From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   The people who get treated the worst in our society are the sex offenders.   
   They get treated as not even human. This is wrong even in case they have   
   committed a crime.   
      
   I believe in proportional punishments. Being daily buggered and beaten in jail   
   is an inappropriate punishment even for rape. And what is also inappropriate   
   is these people being treated as less than human.   
      
   About half the people I know have been victims of rape or incest. The worst   
   situations were the hardest to prosecute, as the perpetrator was protected   
   within the family unit. Everyone howls for the blood of a pedophile who rapes   
   other people’s children;   
    but incest, which carries worse effects than pedophilia, is hidden by family   
   and community loyalties and is very difficult to prosecute.   
      
   Do we then allow sex crime? By no means. But we need to do away with   
   demonization of sex offenders. A person guilty of a sex crime is just that: a   
   person guilty of a crime. He is not subhuman, he is not incurably evil, and he   
   is not a fiend.   
      
   Being ugly to anything or anyone makes us worse people. This is even the case   
   with people who are genuinely bad. Whether or not the offender is a bad human   
   being, we are made worse human beings by treating him like he has cooties. And   
   we need to hold    
   ourselves to a higher standard of conduct than is practiced by the perpetrator   
   and be better people doing better things.   
      
   At the heart of the matter is not what the offender is as a person. At the   
   heart of the matter is what kind of people are we. Are we people who run witch   
   hunts? Are we people who demonize people and treat as less than human? Or are   
   we better than that?   
      
   The attitudes of dealing with sex crime should be reworked. Sex offenders are   
   not demons, they are people who have done something wrong. By all means hold   
   perpetrators accountable, but do not treat them as less than human. Honor   
   their humanity and in so    
   doing affirm your own.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)