WARNING! Viewing This Blog Could Land You in Prison

That's what happened to a Buffalo man, who was sentenced to one to three years in state prison for "viewing the Web sites of nudist colonies."

Yes, the man is a convicted sex offender, and I am certainly not defending his admitted criminal behavior, but one of the downsides to living in a so-called free society is that people are generally going to say and do things that are offensive to other people.

There is nothing illegal about being a nudist, engaging in social nudism, possessing nudist and naturist materials, and viewing nudist web sites.

I don't know the terms of this man's probation. Was he also barred from bookstores, museums, watching television, going to the movies, reading magazines, or going to the Sports Illustrated web site to view the swimsuit models? It's rather difficult to avoid sexually-charged material in today's culture.

This is a major red flag for nudists and naturists everywhere, that at least one judge considers the lifestyle to be sexual, a magnet for pedophiles, and a possible catalyst for illegal and criminal behavior.

When faced with sexual crimes, society seems to be more than willing to sacrifice freedoms in return for some sort of false reassurance that the government is providing protection. The fact is that the government cannot protect the population against everything - already 1 out of every 100 citizens is incarcerated in America, the highest in the world. 25% of the world's incarcerated people are in the United States, which contains only 5% of the total population on the planet.

It seems that we are more than willing to criminalize just about everything that scares us just a wee bit. 500,000 people are in American jails for drug-related crimes alone. A male living in the United States has an 11.3% chance of going to prison during his lifetime.

It's clear that this process of throwing people in jail for all of society's ills is not working. The recent case of Anthony Sowell who is accused of the serial murders of several women in Cleveland, Ohio, clearly illustrates the failure of the system on all levels.

With education, job training, mentoring and substance abuse programs in short supply behind bars, it is a challenge for inmates to clean up their acts and improve their situations. When they are released, ex-felons face an uphill battle to land even the most menial, low-paying jobs. This nation continues to punish the formerly incarcerated after they have paid their debt to society. Many professions and employers bar applicants with a criminal record, and many public housing and college loan opportunities are beyond reach.

Not surprisingly, many ex-cons cannot care for their families or become productive members of society. But they do manage to hone their skills and become better criminals.

And now we're locking up people for their sexual urges, which only further serves to frustrate and bottle up a sex drive which will eventually find a means of expression, often in a violent manner.

Taking someone who is getting sexual gratification from web sites and throwing him into the realm of prison sex, with rape, slavery, violence, and homosexuality, is not going to solve the problem. Once he's back out, he's likely to be in much worse sexual health than when he went in.

I certainly don't have the answers, but it seems to me that the punitive actions society is inflicting on people for real and perceived sex crimes is actually making the problem worse. In the case of sexting teens, who exchange nude photos of themselves with cell phones, charging them with felonies and putting them on sex offender registries is absolutely going to ruin their lives and encourage real criminal behavior in order to survive in a hostile society.

So this poor schmuck in Buffalo who exposed himself to some boys in 2002 at a YMCA camp, and fondled another, doesn't have a chance at rehabilitation. Many will argue that he should be locked up for good. But since his original violation, if the worst thing he did was look at some nudist web sites, then this illustrates our society's deep-seated fear of sexuality and the human body, and its cavalier willingness to discard human beings onto this virtual trash heap we call the justice system.

It's no longer about what is fair, or best for society, it's about money and politics. The recent case of the cash-for-kids scandal in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, shows how incredibly cold and cruel we can be to our own children when there's a buck to be made.

Prison is big business, and big business needs customers. Don't think for a second that YOU are not on their radar.

Pennsylvania Sexting Case Reaches New Heights of Absurdity

Chambersburg Police Chief David Arnold is investigating about 30 high school students for sending nude photos with their cell phones, the the number could grow as the investigation proceeds.

"Currently, my understanding is what they could be charged with is felony child pornography. They would be on the Megan's list as a sex offender for the rest of their lives," said Eric Michael, Assistant Superintendent, Chambersburg Area School District.

Michael says he's now revamping the school district's Internet safety education program and extending it everyone.

"It's something that can't be solved by schools. It has to be solved by all of us," said Michael.

