If you're a do-gooder doing good, anything to get the job done. Lying, cheating, stealing.. it's all OK as long as you're doing good.

Not even named after the child in question. Named after an Anglo-ified pseudonym. (OK, fine, Hebrew-ified.)

So Kevin, you don't think parents should be notified when a convicted pedophile moves into their neighborhood? (Megan's Law) Or is this an exception to your "pretty good bet"?

Bill,

The wikipedia has a relatively good description (at this specific moment) of the arguments against Megan's Law.

But let's say you're a parent, and the police haven't told you of a pedophile. Are you more safe, or less safe? Do you parent the same or differently?

How does Megan's Law actually help? Why not just kill sex offenders outright?

Personally I'm for organ harvesting of traffic camera violators. Think of how many people with liver, kidney, heart, lung or other ailments could be helped.

In Michigan, you can be a listed sex offender under "Megan's Law" because you were an eighteen-year-old lesbian who had sex with a seventeen-year-old lesbian. At least, that's what I assume the code menas by "an abominable and detestable crime against nature."

How is this a good law?

Oh wait. I didn't read far enough. It applies when both parties are adults, also. So public registration of convicted gay people is actually the law in Michigan.

What about Ohm's Law? That's a good law; and Ohm was only six when he discovered it.

Hmmm. So finding out whether one of your neighbors is a convicted pedophile is equivalent to "killing sex offenders outright" and "harvesting the organs of traffic camera violators".

It's very simple. I have 3 kids who play outside. I would rather know whether or not the guy next door is a convicted child molester. Could we tone down the hysterics a little?

Ohm was six-years-old when he discovered his law? Are you sure?

How do you know the guy next door isn't a convicted murderer? Or a rapist who was released? How do you know the woman on the other side of your fence doesn't have a history of violence and attacking people? How do you know your baby sitter isn't a pedophile to be?

Megan's Law doesn't provide you any assurances.

What's the argument in favor of Megan's Law? It's that pedophiles cannot be rehabilitated. Since they can't be rehabilitated, we may as well just kill them. A whole lot kinder than imprisoning these monsters the rest of their lives. Sure, sure, since you know they're there you'll be more careful. But what about family that wasn't told? What about Johhny the clerk at the Rite-Aid? They can't be rehabilitated and you can't warn everyone. It's sad, but for the children's sake, we need to just kill them.

Also, about the camera violator thing, I just think it makes sense. They knew what would happen if they went through a red. They could have wiped out an entire family. They are insensitive, uncaring, arrogant, terrible drivers. If they go through one red light, changes are good they will be recidivists. And their organs could be put to so many good uses. So it's a win win.

Anyway, Megan's law doesn't tell you anything, but a law that provided you with the criminal and medical records of everyone on your street might make a bit more sense.

"Ohm was six-years-old when he discovered his law? Are you sure?"

Pretty. His parents bought him one of those electronics kits from Radio Shack (which in Germany is known as Ohneweirschaftschacken) and he just sort of stumbled on it while playing around with the resistors. Quite an achievement for the lad.

I prefer Cole's Law. On the side.

"Friends of Sarah" did make a poor choice in selecting Jammie Garcia as their poster child rather than, say, Dawn Ravenelle or Tamiia Russell. The fact remains that underage girls who get secret abortions are more likely to go to fly-by-nights like the quack that killed "Sarah", and are more likely to delay seeking medical care until they are moribund. Girls *have* died from these secret abortions. Those who have survived have often done so with horrible injuries. Rachel Ely, for example, was left paralyzed.

What Planned Parenthood is trying to do is to divert attention away from ugly facts about what they and their associates do. They know there is no way that they can defeat Proposition 4 by attacking the actual language of the ballot initiative. It addresses every single objection that they've ever brought up to parental involvement laws, including a provision that allows parents to sign, in advance, permission for any abortionist in the state to scrape out their daughters behind their backs.

They can't attack "Sarah's Law". But they have to defeat it, because they can't afford to lose the revenues they gain by performing multiple secret abortions on underage girls. And they can't let it be known that it's a financial consideration.

They were desperate. What to do?

Attack the choice of examples.

This from the people who have been bringing us the spurious tale of how Becky Bell "died because of a law" for twenty years now. Becky died of pneumonia. I read her autopsy report. There was no sign of infection in her pelvic organs whatsoever, not sign that the pregnancy was tampered with. Becky's parents didn't understand that the "abortion" referred to in the autopsy report was a miscarriage. They thought "abortion" meant "induced abortion", and Planned Parenthood let them go on believing that.

