinois Voices for Reform. They should help others in like situations all around the country, at least that is my hope. The Florida political and legal environments are INSANE. ADULT Porn is legal by fiat of the SCOTUS because when government tried to prosecute it all thru the sixties, seventies, and eighties they failed to win convictions because juries always had a few Grandma Tillies on them who were curious minded and wanted at some point, somewhere, to SEE some before they died. These old ladies really BELIEVED in the First Amendment. Actually legislatures these days, especially in Florida, legislate as if they had never even heard of the Bill of Rights.