ACLU Fights The People of Hawaii To Protect Their Children
Posted on September 6, 2005
Hawai’i residents could get another chance to vote on a constitutional amendment that would make it easier to convict people accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting children under age 14.
The state Attorney General’s Office yesterday said it will urge state lawmakers to reintroduce the amendment, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court Thursday. The amendment was approved by voters last year.
But the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai’i, which was against the amendment last year, will oppose it again.
I try really hard to keep it clean here, but it gets really difficult for me to find adequate words to describe the anger I feel whenever it comes to the the ACLU’s love of child predators. Just be glad I’m behind a keyboard, and that this isn’t a podcast.
Now, who in their right mind would not want to make it easier to convict people for sexually abusing children? REPEATEDLY at that!! Well, of course the answer would be those who are on the defense side of the sick perverts, the infamous ACLU.
Look how the ACLU argued this one in the past.
The high court ruled the Constitution was violated because a bill to change the statute was changed to amend the Constitution after the measure had advanced through the House and the first of three readings in the Senate. In addition, the title of the legislation did not reflect it was to amend the Constitution, the court said.
ACLU lawyers who represented 38 voters who challenged the amendment said the result of the “11th hour” switch was that the public was shut out from commenting on the legislation.
“The attorney general gets it actually backward,” said Lois Perrin, ACLU Hawai’i’s legal director. “The Legislature had attempted to shortcut the Constitution, a practice if approved would have been harmful to us all. The duty of the Supreme Court is to protect the integrity of the Constitution and to be vigilant in protecting it against any and all violations.”
She said the ACLU will oppose the amendment, but the public this time “will have the benefit of a full public debate at the Legislature as the Constitution envisioned.”
So, the ACLU argues that if this amendment that helps prosecute child molesters, approved by the vote of the people would have been approved it would have been harmful to us all. The democratic process, and the will of the people be damned say the ACLU, we know what is best for you. Apparantly their argument was convincing enough for the Courts however.
The amendment would have essentially restored a 1997 state law that calls for a maximum 20-year sentence for sexual offenders who molest children three times or more.
In my opinion, 20 years is not enough time for one offense, much less three. I’m sure the ACLU opposes this for different reasons however. When you think about it, it makes sense the ACLU would oppose this. It could make it more difficult to defend NAMBLA members and other pervert friends of theirs. I pray the amendment goes through on it’s second try, and the will of the people is not overruled by a black robed king via an ACLU joker.
Linked at Indepundit and Cafe Oregano
» Filed Under ACLU
Trackback URL
Comments
15 Responses to “ACLU Fights The People of Hawaii To Protect Their Children”
-
Affiliations
The Giants
-
Advertise
Donate
Our Store
Click the design to visit our store and help Stop the ACLU!
Stop the ACLU blogburst
-
More blogs about the ACLU
Syndicate Me
I am a special education teacher and I have seen firsthand how victims of abuse can be seriously harmed for life. This IS a serious matter. And although the ACLU sometimes supports issues I disagree with, this is not one of them. Why? The reason the courts agreed with them is because the bill was unconstitutional. This means that – if passed – it could potentially do much more harm than good in the long run. The first time someone gets convicted under this law, it will be thrown out. So all they are saying is GET IT RIGHT. This way, our children WILL be protected. The left often uses very poor examples to tear down the right. This is the same thing. The ACLU does not support child molesters. Find a better example if you want me to join your group.
Sixty years sounds like a better sentence to me.
Twenty years is still better than the 12 month sentences just handed out in Holland to a group of teenagers who gang raped three teenage girls.
Find a better example if you want me to join your group.
How bout looking around my site, where there are numerous examples? More examples, as a matter of fact that show the ACLU supporting child molesters, and child porn distributors. All kinds of examples…just look around.
I guess the ACLU figures that the government ought to have to prove somebody is guilty before tossing them into prison for the rest of their lives. Damn them….don’t they realize that the state is always right and are there to protect and nuture us?
Ugh, the ACLU is simply disgusting! Why would anyone be against making it harder for sexual perverts to molest our kids? I agree that a first offense should severe. In fact, any offense in which no consent by the minor was made (you know that’s statutory rape) should sent the offender/rapist up the creek for good in my opinion. I somehow suspect the ACLU is made up of a bunch of former crack-addicted child molesters themselves. Ick.
I saw you, Jay, comment on Little Green Footballs but the register is closed and I can’t comment! Do you know if it’ll be open again?
Keep up the good fight against this perverted group. I’m glad you guys do it because I think I’d get sick if I followed the ACLU too closely.
Kevin need to do a little research on the ACLU or read this blog more often.
I dislike the political agenda of the ACLU just as much as anybody, but who do you blame when the legal issues they raise are adopted by judges? Lawyers are free to raise any issue they want. If judges and juries are dumb enough to buy into them, who is the real culprit? The real problems in our society are a culture of looney liberalism and gullible jurists and juries who are swayed by faulty logic.
I agree, but the ACLU does not get off the hook that easy.
If you look around you will see that I am also very concerned with the judicial branch.
It is almost never guilt any more with the ACLU. It is a gotcha Simon Sez game. We need to revise intervenor funding laws to limit the number of interventions that can be funded to one per organization per year. And we need to make someone who springs a guilty party a guarantor of good behavior.