Jammie Garcia, aka Sarah, really did die a horrible death caused by a botched legal abortion. Her fetus was shoved through the back of her uterus into her bowel and left there to rot. Planned Parenthood doesn't want you to remember this. They want you to remember that she was living with her baby's father, as if that somehow changes everything, as if that made her an adult that was responsible for her own death.

This isn't a pro-choice issue, its a parental rights issue. Why on God's name wouldn't the parents have a right to know their child was having a medical procedure?

Since the age of consent in California is 18, there's a pretty strong correlation between pregnant minors and statutory rape victims. One imagines statutory rapists are pretty strong on the, umm, pro-choice side of the issue, so there will be a strong pressure on the girl from their end to destroy the evidence. As a rule, a minor should seek counsel from her parents, and for the exceptions that test the rule--- there's a judicial waiver option.

Its idiotic not to include the parents in a matter where their own daughter is both a patient and a crime victim.

The linked article says nothing at all about the
quality of the law - it is all about the circumstances of one particular individual.

Kevin fails reading comprehension 101 and his little flock of dittoheads just lap it all up.

Oh great. More abortion shrieking.

Thanks Kevin.

For your next thread, how's about asking whether Israelis are the new Nazis?

"One imagines statutory rapists are pretty strong on the, umm, pro-choice side of the issue"

Go soak your head. Do you people just say the first stupid thing that pops into your minds?

Sarah, can you explain what's so stupid about beowulf's statement?

In fact, Planned Parenthood has been documented on many many occasions at sites across the country of offering to ignore or cover up statutory rape.

I think Planned Parenthood plays a useful and vital role. And I think it's shameful that they would violate local laws, and that they would make it easy for serial, statutory rapists to commit, well, statutory rape on a serial basis.

If Planned Parenthood thinks the law is wrong, they should do whatever they can to overturn it. If they plan on violating the law, the should stand up and take a principled stance and say, we at Planned Parenthood will not support or abide by this law and use their lawyers to fight for their stance.

The best part of this sort of dialog, Sarah, is that first you accuse beowulf of being stupid, Then you or others will accuse beowulf and maybe myself of being trolls, or rapists, or the best one, "oh gosh, I hope you don't have daughters, the poor things!" It's pretty disgusting the level of discourse over this and I encourage you to just say no thank you to that.

Well I have daughters, and when they are old enough, around 11 to 12, I plan on telling them about birth control, the pill, and how to get it, and telling them that I will support their getting an abortion if it ever came down to that.

Now, since assholes are never satisfied, when I've mentioned that last at radical feminist blogs, the response has not been, "oh what a good father you are", it's been "getting your daughter birth control and an abortion, you're almost certainly committing incest you rapist, pedophile, wifebeater" you know, the usual shit that the pandagon feminists love to fling instead of actual, uh, argument.

So yeah, my guess is that statutory rapists are probably very happy with laws that say that their victims don't have to notify parents or judges.

That seems more like obvious, and not, "stupid."

And I agree with beowulf, parents and/or a judge should be notified of an underage abortion.

What was lovely was a discussion at Pandagon within the past six months in which it was agreed that people under 18 should not have the vote because they are too immature.

I pointed out that this same group of people that don't want kids to vote, including Amanda of course, were perfectly okay with teenagers having abortions with no parental notification or the notification of a judge. Amanda Marcotte, of course, just deleted my comment and banned me. Good old Pandagon....

Radical feminists, stupid feminists like to worry about the least case situation: what about the girl who has rotten parents and finds a fucktard judge!?

Well, what's more likely in 2008, girls finding a fucktard judge regarding abortion, something that has been legal since the 70s, or young girls falling under the influence of a 20 something statutory rapist and convinced to avoid parents and judge?

Talk about stupid, kneejerk, very unfeminist viewpoints. How does ignoring statuory rape help women? Oh noes! You're just a pedophile/rapist/mra/rightwinger/troll/wifebeater/patriarch who just doesn't think girls should have sex!!!!

As I said, when the kids are old enough, and have gone through whatever woeful sex ed they've given them in school, I'll be telling them about BC and the pill and where to get a safe abortion, if they are so fucking stupid, or so stupidly fucking that they need one. (I suspect that on this, the ex and I agree.)

So once again, Sarah, what's so stupid about beowulf's statement, and do you think you are capable of making a logical argument?

Jerry: "In fact, Planned Parenthood has been documented on many many occasions at sites across the country of offering to ignore or cover up statutory rape."

