GA- Lawmakers might reform law if 'oats' in their past were exposed

7-27-2008 Georgia:

Editor:

The Georgia state law which is forcing Wendy Faye Whitaker and her husband to move from their Grovetown home is cruel and unusual punishment for a sexual indiscretion committed by Mrs. Whitaker 11 years ago.

She was then 17 and her companion was 15, both of them unwise experimenting teenagers. To treat Whitaker as if she were some kind of sexual monster preying on innocent children is insane.

The politicos who wrote and enacted the sex offender law have not (nor will they ever) deter a determined adult predator. What the law has done in many cases is to carve a scarlet letter on the foreheads of people who have made mistakes in the past, but constitute a danger to nobody.

The eager proponents of this unrelenting lifelong punishment law are cruel and stupid.

Perhaps a thorough, open investigation of these politicians' "oat-sowing" years will yield some indiscretion for which the law can turn on them and force them into a life of constant humiliation.

You can bet a lot of our representatives would be scrambling to revise or rescind the present sex offender statute.

..News Source.. Opinion of: Gene Rickaby, Martinez