See, the thing about all that controversy over sex offender legislation, is that the legislation itself wasn’t really all that controversial. That’s why the entire package passed the House today by a unanimous bipartisan vote. (Even the part about the new stricter sentences not applying to family members.)
Interestingly, the package included a late addition, HB 3238, “Prohibiting the distribution of false sex offender notifications,” and as Carl at the Washington State Political Report ironically points out, one of its unanimous votes came from House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt… the man responsible for authorizing the GOP’s false sex offender notifications. Carl deduces:
That means that DeBolt thinks what he did was so bad that it should be a class C felony.
Yup, DeBolt won’t actually apologize for the House GOP’s vicious little fear-mongering stunt, but he will vote for legislation making it illegal.
Huh.
This is unbelievable. Here is the floor debate, if anyone cares:
http://www.tvw.org/MediaPlayer.....038;TYPE=A
It starts exactly 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 45 seconds into the audio clip, and only lasts about 4 minutes. It’s actually pretty eventful even though it passed so easily and had little debate.
I hope this is in the news tomorrow…
Gerald, LiberalWashington.com
from the link
what the hell do they mean, these postcards wouldn’t be banned?
Hey Hey,
What you say,
Richard DeBolt
CYA.
Burma shave!
@2
Good question. I think its just Republican spin… The language obviously would make the postcards illegal.
Gerald, LiberalWashington.com
What – a republican felon? NAAAAW!
After all – which party want to be viewed as kind to sexual predators??? I am very liberat, but they get my blood boiling. They are sick, sure, but so easy to hate.
Goldy,
Maybe you should apologize for misleading your readers in your post; “Exit Strategy”.
I’m not holding my breath though.
Only in Washington State, would crap like this bill that allows parents to continue to have sex with their children pass in the legislature. A parent will get a longer prison sentence from knocking off a liquor store than sexually abusing their child.
Karns@9 This is total BS.Back to you’re trollhole.
sgmac, it used to be that I read your thoughtful posts and at times admired your views. Now you have stooped to the level of Janet S, Mr Cynnical, etc. Sorry for you.
I, for one, have actually worked with Sex Offenders and their families. When the Offender offends within the family, it speaks to an even greater sickness. If you don’t think a family dysfunctional enough to spawn such an offender will not rally ’round and defend the offender against the ‘outside’ then you are naive beyond words.
To try to turn this extremely difficult social situation and its management to some political end is twisted beyond words.
HB 3828 is simply a grandstanding political stunt. There is absolutely no way that this law would be upheld as constitutional if anyone challenges it. A person has just as much right to distribute outrageous political advocacy material (such as the phony sex offender notifications) as they do to wear a Nazi uniform or burn an American flag (assuming they own the flag of course).
None of these three stunts is likely to be politically popular or get the perpetrator much political support, but all three of them are protected free speech. It won’t be long before some enterprising lawyer (probably some ACLU type) files a federal lawsuit against this law and ends up earning five or six figures worth of legal fees at state government expense for his or her effort.
Maybe DeBolt should resign. Certainly the GOP wouldn’t keep him as their leader long if he showed up at the legislature wearing a Nazi uniform or burned an American flag on state capitol grounds. But to distribute the sex offender notification and then not even show the courage of his convictions — DEBOLT IS A PUSSY!
Only a PUSSY would meekly vote for a clearly unconstitutional law that criminalizes something they recently did and couldn’t even accept responsibility for or apologize for. And only a PUSSY would first complain about the “Friends and Family Discount” and then vote IN FAVOR OF IT.
Whoops, that is HB 3238.
Dear God,
Please allow Richard Pope to be elected chair of the WAGOP. Please, please, please, please?
Signed,
A. Democrat
So, Goldy, are you going to show some guts and support the Danes? Gerald has already declared that he is afraid the extremists might have their feelings hurt, so he isn’t.
Of course, if you disagree with the opinion that the Danes are expressing, that the Islamists are a cult of death, then I guess you are off the hook.
Shoulda slipped in an amendment outlawing Republicans. DeBolt would have voted for that, too … because he knows a felon when he sees one.
