TN: Bill would allow sex offenders to attend church with permission
Can anyone tell me why this is even a thing? Isn’t spiritual growth and repentance something society would want from someone who has sexually offended?
To make that and the exercise of one’s religious beliefs more of a challenge to persons on the registry, a bill (House Bill 1922) proposed by Rep. Patsy Hazlewood would require the registrant to provide written notice of their offender status to the leader of the church and receive written permission from that leader in order to attend services at the church.
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We have talked about moving and know people in Tennessee so I looked into it. This is no surprise they would try this. They have or had something where some offenders could not live with their kids. Needless to say we are still in Florida. Sometimes the great looks greener, but normally it’s because it had lots of manure.
I just moved from FL to Tn, so far, been great, one word of caution, if you move to TN, you are automatically classified as violent until they receive all records for Florida before you are reclassified
Statistically, the most likely group of people to harm children in a church is the clergy. Therefore, the rules should start with them. Churches are free to make up their own rules currently. Churches could implement a policy to check driver’s licenses and run them at the door if they choose to. Despite the separation of church and state, The General House of Tennessee now believes that their authority extends to: “a house of worship for the purpose of attending religious services.” Basically a church leader who oversees a church with their own policy must disregard their current church policy and adopt a policy adopted by the General House of Tennessee. The law is meaningless since it cannot be enforced. Oh, perhaps they think someone will serve prison time because he attended church illegally. No church could survive that kind of hypocritical publicity.
I have tried to move to a better situation several times. Once I moved for 3 days to California. I put a deposit down on an apartment after quitting my then job and then went to the San Diego Sheriff’s office.
I read through the mound and pounds of boxes of rules, laws, ordinances, etc and went back to the apartment and begged for my money back. When they refused I said “I am a registered offender so you cannot kick me out since I cannot have a refund. The response was ” Let me get my checkbook”.
I came back to Florida and at the time you didn’t need to let them know you were leaving unless it was for a long period of time so it was like I never left.
When I was in Noway I was offered Asylum but I turned it down since at the time my Dad was having cancer treatments. (Yes God Healed him he is now 81) Plus I would not have ever been able to return without fear of arrest.
We are free to our own opinion. We too are planning to also move to Tennessee and despite this conversation are still planning to do so. As with all situations there is positive and negative. Until this unconstitutional registry is abolished each state and county will have their own garbage made up rules. Yes, Tennessee is far from perfect and although I am in a decent county here in FL. (Hernando) for my wife and I the Positive of the Tennessee Registry requirements far outweighs this state. 1) I would only have to register once per year 2) I would not have the local sheriff pull up to my house every 90 days. Therefore meeting these people a minimum of 6 times per year and having my wife deal with this. 3) In my particular reason to have to register I have the chance of being removed from the registry in 5 to 10 years in Tennessee. 4) If I should age to where my health goes and not able to re register in person, Tennessee is one of many other states which is understanding of this and would not prosecute me. So for my wife and I although we know there might be some things that are worse than Florida the GOOD FAR OUTWEIGHS THE BAD.
Still Hopeful,
these are same reasons I moved from Fl to TN, a couple of things
1, you still get the visit every 3 months
2, you WILL be classified as VIOLENT, and have to register every 3 months until you are reclassified, and that can take 6 months or longer, during this time, you will have to pay the initial 150.00 registration fee, then you will pay it again in March, and again the month of your birthday ( pay twice a year ) . Once you are reclassified, you pay it once a year, the month of your birthday
3. yes can apply for removal after 5 years on the TN reg.
Where I moved to , I only deal with 1 person, he does the checks every 3 months, and I register with him. Gave me his cell # to text/call should I have a question or problem.
So far, it has been nice, he doesnt bother me, very friendly, yet professional,. you still have to register cars, email. etc.
The DMV was also good to deal with, was very discrete when I told them I needed to code on my license
I hope this helps you
Just curious how this is better than Florida?
I get a home visit once a year and registration if free. Also the DMV here automatically places the notation on your license without having to ask.
Also you have to be classified for up to 6 months as violent no matter what is not good either. Glad it makes you feel at ease but that would cause me to get as far away from there as possible.
Thank you for the info. Not moving right away as I am waiting a few more years until I retire. My wife and I did visit this past year and when I checked in during our vacation there we couldn’t believe how great we were treated and the process. Thank you for your info as it was helpful and yes the good definitely outweighs the bad. I won’t mind the few things that are inconvenient or worse compared to the opportunity to get off the registry altogether.
Maybe I’m misreading the law, but the amendment seems to apply only to church services held in places like schools, parks, etc. It does not require registrants to get permission to attend church services, generally.
It rather makes an exemption to the presence restriction, allowing a registrant to attend a church service held at an otherwise prohibited place.
(Go to page 23 for the relevant section)
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tbi/documents/2016_Sex_Offender_Law.pdf
This is the clearest explanation of this bill that I’ve seen thus far.
Any church that discriminates and turns a person away and violates their freedom of religion and freedom to worship should lose their tax-exempt status. We are supposed to have complete separation of church and state. The government should not be making rules that dictate anything in regard to religion if no law is being broken. This also violates the 1st Amendment because it forces a registrant to say something he or she may not want to say.