I agree, some seem to miss the point that these are repeat offenders.
I don’t agree with many of the things that the ACLU stands for. (opposing school vouchers is hardly a ‘civil liberties’ issue.) But, they have been insturmental in limiting the power of the state. How is it that conservatives are always talking about how government solutions are inferior,and that big govt. is bad, yet they seem so eager to hand the government more power to investigate, prosecute and incarcerate? If there’s one thing I don’t want the govt. to be able to do easily is to throw people in prison and to keep them there for a very long time. So many of you are railing against the ‘child molesters’. Fine — people who truly use children for sexual gratification must be stopped. But let’s agree upon what child sexual abuse really is before we start locking people up and throwing away the key. The definition has broadend so far in just the past few years, that what was once considered normal, innocent behavior is now labeled ‘child abuse’. When I was a child in Hawaii in the 1970’s, I would often run naked through the sprinklers in the yard. If I were a child today, and tried the same thing, I can’t help but suspect that my parents would be jailed for allowing such freedom and innocence. The hysteria surrounding ‘predators’ of children has resulted in mothers being jailed for taking pictures of their own children in the bath tub, and even the little girl on the coppertone ad — once a charming symbol of innocence — has now been forced to cover up her formally bare bottom. People keep crying out for new laws and there is no end to the flood of new legislation in sight. Do you really think that all these new laws ‘to protect the children’ aren’t going to be used to justify govt. power grabs that have nothing to do with sexual ‘predators’? If you really believe that, you haven’t been paying attention. I’m seeing less and less differences between Liberals and Conservatives — they both have a rabid desire to grow the government as big as possible, and to expand the definitions of what is punishible by law. The definiton of a free country is not the one with the most people in jail for the longest period of time.
You actually make a valid point. However, keep in mind, in this case we are talking about repeat offenders and sexual abuse. We are not saying they shouldn’t be represented, but once found guilty…come on! Personally I think such a person should be locked away…but come on…you can at least agree that three strikes and you are out.
Thanks Jay! I should be in LGF this weekend.
A few points:
First, the Supreme Court did not strike down the law on the merits but instead struck it down for the legislature’s procedural errors.
Second, I notice none of the posts supporting this predator law argues in favor of changing the rules and procedures necessary for a constitutional amendment in Hawaii. Even the ACLU did not argue on the law’s merits but simply argued the law was unconstitutionally put on the ballot.
Third, the scope of the bill’s text is far smaller than the scope of ignoring legislative procedure. The bill’s text only affects a small population — child sex offenders. The procedure, or abuse of procedure, used to pass this amendment is wide in scope. A procedural violation is far more egregious than a contextual one because it’s potential impact on the legislative process is far greater. I simply cannot support a political philosophy that has, at its core, the belief that the means justify the ends.
If the law was so great and had such wide support, why didn’t the legislature follow the constitutional procedure and avoid this mess? Why did they feel the need to ignore the rules? Child predator laws are a good thing but I cannot support a violation of constitutionally mandated procedure to get those laws on the books.
I believe I understand what you’re saying, Jay. Don’t get me wrong –I’m with anyone in locking up, and in some extreme cases — like the recent one in Idaho — of executing people who prey on our most defensless citizens — the children.
But I must urge caution when it comes to passing new legislation in a climate of fear and anger.
May I use the gun control lobby as an example for the dangers I see in more ‘predator’ legislation? Gun conrol advocates are always calling for new and more restrictive laws to take guns away from people. Conservatives argue that we should just enforce the laws we already have. Few conservatives say that convicted felons should be allowed to carry guns, but also recognize as bogus the Left’s sensationalizing of emotionally charged and high profile incidents such as Columbine to force through more gun control legislation that results in the disarming of honest citizens. The Left continuously broadens the defintion of ‘assault rifle’, and makes up terms for non-entities such as ’saturday night specials’ for the purpose of inciting the public to demand new laws. The result is more stealth legislation than does nothing to decrease gun violence, but only weakens the individual citizen’s freedom and choice to protect themselves, and increases the governments’s power to control the individual.
In like manner, I’m not arguing that children shouldn’t be protected from predators. But we already have laws against rape, molestation, and sexual exploitation of children. Violation of these laws comes with severe penalties. Why not just enforce the laws we already have?
How justified are we in locking people up forever when we are continuously broadening the definition of ‘molestation’ of ‘predator’? What was once innocent behavior, like skinny dipping at Summer Camp –almost an American tradition — can now get a camp councilor a life sentence.
Whenever I hear of new laws to ‘protect the children’, my alarm bells go off. I smell stealth legislation. Such laws seldom do anything to address the problems they claim to remedy. They merely broaden the definition of what is criminal, and increase the State’s power to interfere with the individual’s — in this case the parent’s — right to decide what best for thier own children. If you think that new laws passed in the spirit of moral outrage won’t be bent to purposes
far removed from the scope of rape and molestation, then you put way too much faith in the goodwill of the State.
In conclusion: I’m no fan of the ACLU, they do a great deal of harm to our society. I think that most of their energy is spent on things that have nothing to do with civil liberities. But who else is standing up to put the brakes on increasing government power? Where are the conservative legal organizations telling the government ‘No! You can’t have unlimited power!’?
I guess we could put a stop to child molesters if we just put everyone in prision for life.