“The Fine Print”, by Michael Schrader

DO YOU WANT YOUR FACE ON A POSTER?

(Written 18 November 1998. Published in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted 11 August 2009.)

I was quite surprised, and should I say, quite disturbed as well, when I went to my neighborhood filling station the other day and saw a poster of a sex offender that has moved into the neighborhood. Now before you jump to conclusions, I am not disturbed that a convicted sex offender has moved nearby; what I am disturbed about is that the police now have the right to tell the world about this guy's dirty little secrets from the past.

This guy has been convicted and served his time. Now, despite the fact that he has been punished for his crime, he is not being allowed to put his life back together. No, he is to be stigmatized for the next fifteen years, effectively for the better part of his life, for a mistake he made in his past. If you read the notice carefully, it says that it is solely informational to alert the neighborhood of the presence of a convicted pervert. What it really means is that for the next fifteen years of his life, this man is subject to harassment and vigilantism. This is cruel and unusual punishment, to say the least. We might as well brand this poor soul with a scarlet letter!

The proponents of such notification will tell you that an informed public is a wise public, that the intent is the safety of the citizenry. Rubbish and poppycock! It is nothing more than a return to the puritanical days of Hester Prynne! What is most repugnant about the notification program is that its strongest advocates are the supposed "freedom-loving" liberals, rather than those hated, Bible-thumping, thought-controlling conservatives. Kind of ironic, isn't it?

The scary thing is that now that the box has been opened, now that the precedent has been set, it won't stop. First it's the sex offenders. Next it will be the gun owners. There will be a time in the not-so-distant future when pictures of all hunters and gun owners are posted throughout neighborhoods. After all, the argument will be made, guns kill, and since guns kills, those who own guns are a menace to society. And, we just wanted you to know who they are, so you can be prepared.

Don't laugh; it's not as ludicrous as you think! Gunowners are already being branded and stigmatized. In the wake of the Jonesboro shootings, there is a movement asunder to make gunowners responsible if their guns are stolen and used in acts of violence, like murders. (Remember, the two young boys in Jonesboro stole the guns from a family member before firing upon the school.) What does that mean? Well, if someone breaks into your house and steals your hunting rifle, and then proceeds to do bad things to other people with your rifle, then you could go to jail for contributing to the crime. After all, if you had not had a gun, then the bad guy couldn't have done those bad things with it, now could he? So it's your fault, and you will pay! What's really scary is that a very effective fear campaign makes such a law likely.

After the gun owners, we can post warnings about cigarette smokers. After all, those darned smokers are killing innocent people with their second-hand smoke! Did you know that if a non-smoker gets lung cancer, that person can sue a smoker on the grounds that the cancer was due to second-hand smoke? Is this a great country, or what? It's not enough that smokers are now treated as lepers (no, I think lepers would be treated better), but a non-smoker can hold a smoker liable for his medical problems!

We must draw the line in the sand right now! Life is too short to be stigmatized. We must allow every human being to have his privacy and his dignity. Yes, even convicted felons. If we allow the government to take their privacy away, who is to say that ours will not be next?

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