Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:35:34 PM
But will none of them be allowed to sell ice cream? Andrew Blankstein of the Los Angeles Times reports.
A measure that bars registered sex offenders from operating ice cream trucks in San Bernardino County has been unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors.
The ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, requires anyone seeking a business license to sell ice cream to undergo electronic fingerprinting that would be checked against state and national criminal databases. Violators could be fined $500 per day or face six months in jail or both.
Now, maybe the newspaper isn’t being precise in their terminology, but if this is a blanket ban on any sex offender from operating ice cream trucks, as opposed to child molesters or someone who otherwise has a history of crimes against children, then I think it is overreaching.
For example: Why should someone who got drunk at a Spring Break event and exposed himself to other drunk Spring Breakers ten years ago be banned from operating an ice cream truck? Or, what if someone was caught in a prostitution bust once ten years ago? Should someone who was convicted of statutory rape twenty years ago for having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend when he was 18 be banned?
Let’s use some common sense here.
No, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for sex offenders. But I think unfair or unnecessarily restrictive laws are harmful. I think this kind of overreaching with legal force is a reaction to the promotion of license in the culture. We claim we are more open and free about sex and more tolerant of alternative sexuality, but if someone messes up sexually, we crack down with extra force. We make things unnecessarily complicated because we don’t want to tout that keeping sex within marriage is the ideal, and back it up with our actions. We put our children in situations where it is more likely they will be abused (day care, or with a date, shack-up honey, or stepparent), and then try to prevent the abuse by trying to ban molesters from parks. How about...watching your own child?