Member Submission: Hello from the FAC YouTube Channel!

Hello from the FAC YouTube Channel! Thank you everyone for your continued interest and support of our channel. I’m getting ready to post a video of court highlights and watched a case I hadn’t heard before: People vs. Lymon out of Michigan. Once again I had to listen to a lawyer with a straight face make the government’s case that the registry isn’t punishment. But this guy was different. This lawyer happened to be Deputy Solicitor General in the Department of Attorney General of the State of Michigan and since he graciously published his email right there on the State’s website, I thought I would attempt to change his mind.

Enjoy and Keep Watching!

FAC YouTube

Attorney General Restuccia,

First of all thank you for making your email available to the public. It shows you have the mind and character to listen to people and consider what others have to say.

The Sex Offender Registry is not punishment? You know, at some point we’re all going to have to at least agree to the obvious. The sky is blue and being on any state’s registry is a whole lotta punishment. Would you like to be on the registry?

What do you think your life would look like if your name was on a public registry intimating that you’re a pedophile for something stupid you did 30 years ago, for the rest of your life? Your life would be officially over. Nothing good will remain. A reputation forever ruined. Our reputation, the currency with which we move about and exist in the community of the world , forcibly and forever maligned and enforced by a government’s law. Imagine the government having the power to deny such a spiritual truth like “Your Past Does Not Define You” or, my favorite, “I Am a New Man in Christ.” A government action is denying me these universal freedoms. My past will always define me if you’re going to keep calling me a “pedophile” on a government website. It’s makes achieving high goals, obtaining good jobs and providing the best of life for my family impossible. The government enacts a law so devastating that is makes finding a job, a place to live the most impossible humiliating issues of life AND says it’s not punishment?

The scheme completely decimates people both mentally and physically. This goes way beyond the need to “warn” people. WHAT? People are shocked to find when they come aware of a sex offender in the neighborhood there isn’t one damn thing they can do about it. What are they supposed to do, stand at the window all day and night because WARNING there is someone living next door who is so out of control and so dangerous that he could rape your child at any time – but don’t worry the registry will keep you safe? It’s actually very irritating to people. They would have rather just not known. But by making it known, using a scheme which was born out of panic, fear and emotional outrage – the exact wrong time to be writing laws.

And child abuse keeps happening it’s just that the monster you keep looking out the window for has actually just made its way into your child’s bedroom but you missed it because you’ve been lied to and misguided. People on the Sex Offender Registry aren’t actually the ones abusing kids – another irony. And if they do well, they’re gone to prison. No one is claiming that there aren’t bad people in the world. The world is a dangerous place. But we’re looking in the wrong place.

Have you ever gotten a DUI? Many have, took a few weeks off, got some help and returned to work. DUI’s that injured or killed people, even. Imagine the government coming in and labeling you a drunk, a danger to society, because you never know when he could be drunk driving down the street. After all he did it that one time in 1962 – he’s dangerous! The irony is that would probably save more lives than the registry does.

Don’t we all win when laws are based on truth? The American quality of life is best with a system that is just, honest and believes in an effective rule of Law. The research is horribly clear and becoming voluminous all stating in a thousand different ways how this does not work, actually hurts children and families of sex offenders. A government label declaring and shaming you a pedophile when you really aren’t one for the rest of your life?

Maybe we should stop talking all high and mighty, burning the midnight oil reading cases and just agree on the definition of the word “punishment.”

Of course it’s punishment – it was always meant to be punishment! Of course the Legislator is going to write the law in that way! Otherwise, the whole scheme would be a bust and they like their bills to be popular with the public so that we continue to do the exact opposite of what we should be doing to combat child abuse.

Because making someone (who we honestly do hope never does such a crime again – when was it just assumed that no one can ever change or be better or stop bad things, Christ! Talk about anti-christian!) So let’s make someone who we’re supposed to be afraid of sit at home in a shit of shame all day with no job no money no friends called a pedophile can’t go to church can’t go to son’s school can’t travel without a “Yellow Star” on my passport? Which part of all that isn’t punishment? And which part of that is protecting children?

As long as this keeps going on, we’re all losers. No one is winning. We can keep telling the public some lie about protecting that one child (which is a legal absurdity and not how a Democracy works). We’re not gonna give up our guns to save just one kid and neither should a million people be denied their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for one child.

And something else absurd? Naming the laws after the most horrific, disgusting, evil crime man has ever heard. Listen, I had nothing to do with Megan Khanke. Never knew her or spoke to her. Nor was my crime anywhere close to that horror – how in the hell is it fair that the laws which have nothing to do with the named child, are allowed to have a title which elicits such outrage?

Sir, this is all about punishment and it is both cruel and unusual.

Sincerely,