Candice
I agree completely. It appears the law would be mainly directed towards the church. To force the church to follow a certain line of thinking like discrimination against a certain individual when that is not there normal teaching on the matter , is the state taking on the role of dictating to a church how they should teach there congregation. Is this really the road this country should go down. If it is just imagining the laws that will follow. The church’s will become nothing but tools of the state like in Russia .
Capt. Muncey jr. thank you for your service.
I agree our constitution was found on mostly Christian principals that’s why it has endured this long. I also grew up as a Methodist. But just because it was founded on Christian principles doesn’t give the state the authority to tell churches how they are to run there churches as long as there following the laws unless those laws conflict with Gods laws , then a Christian has an obligation to obey God’s laws. This bill is frightening lay close to crossing that line.
David, the laws in this nation were established on Christian principles. People were to be treated in accordance with principles laid out in the Bible. The ‘separation of church’ clause came into effect only where the Congress was restricted from passing any law establishing a religion, i.e. no state religion. Congress cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion. The term ‘separation of church and state’ came into use twice in our history. Once when a church wanted to ‘import’ a foreign pastor and were told that they couldn’t because of laws then in place. Congress swiftly got educated on that restriction. The other instance was when President Jefferson was dealing with the Barbary pirates. He wanted to make sure that they knew in dealing with the United States it would not be a ‘religious’ conflict but a conflict of political systems…thus ‘separation of church and state’.
When my family member was on probation, he could go to church but was told by probation officer that he could not talk to or even respond to anyone under 18. Even if he had known them all his life. And if he did it would come out in a lie detector test. Therefore he never went to church. And this is right here in Florida
As a former law enforcement officer, I can tell you, lie detectors are faulty. They do not detect lies or truths. They detect your reaction to a question.
I applied one year to the Tampa police department. I did not get the job because they said I was deceitful when asked if I had ever used Cocaine? I wouldn’t have known what cocaine looked like if it slapped me in the face.
So to prove the machines were BS, the next department I applied to asked if I had ever done ANY drugs. I had used Marijuana once but just said no and passed the test and got hired.
So in closing, I told the truth to one department and was told I was lying. The next one I lied and was told I passed with flying colors. To add to that, it also has to do with your conscience. I had decided I was not going to get hired either way so didn’t care. Since I was just saying no not worrying about failing it, the needle never moved as I was calm and at peace that no matter what I wasn’t getting hired. However I did.
An added note. The first guy at Tampa P.D was a former NYPD cop who was very rough around the edges and I was shaking the entire time. He treated me the entire time like I was an inmate getting the exam instead of a police recruit.
The examiner at the next department made me feel so comfortable and calm that after I got hired I could never look him in the eyes again after lying . ( Although Smoking MJ once is not an earth shattering event )
Not once in 4 years of probation was I ever asked to take a polygraph although every visit I had to do a drug test. Never failed one.
I know what you are saying about lie detectors. Years ago when I was required to take those silly tests, the examiner came to the conclusion that I was trying to groom a kid in my church. Well, such a conclusion really pissed me off. So in the presence of my counselor and the evaluator I laid a hundred dollar bill on the table and challenged them to do the same. If they could come up with one name in six months the hundred dollar bill was theirs. If not their hundred dollar bill was mine. All I did was piss them off, but I knew I had hit a nerve. To this date 15 years later I have yet to hear or see a name. As you might guess, they had the courage to condemn but not to put their money where their mouth was.
I gave up on churches long ago, as I have found many to not be worth the very words they preach in regards to being a Christian.
Churches are full of Human people. We are all sinners. We and they all make mistakes. We expect the Pastor to be better than us but because He / She is human and puts their pants on the same way as us, they fail sometimes as well. The Disciples were some of the biggest misfits around and often messed up big time, but Jesus loved them all the same.
Look at Saul, he use to persecute and even kill Christians. When he converted and became Paul, he ended up writing a large portion of the new testament.
My biggest complaint about churches is, the pews are so uncomfortable it is hard to not fidget in my seat.
Even when I was on probation, my paper work listed places I was allowed to go. Church services was on there with no approval needed.
When ANY person is turned away from church (Unless they are there to commit a crime or causes trouble) seems it is violating the constitutional right to worship.
What have we become as a society? Some of those weird SciFi movies I watched as a kid are coming true it seems.
It’s wrong.
Once again this is made to ‘seem’ to protect the Church’s children, but it doesn’t at all because almost all offenses in the Church don’t come from registered citizens.
It doesn’t protect the one on the registry either. It only makes them a ‘person of interest’ to be watched, feared, and kept from coming near any children like a bomb that is going to go off.
If a child is going to falsely accuse someone and it just happens to be that person, how does it protect the registrant?
Signing of documents doesn’t give a registrant some sort of immunity to accusation.
And how does it protect the Church? The Church would have to know ahead of time that this person was going to re-offend and not let them in, but what Church knows that.
Also, if a registrant does re-offend and the Church knows he/she was there then that would look even worse.
To sum it all up, this is another sub-conscious way of making registrants appear as though they are a danger and registrants only. No other felons.