...I'd be on death row.
by guest-blogger: J. Gravelle
from the DailyScoff.com blog
Reading the story about the 14 year old boy who may be branded a sex offender for unhooking bras got me thinking back to when, in Junior High, I discovered how a tube top rolled down in the back would simultaneously roll itself down in the front.
If my son tried that today, he might very well become a red dot on a map for the rest of his life.
It reminded me about how when I was 13 I convinced a 16 year old girl I was 17. I'm positive she earned HER dot on the map.
At 17, I had a 15 year old girlfriend. We were less than a year and a half apart. And there you have MY dot.
My point?
It's a really good idea that, when a child molester or rapist gets kicked to the curb (to free up another prison cell for a pot smoker... a rant for another day) the citizenry of his new neighborhood SHOULD be alerted. The "Family Watchdog" mapping program is a laudable use of modern technology to combat an age old threat.
The problem (and it's a serious one) is that we're going to rapidly dilute that invaluable database. At this rate, it won't be long until the map is full of 13 year old bra snappers, or 17 year old boys who had 15 year old girlfriends, or 16 year old girls who were lied to by 13 year old boys, or pubescent junior high schoolers with prurient interests in tube top physics.
Once the map becomes little more than a Seurat canvas, the significance of each dot will be diminished to near worthlessness. We won't be able to tell if the actions of the red dot living across the street were horrible, unspeakable, and perverse, or precocious, common, and natural.
When that happens, the Watchdog database will be nearly useless, and we'll be back to not knowing who or where the REAL threats living among us are...
- J. Gravelle
DailyScoff.com
