Response to "'sexting' suprise: Teens face child porn charges"

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Sex offender: that creepy, evil-beyond-human guy who lurks about waiting for any victim to walk by so he can have his way with them.
This is fear mongering sponsored by 1984's Big Brother, who lives today, folks. And contrary to popular opinion he is not a construction of the religious right, so far as I know (I being part of it), but rather of pure legalism, which is separate entirely from morality, yet drives our modern justice system with an iron fist. It operates by placing irreconcileable guilt on those who break it's code. If it were based on God's justice, the focus would be on reconciliation after repentance. Instead, we have what is in reality a crime against humanity: we label a group of people, who have sinned perhaps just once, as OFFENDERS FOR LIFE. All have sinned, and all can repent, all can change thier ways. If someone was an offender when they were, say, 30, why on earth would he necessarily still be an offender when he is 80? People change. Labeling a group in this way, criminals though they may be (though keep in mind that many things that get people labeled as sex offenders are not actually worth the title) is far too chillingly similar to a certain time in history, where a certain group of people were awarded with pretty little six sided stars to wear by a certain government, so that the rest of society would know to stay away from these inferior beings, and when they could not, to treat them like dirt.
There is that poem, in which they took all these groups of people away...and the author didn't protest, because he wasn't a member of one of those groups. And then they took him, and there was no one left to protest on his behalf.
So yes, fear the evil sex offender, loathe him, and relive...1945.
Hypocracy. What would Jesus do? Actually, we know what He did. He said, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."
Our justice system in this area is a witch hunt. A wolf hunt. A lynch mob. And there is, in all reality, very little that we the people can do about it.
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It makes you wonder, too, any time the government has this much power in a sector of life as private as this. And yes, what happened to parent's rights? Aren't they technically the ones in charge of these dependents? These kids aren't living in Big Brother's orphanage, you know. Let the government deal with those it has labeled as its citizens, let parents deal with those the government has labeled as their children (keep in mind, it is the legalist government who set the magical age to 18 in the first place, for a lack of a better standard by which sexual morality could be determined by consent rather than marital legitimacy). And some cultures allow marriage by the age of 14...
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Now, with all that said, many sex offenders do need to be dealt with somehow or they will (possibly) harm others again (assuming that they did in the first place, which in a few cases is actually rather debatable.) Sending them to prison to rot the rest of their lives is an option, but it doesn't better their situation at all, and costs the government a lot of money that of course it doesn't have. Labeling them as lifelong offenders does nothing but prevent them from being able to make any sort of change for the better, so that's the worst option, wildly popular among our legal ...people... though it may be. I actually propose this, in addition to whatever counseling, etc is appropriate, and no, you aren't reading it wrong:
Slavery
Now let me explain. We all know the common and seemingly correct theory that work keeps people out of trouble and doing nothing gets them into more trouble. This is because it's harder to do two things at once than one thing at once...its a distraction. Work also builds character, a willingness to serve, and a sense of purpose, worth, and accomplishment, which may well have missing from the life of the sex offender previously in some way or another. They may even pick up some vibes of gratitude here and there for a job well done. Medicine for the soul, it is. So, in combination with counseling and the like, they might turn out to be decent ordinary citizens after all, at which point they could cease to be slaves and go back to being their own person. And recall all that money that prison was wasting with them rotting in it? Chain gangs are great for a country that needs rebuilding. Just look at all the public works projects that got done by chain gangs earlier in the century. Free labor, how can you complain about that? Good slavery (yes, there is such a thing, apparently) is slavery that is earned (through exemplary bad behavior, I mean). Bad slavery is slavery that one is tricked into, forced into or born into, or placed in based on circumstances beyond one's control (such as the color of one's skin).