For reasons that these three crime-fighting quill-smiths either overlooked or cautiously avoided, such a law, if ever passed (and that’s dubious, at best), would have to be written in such a way that it only applied to a registered citizen’s prior residences. And, as time passed, these residences would grow in number and ubiquity as registered citizens move here and yon. Fast forward 20 or 30 years and there would likely be registered addresses all over the state, and lots of unregistered people living in the former addresses of registered citizens. These innocent people would have no idea why and no legal remedy to free themselves, or their property, from the stigma of registration.

Or let’s think of another “hypothetical” that is more likely to suffer from the stupendous and absurdly moronic opinion that has issued from the mind of not one, but THREE, “educated” journalists in Halifax County. My registered address was once the same as my mother’s. Now that I have moved, her home address is no longer associated with my registration. That’s the way it should be.

But I do occasionally visit my mother. And I typically stay the night in her home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and sometimes even for the New Year holiday. It would be tremendously burdensome for me to track down a legitimate law enforcement agency on Christmas Eve just for the ridiculous purpose of letting them know (and ostensibly the entire population of the planet) that I was planning to spend the night at my former registered residence which just also happens to be my mom’s, a home built by her dad and sitting on property that has been home to the family since the 1820s.

The Herald‘s suggested fix to this newly discovered “loophole” would not serve any legitimate public safety purpose but WOULD merely expose an elderly citizen of North Carolina to potential threats and harassment by the very people the editorial staff is likely to inflame: gun totin’ sycophants who remain whipped into a psychotic frenzy by the constant drumbeat of sex offender paranoia that has gripped the nation for more than two decades (beginning with the now laughable histrionics of alleged satanic rituals involving children in the late 1980s).

There is not a great deal to worry about here. Not only is the Daily Herald‘s readership abysmally low, but the suggested fix would likely find its way to the first garbage receptacle in legislative bill drafting after staff attorneys got done with it. But what is most disturbing is how far out of touch the media increasingly seems amidst a growing consensus among legal and academic experts that our nation’s policies regarding people formerly convicted of a sex offense are based on false statistical data and an unreasonable (and unsupported) level of fear among rank and file Americans.

But it’s that very fear that the editorial staff intends on fostering. Fear sells newspapers. And boy do they ever need to sell a few!

Sex offender therapy, while a requirement of my probation, is a weekly trip to twelve friends. I have even come to accept changes when they come in the form of suggestions from the group; they say what they feel, and they feel more than most — in part because they have been treated like the worst. Just like me, they come to group to pay their fees and talk about their last week’s thoughts and behaviors. Just like anyone, they desire a community: work; friends; lovers; a sense of joy from time to time. Unlike others, they (and I) suspend ourselves from much of the physical and cyber world because of flawed legislation which supposes that registrants are a) all alike in their likelihood to recidivate, b) innately flawed humans who do not regret their choices c) unworthy of a second look – hence, the registry’s treatment of a class of folks much the way toxic waste is treated.

If you saw my mother and step-father standing there, speaking up on my behalf week after week, fully supporting my good decisions and frowning at my mistakes, you would think twice about keeping me away from the farmer’s market on the weekends simply because on the weekdays people in there do administrative work for the parks department. I still manage to have nice meals with my parents and with friends; I just have to have my veggies picked up for me sometimes.

Few friends I had before I was arrested for a sex offense have stood with me and risked further association with the worst kind of outcast. Those who continue to stick with me exhibit a quietly fierce courage I cannot with certainty say I would possess in their situation.

There is no bravery in lambasting registrants with angry, inaccurate names. It is not a hero who, in assuming the kind of moral superiority that ends with violent words and even violent acts, puts down hundreds of thousands of American citizens who have committed a sex crime. Putting that in words, it doesn’t seem it should need to be said, but it does. It does because in my therapy group, the guys are some of the most caring, sensitive, impressively attuned folks I have run into in a long while, and recently at least two of them have spoken reservedly about feeling like giving up.

I am not trained in interpreting law, but I feel confident in feeling that legislation is supposed to have a purpose, and when this purpose is not achieved, when real harm is being done, those are the types of laws that some of my favorite thinkers speak of when they rail against oppression. A song in particular comes to mind when I think of the madness of following laws that even police officers speak against openly and harshly.

Cutting any group of people off from broad swaths of society creates irrational fears. Like a danger or warning label which few are qualified to read but everyone assumes they understand, the registry engenders a false sense of fear.

I learned something this week in my group therapy. I learned that I am no better than anyone else; I have much to learn about what causes me to fulfill my emotional needs in unhealthy ways. Even after years of therapy, some prison, and lots of alone time, I am surprised to find that people do want to know me; new people at times do want to know more about me, but they first have to overcome the registry.