Prove it. (Fox News doesn't count. Show me a few of those nationwide sites that aren't funded by Christians)

Jerry: "LEAST CASE situation: what about the girl who has rotten parents and finds a fucktard judge!?"

Prove it. (ditto) And as long as we're just floating unproved opinions, I'd say the problem IS overbearing parents who don't have a healthy relationship with their kids. Why else would a kid be afraid to approach a parent about something so important? Why isn't the kid on birth control? Just say no? Get real.

And what was so stupid about Beowulf's statement is that he said statutory rapists are pro-choice. Nothing but a cheap shot and a valueless statement. For one thing, the whole term "statutory rapist" is ridiculously inflammatory. It could apply to a 19-year-old guy having sex with a 17-year-old girl. Or vice-versa (think about that one for a minute).

I don't want to get into a whole discussion about how times have changed and kids are having sex a lot earlier so laws are outdated but it is something to think about before notifying everyone in the neighborhood they have a pervert in their midst.

Sex is a charged topic that few people want to sit down and think through. They drag their personal baggage and third-party religious dictates into the topic, their fears, whatever. And, oh. my. god. How people's ideas about sex change once they become parents!!

So that's what I meant about people saying any stupid thing that pops into their heads. No thought. Just visceral penis-jerk reactions.

I feel sorry for the kids. To be thrust into all this turmoil of second-guessing, domination and revisionist sexual history. No one appears to actually be thinking of the teen-age girl and what she's going through, what her emotional and physical burden is. Just what they want and they think is right. For her. Because they know so much more. If they know so much, why is their kid knocked up?

It seems that in the world of these commenters, all parents are saints, and all nineteen-year-olds who have sex with seventeen-year-olds should be behind bars. This isn't the world I live in.

First of all, what about girls with legitimate fears about their abusive parents? What about those whose father is himself the father? What about those who have to travel hundreds of miles to find a place where they can get a safe, legal abortion?

Second, I won't say beowulf's statement is stupid, but in assuming that there's a strong correlation between teen pregnancy and statutory rape, it assumes that most teens who get pregnant had sex with males over 18. Do we have any evidence that this is true? On the moral/experiential side (bracketing the legal question): has no one here had the experience of having consensual sex under the age of 18? (Or, since most of you who know what's best for girls seem to be male, are you saying seventeen-year-old boys are more responsible and adult than seventeen-year-old girls?)

I think Planned Parenthood wants girls to have access to safe, legal abortion. Isn't the argument that if they have to notify their parents, some of them will have exactly the kind of unsafe procedure done that killed Jammie Garcia? (Which this law, because she was NOT legally a minor, would not have stopped anyway?)

Finally, on the Megan's Law question, absolute claims about what public policy should be that rely entirely on what "I would rather" are kinda the definition of hysteria, no? I would rather your children be kept safe, too. But it seems like whenever child molestation comes up, it is actually a proxy for more dangerous (in the sense of more prevalent), less controllable social anxieties. There are a lot of things I might think I would rather know about my neighbors, but I don't assume the law should automatically be tailored to give me that information. There might be things I don't want them to know about me, too. If the answer is that convicted pedophiles who have done their time should have none of the rights other people have, if there's a social consensus on that, then I don't see how that differs from calling for their summary execution. And making the slippery slope argument does not seem so unreasonable when e.g. the Michigan law demonstrably sweeps into its purview anyone who is in the state for 14 days or more who has had homosexual sex, run a gay bar, worked as a prostitute, been a john, worked as a stripper, had sex in the park, etc. So in fact, everyone has a sex offender in their neighborhood. Does notifying you of that fact make your children safer?

Don't we have to wait and see how her so called husbands suit turns out. Just because he has sued to create a common law marriage doesn't mean one existed. That will be up to the court. She would have needed her parents consent to enter into any marriage. Did she have that? Be a little conservative about jumping to conclusions. Perhaps there was a common law marriage perhaps not.

TruthPolitik -

In Texas, common-law marriage is really easy to establish, as are binding contracts. My understanding is, if you cohabit (how long? not sure) and claim to be married in public (even just once) then you are. Contracts, you can (or could, 25 years ago) make with a public handshake. If you're cohabiting and already have one kid, I think you can claim common-law status, at least in Texas. The final answer's up to a judge, but in normal cases, I know how (s)he would rule.

And this is what, a California initiative proposition, named after a kid? There's no need to hear anything else, Just Say No. This is a boneheaded way to deal with medical malpractice -- which is what you care about, right?