16
So, Janet (aka Kevin Carns), are you going to show some guts and support Dubya’s impeachment? Or haven’t you had enough lies, corruption, lawbreaking, and incompetence yet?
sgmmac
“this bill that allows parents to continue to have sex with their children”
Yes, they would only get 8-10 years in state prison (based on RCW 9A.44.083). That’s practically begging them to do it.
richard pope,
to be ruled unconstitutional someone has to challenge it.
any volunteers?
*crickets*
Daddy love, 8 to 10 years isn’t long enough to keep mommy or daddy away from the child till it’s grown up. Incest is a crime and it needs to be prosecuted, it has been the hidden shame in America for generations, never being discussed. It is time to put it in the grave by treating the offending parents the same as any other common criminal. The parents who do this to their children are worse than the stranger who does it to a child.
So, Alito’s first vote was against Republicans…….. absolutely too funny!
FROM THE SEATTLE TIMES – TODAY – RIGHT ON, THREE CHEERS ( Written by a Blethen, the Family which owns same)
The generational disconnect on homosexual rights
Leaders of the fight against civil rights need to give up their crusade. Their notions of sin and sexuality belong in another era, to decades past when women could not vote, black people drank from designated fountains and gays and lesbians were beaten into false lives.
This generational disconnect was on full display the past couple of weeks as gray-haired legislators and salt-and-pepper-bearded pastors tried to deny a law that granted gays and lesbians the rights heterosexuals and minorities have long enjoyed.
It was significant that the civil-rights law passed largely because of a Gen-X Republican’s vote. Sen. Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, was quoted from the Senate floor in The Seattle Times as saying, “We don’t choose who we love. The heart chooses who we love. I don’t believe it’s right for us to say … it’s acceptable to discriminate against people because of that. I cannot stand with that argument.”
The future of civil rights lies with Finkbeiner and other Gen-X and -Y politicians not yet elected. It will be important for this cohort to be active between now and November. That is when a misguided Tim Eyman referendum or initiative to undo what was done in Olympia could be on the ballot. No doubt the Eyman campaign will be loudly backed by the familiar faces of opposition, who will trot out the same tired reasons, too numerous and faulty to list here, to gain signatures.
One of the reasons used to try to tank any civil rights aimed at gays and lesbians is the claim that those rights will lead to same-sex marriage. On this point, the opposition is correct. Thank goodness. (Before moving on, let’s drop the labels. The weddings I attend this summer will not be called “heterosexual” weddings and the people involved will not be in “hetero-marriages.” So let’s not label marriage as gay. Call it what it is: marriage).
Now that gays and lesbians have legal safeguards that grant them the same rights as the rest of us, it only makes sense that our state give all its adult citizens the right to marry. To not address this inequity would be wrong and perpetuate dated discrimination. Adding momentum to the debate is an expected ruling by the state Supreme Court on marriage.
What the defenders of virtue do not understand is the role marriage has played in the lives of younger generations. The “sanctity of marriage” has become a meaningless slogan when used to perpetuate morals in an age of divorce. We either grew up in a divorced family or had numerous friends whose parents’ marriage habits were like those of dating, middle-school kids. Gays and lesbians certainly could do no worse.
Is the institution of marriage really going to suffer if gays and lesbians are allowed to make the decision to marry? Not a chance. Religious institutions, including the Roman Catholic Church, would not have to condone state-sanctioned marriage.
Not much has changed in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, where marriage was made legal for all by that state’s Supreme Court in 2003. According to the National Vital Statistics Reports put out by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, between the months of January and May in Massachusetts there were 6,753 divorces in 2003, 5,984 in 2004 and 5,137 in 2005. Marriages increased by about 1,000 during the same three years.
So what exactly is the threat? Seems to me the real threat to family is teaching intolerance. We are in an era of unrivaled global interaction that begs for understanding. If American children are taught that their friends and neighbors are a threat to the fiber of family, they cannot be expected to make the leap of comprehension needed to be a world citizen.
The disconnect is not excusable. What the gray-beards must realize is that my generation sees co-workers and friends in same-sex relationships. We watch sitcoms and movies with gay characters. We read novels where lesbians grace the pages. I was shocked by my first compact disc, not my first gay bar.
The elders need only to flip the issue and consider the future, a future of equality beyond them, but in the grasp of their children.
Ryan Blethen’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rblethen@seattletimes.com