Did I Miss Something

OK, I dropped out of society and took a little sabbatical. Now that I am starting to return to society, I am thinking maybe that isn't such a great idea.

While I was gone what happened? Before I left, the state was in a position to defend the rights of minors. Now the state seems to be much more concerned with the rights of pedophiles. I feel like Rip Van Winkle!

A Texas pedophile with reportedly 200 offenses was given probation after chemical castration and moves to Virginia just to start anew. Virginia authorities give the Texas Pedophile probation again. This is Texas and Virginia, not Vermont!

I remember that in the blur that was my past that everyone has civil rights. Just how many civil rights do pedophiles really have today? I don't remember child abuse and molestation being a misdemeanor. Wasn't that just a little more serious?

I am not advocating hanging child molesters, just a little longer-term incarceration than 60 days. There is a law being proposed in California that will make it illegal spank your child under four years of age. I wonder what the mentality for swatting stubborn child's butt will be?

Before I dropped out, a friend of a friend's six-year old boy tripped and hit his head on a tree. The next day in school the child's teacher call the Department of Children and Familiy services. The child was removed from his parents by DCF that day. The child denied any abuse. The parents denied any abuse. Only a teacher's suspicions caused the removal of the child.

It seems to me that the focus of government is to protect children from parents, not children from pedophiles. This is a little different than I think it should be. I may be wrong, but don't children deserve equal protection under the law?

I use to think it was my Southern upbringing that influenced my lack of tolerance of child or spouse abuse. With Virginia and Texas allowing a child sex offender to get off with a slap on the wrist, maybe it is more that my Southern influence.

I guess I am just out of step with the times. I can never become so warm and fuzzy in my thinking that I would consider a serial child molester is, "only a good person doing bad things."