You can solve this problem right now by dropping the investigation and staying out of the private sex lives of teenagers. Nobody seems to care that these kids are actually having sex with each other, it's all about the images, which seem to have taken on some sort of power to sap the sensibility out of authorities.

This is about as absurd as the Supreme Court debating the legality of depictions of animal cruelty, when every night on television human beings are depicted as being raped and murdered under the most horrible of circumstances.

Do we really believe that the banning of images somehow makes the root of the problem magically disappear? In the case of sexting, does anyone truly believe that putting 30 high school students on a sex offender list will solve anything? It's truly stunning to hear a police chief and a school superintendent be so ready and willing to destroy the lives of perfectly normal teenagers in order to pursue some warped version of "justice".

These individuals have been given the task to protect and educate our children, not to ruin their lives.

14 Year-Olds Are the Most Sexually Dangerous Group in America

America is turning its children into sex offenders. The chart above, from the US Department of Justice, illustrates how we are criminalizing what was once a normal part of adolescence - experimenting with sex. Via Andrew Sullivan's blog comes this essay.

In our new bizarre world of sexual offender legislation each child is a victim and a perpetrator. As the victim, they get no help, of course. The victim status is the excuse needed so that the sledgehammer may be used on the other child. So each becomes a perpetrator. They will be arrested; they will be forced into court. They are likely to be convicted and sentenced. They may be placed into the various prisons for children that have been established—places where they will learn what unwilling, sexual attacks are really like. They will be tortured by therapists and eventually released—maybe. Even that is no longer guaranteed under our sex panic. Today, someone who has served their sentence can then be held in preventative detention for the rest of their natural life because the mob demands it. And the politicians give the mob what it wants.

As any reader of this blog knows, I've been railing against the criminalization of "sexting" and other youthful sexual indiscretions for some time now. Teens have been having sex since long before recorded history, but it is only now in the age of technology and information that there is hard evidence that such activity exists. Where once a heavy petting session in the back seat of an automobile yielded merely some boastful claims and the hushed passing of secrets, now there are cell-phone photos, text messages, and Internet postings, all flowing in the trough for overzealous prosecutors, Christianist lawmakers and panicked parents to feed off.

It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids “moon” a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a “child pornographer” for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a “victim.” One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week’s difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

The magnitude of this perversion of natural and man-made laws cannot be underestimated. Recently The Economist ran an editorial on the harsh punishment of sex offenders.

Because so many offences require registration, the number of registered sex offenders in America has exploded. As of December last year, there were 674,000 of them, according to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. If they were all crammed into a single state, it would be more populous than Wyoming, Vermont or North Dakota. As a share of its population, America registers more than four times as many people as Britain, which is unusually harsh on sex offenders. America’s registers keep swelling, not least because in 17 states, registration is for life.

So the rounding up and persecution of sex offenders is the new red scare, the new witch hunt, the new crucible in which to burn our fears. I recently received a postcard telling me that a sex offender moved into the neighborhood, giving his name and address. I'm sure everyone in the area got one, too, and everyone is now living in a certain amount of fear. I do not know what this man did, but I do know that I have never in my life received a notice when a bank robber, murderer, embezzler or violent criminal ever moved into my neighborhood.

I cannot state enough that true child pornographers, rapists, kidnappers and other violent criminals who would take the innocence, health or property of any other human being deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Human vermin like Phillip Garrido, if found to be guilty of the heinous crimes with which he is accused, deserve no mercy from the courts.

But to take a teenager who is only fumbling around and experimenting with sexuality, and turn that kid into a sex criminal, is doing precisely the opposite of what the law intends. Thankfully people are beginning to wake up to this bastardization of justice, but it's too late to help so many of the kids who ended up behind bars, kicked out of school, found themselves unable to secure meaningful work, or ended up living in the streets.

These kids are criminals, not necessarily because they violated the life, liberty or property of another person. They are criminals because the politicians defined them as criminals. These damned “family values” conservatives, and compassionate feminist Leftists, who banded together to “save the children,” turned America’s kids into sex offenders by fiat. And they feel good about it. They are satisfied by it and only wish more had been rounded up earlier. The Left wants everyone in therapy and under the perpetual care of the state, and the Right wants everyone in prison, or in fear of the law, and under the thumb of the police. And that is what is happening. [Classically Liberal]