When Boone County law enforcement officials sent a letter telling registered sex offenders they couldn’t go to church where there were children’s programs, three of the letter recipients filed a lawsuit.
The men claimed they couldn’t exercise their religion for fear of being arrested. They won their case with the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Now, a state senator is trying to set a time limit under which sex offenders can attend churches when children are present. Full Article
If at first the Constitution gets in the way of your hysteria, try, try again…. This law will get slapped down just as easily as the other. What if the RC is a church official and must be there 31 minutes before services, or 31 minutes after? What if the RC wishes to attend Bible study classes that are held prior to services? Toss in that I’m pretty sure that, outside a priest with a parishioner, there probably is no proof or even indication of a problem in this setting.
At what point do courts start telling the legislatures their laws are no longer based on reasonableness or rationality? (I know, they’re starting to.) At what point do these fear-driven/fear-mongering legislators realize the truth is other than what they gin up?
A major problem with the way laws are established is that State and Federal lawmakers are free to pass any law they desire, and these laws are presumed to be constitutional until they are challenged and proven not to be. In many cases, tens of thousands of RCs can be harmed by such laws before a successful challenge can be mounted.
If RCs do not fit the definition of a disfavored class of persons, it’s hard to imagine what group would.
“”It’s our responsibility to protect children.”
Yeah, well.. there’s nothing “proactive” about witch hunting people.