Aha -- Google to the rescue, with an authoritative-looking site:

http://www.ncsl.org/programs/cyf/commonlaw.htm

Texas calls it an "informal marriage," rather than a common-law marriage. Under § 2.401 of the Texas Family Code, an informal marriage can be established either by declaration (registering at the county courthouse without having a ceremony), or by meeting a 3-prong test showing evidence of (1) an agreement to be married; (2) cohabitation in Texas; and (3) representation to others that the parties are married. A 1995 update adds an evidentiary presumption that there was no marriage if no suit for proof of marriage is filed within two years of the date the parties separated and ceased living together.

and

http://www.legalhelpinntx.com/law_office/faq/common-law-marriages.html

Common law marriage is established by proof that you have cohabited (lived together), represented to others that you are married and had an agreement to be married. The agreement can be inferred from the other two elements.

Yow. No shotgun required.

Your assertion is a little harsh, Kevin. But I agree with an implied point - that conservatives exploit children for political gain.

Too bad they don't feel guilt about stealing from our children by passing big tax cuts for the wealthy while spending recklessly on pointless military expenditures like Star Wars and aircraft carriers.

*

mhr, rabbit made a perfectly succinct, relevant and logical response to Beowulf's post. The fact is, Beowulf made his argument appealing to evidence he still hasn't provided (as pointed out in rabbit's post).

So your complaint, once again, is just more self-righteous bellowing we're used to getting from you.

"dr2chaes---Common law marriage is established by proof that you have cohabited (lived together), represented to others that you are married and had an agreement to be married. The agreement can be inferred from the other two elements."

If I understand Right she would also have to have been of legal age, had her parents consent or had a court order giving her the right to marry. If she could not legally get married in Texas it doesn't make sense that there could be a common law marriage.

So mhr thinks that arguing that opposition to this law is due to some pro-statutory-rape lobby is a "succinct, relevant and logical response."

Wow. Just wow.

"However, she was still 15 and was not equipped to make medical decisions on her own, whether she was living with the father of her child or not," said Erica Little, a spokeswoman for the campaign supporting the proposition.
Well, if she wasn't old enough to make medical decisions on her own, she obviously wasn't old enough to marry, too, Mrs. Little. Looks like it would have been a much better idea for your group to propose a law to close this Texan loophole, that allows the marriage of underage girls. Oh, and btw, if her parents weren't intelligent enough to forbid her to marry, what tf makes you think those morons would have made the proper medical decisons for her???

What's the argument in favor of Megan's Law? It's that pedophiles cannot be rehabilitated. Since they can't be rehabilitated, we may as well just kill them.

Oddly enough, in my experience the people most likely to go in for this kind of thinking are the same ones who tend to believe homosexuality can be "cured" and gay people turned straight.

"It's a pretty good bet that any law named after a child is a lousy one."

And there's McCain-Feingold.

I guess I agree, but I do feel that a child (under 18) needs oversignt by a parent and should not receive medical attention - save emergency - without a parent there, present.

However, some parents are louts and children say 15-18 or any in bad cases, deserve an out, but it needs to be a formal one presented by society at large.

"Four score and seven years ago our *fathers* brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all *men* are created equal."

You have betrayed my beautiful vision. Your chattel gained suffrage and your daughters are fornicating with other men. Republicans -- control your women or ye be not gentlemen.

Are you serious?! You honestly think that Megan's law is a "lousy one"? Do you have any idea how many lives that law has saved?

I haven't read the comments above, but I'd be surprised if no one else has commented on this. I also don't know whether you (Kevin) have children or not. My hunch is that you do not, otherwise you could not write something like this without acknowledging Megan's law as an obvious exception.

How about "Amber Alerts" and "Code Adam"? Look them up in Wikipedia if you don't recognize the names. They were named after abducted and murdered children. The above commenters who think the sex offender registry is all about the peculiar and exceptional examples they cite should read about the history of the Amber alert, which includes not one but two cases of a child being kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a person who had already committed sex crimes.
Liberal, shit-for-brained idiots.

shorter anonanon: if a law is created in reaction to something represhensible, it is automatically a good law.

shams, wrong. That's not at all what I think. There are plenty of laws that are enacted out of reaction which are bad laws.
These laws are not among them. Would you prefer that Amber alerts not exist? Can you explain that to the parents of the children who were saved?

shorter shams: I'm an idiot who really doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, and I probably don't have kids.

Any law named after a child is a lousy one.

I hereby dub this "Kevin's Law."

(Yes, I'm aware that Kevin isn't a child. Bear with me here.)

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