Politicians using “sex offender” barbs as ammunition
One Florida city is using a person required to register as a sex offender as mud to sling in a City Commission race. Gladys Mezrahi and Rachel Saltzman Friedland, who are both running for Aventura City Commission, are using a 2018 effort to force a registrant out of the condo community where both candidates live, each arguing that they did more than the other to kick the man out.
This is hardly uncommon. Last month, in California, Legislation that intended to eliminate anti-LGBTQ inequality in sex offender registration requirements (SB-145) was spun by the sponsor’s opponent as “promoting pedophilia” and at the center of a New Jersey congressional race, one candidates tenure as an official at Human Rights Watch (which opposes the registry) is leading to him being accused of “helping sexual predators hide in the shadows” and “choose[ing] sex offenders over your family.”
When politicians start using “sex offender stigma” as ammunition in political battles, perhaps it’s time they informed themselves if they truly want to position themselves as caring about public safety. Sad!
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Statements like these two are making should make it easy to show intent to banish people (punishment) wherever residency restriction legislation rears its ugly head.
Is thi in a news article somewhere? I’d like to add them to my Shiitake Awards blog so I’d like quotes if possible.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/aventura/article246000700.html
Ms. Book has made a career out of it and paved the way for other Florida politicians to do so. No need to let those pesky facts get in the way of their “Bona Fides”.
A close relative of mine is a politician in the state where I live and I have been used as ammunition against him. The attacks have always been by anonymous or obscure sources such as “a concerned neighbor” or “John Galt”. I even had my own state representative sign a letter of concern condemning my relative for supporting a sex offender. Ironically I am one of his constituents. In all fairness both parties attacked my relative. I have contacted the police but apparently these low life’s know just how far they can go and not break the law. One day one of them will go to far and I will find out who they are. I have contacted a lawyer and the legal gun is loaded on the rack. My intentions are to go after them and legally nail their hide to the barn door. Since I am already exposed, I feel I have nothing to loose except possibly a court case.
If someone supports this or can talk me off of that ledge I am all ears.
Unfortunately, this tactic works and will continue to do so, especially now with the whole “save our children” bandwagonall the pearl clutchers have jumped on.
And it NEVER enters their minds that these same “children”…their children…will be adults soon and heaven forbid they do something silly, naive, immature and end up on a sex registry with their lives ruined. These same pearl clutchers (I like that terminology) probably also have a gay family member or an interracial marriage somewhere and of course they HAVE to do everything to “save” everyone else from these poor “choices”….yadda yadda yadda. Taught my sons as they entered teenage years(13-14) that you could try to go against “society” but that you will lose against the weak and fragile that control just about everything. Ignorance is bliss…a worn out cliche but oh so true.
Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often and for the same reason.
Thanks Ben. I will plagiarize that comment in the future.
Veritas.
Well said, Ben. Too bad that wasn’t written in the Constitution.
It dosent matter if it was written in the constitution in Florida. They would just legislate around it. The same way they did ex-post facto.