TN: Bill would allow sex offenders to attend church with permission
Can anyone tell me why this is even a thing? Isn’t spiritual growth and repentance something society would want from someone who has sexually offended?
To make that and the exercise of one’s religious beliefs more of a challenge to persons on the registry, a bill (House Bill 1922) proposed by Rep. Patsy Hazlewood would require the registrant to provide written notice of their offender status to the leader of the church and receive written permission from that leader in order to attend services at the church.
Even though this is probably more unintended consequences of SO legislation, maybe it will actually help us because now the law will formally recognize us as members of a protected class.
It’s getting real petty in TN. I have attend several churches regularly and have for over 20 years as a registrant. And not once have I had any issues. People are fiercely passionate about there religion no matter what denomination. This will probably get ugly if I had to guess.
I guess it’s open doors for drug dealers, armed car jackers, drunk drivers, home invaders, etc. Nice to know that some churches are so well protected.
Most churches are actually OK with repentance by sex offenders. They just don’t want that repentance done on their premises.
Go repent somewhere else, please, and not put us at risk, is their thinking.
FAC, here’s what I don’t understand about this posting— “allow” sex offenders to attend church? Why would you need a law allowing something? Are they currently barred from it?
The statute doesn’t make any reference to churches, but I just took a cursory look at their statutes.
If the existing statute doesn’t prohibit church attendance, then this one is creating a new restriction. You must now have written permission To attend church.
Oh Lord, please do not let me make comments on this!!!
The scope of idiocy by some of these Legislators, pandering to an unknowing public, knows no bounds.
This is an election year and appearing tough on sex offenders is an easy sell. No one was ever elected by being “rational on crime.”
Accountability would be one reason to notify the Senior Pastor. 2nd would be covering. A good friend or “wing man” would help thwart a false accusation should anyone decide a SO’s shouldn’t be in church. My experience has been this was more protection for me than it was protection of the congregants. I changed churches after more than 25 years in the same congregation and I told my first good, tried and true friend plus a staff member I got to know. Never lost a moments sleep or felt I was told to sit at the back of the church.
Sunlight as well as Sonlight is good for the soul.
Signing of documents doesn’t give a registrant some sort of immunity to accusation. If a child is going to falsely accuse someone and it just happens to be that person, how does it protect the registrant? It does nothing for them or for you.
Letting the Church know does not protect you or any registrant in any way unless you are watched the whole time you are there and you are falsely accused.
Then you would have witnesses to back you up, but I personally don’t want to be watched while I am worshiping God just for the sole purpose that someone might accuse me because I am a registrant.
Who wants to worship in that kind of atmosphere?
Church is for worship. Not useless scrutiny.
One wonders if these proposed changes at the behest of the churches. I suspect not. While sexual abuse may be found in our churches, I’ve only heard of it happening by those in a position of trust whose background was crystal clear, not by a registrant simply seeking to attend.
Seems to be another example of legislative bulldozing of Constitutional liberties chasing after already proven ineffective solutions to sexual abuse.
I had to sign an “Sexual Predator Attendance Agreement” to attend the First Methodist Church in Melbourne when I came home from prison in 2013 (no, I’m not classified as a Predator). Not only did I have to sign one but I had to have a list of 5 “buddies” one of which went EVERYWHERE I went….. including the restrooms. They had to meet me in the parking lot and then escort me back there after church. This is where I mention that I had been a member there for 40 years……
Needless to say I left soon after.
The thing that frustrated me the most was that the pastors made NO effort to talk with me about who I was and what my offense was. When I did try they immediately shut down the conversation. My wife and I started attending a church closer to our home and there hasn’t been any issues. I’m allowed to volunteer and participate in any activity that doesn’t Specifically include children, which I wouldn’t do any way.
Do you have a copy of that piece of toilet paper? That would be a nice exhibit in our suit.
Good to hear you are doing well, Roger. Any church you couldn’t go to I wouldn’t want to attend. Some churches are their own worse enemy…and a friend of the ‘angel of light’. I now go to the Merritt Island campus. Miss seeing you my friend.
This is exactly why I do not go to small churches where everyone knows your business and wants to invite you over to their house for bible study. I attend a church that seats about 5,000 people and has to have two services so many people come.
Blend in, enjoy, and get out. Sad but as soon as you make friends with a “Christian” and they find out about your baggage, you are suddenly Satan’s step child.
I am not being mean, I love my brothers and sisters in the Lord. However, Christians can be some of the most unforgiving people there are sometimes. Especially for RSO’s We are God’s problem, not theirs.
When I first got released, I attended a Christian group for ex felons. Each week someone ( if you were comfortable ) would share about their life. I never did, however once I got comfortable with the leader who was drug offender ( yes he was still doing drugs ) I confided in him about my past. There was even murderers in there and I never judged one of them. Once the cat was out of the bag they stopped inviting me to the sessions.
I got saved when I was extremely young but got Baptized when I was a little older. Through the years I have been treated better by non Christians than the people who are supposed to be our family.
Jesus did not walk with or hang out with Kings, rulers, judges and priests in His day. He hung out with thieves, prostitutes, beggars, the poor, the sick and the lost.
This bill is completely unconstitutional. Separation of church and state.
DavidM, I have done lots of study and writing on ‘separation of church and state’. That is a myth supported by those who want to take morality out of government. I am into my fifth year of writing a blog on “Politics and the Church”. It can be found at http://www.geezerleisure.com.
David, that web site should read http://www.geezerpolitics.com. Sorry for the original error. My mind is in too many places at once.
And what if they DON’T provide written notice to the church?? What if they just show up and attend services? These days, many churches already run background checks – especially for anyone working with youth. So when is this proposed law even necessary?
And does this apply to other who have been convicted of crimes? Embezzlement? Fraud? Extortion? Black mail? Confidence schemes?
I would think any such convictions would place a church at risk.
Looking at Sections 1 and 2 of this statute online, it appears that this new bill would allow RC’s to be near children provided the above notice is given to the church leader. So, if you’re at a church ball game at a park or something, and you’d normally not be allowed there due to children being present, then you would be allowed, provided your church leader knows you’re an RC. So, maybe not so bad after all, or did I misread?
Even when I was on probation, my paper work listed places I was allowed to go. Church services was on there with no approval needed.
When ANY person is turned away from church (Unless they are there to commit a crime or causes trouble) seems it is violating the constitutional right to worship.
What have we become as a society? Some of those weird SciFi movies I watched as a kid are coming true it seems.
It’s wrong.
Once again this is made to ‘seem’ to protect the Church’s children, but it doesn’t at all because almost all offenses in the Church don’t come from registered citizens.
It doesn’t protect the one on the registry either. It only makes them a ‘person of interest’ to be watched, feared, and kept from coming near any children like a bomb that is going to go off.
If a child is going to falsely accuse someone and it just happens to be that person, how does it protect the registrant?
Signing of documents doesn’t give a registrant some sort of immunity to accusation.
And how does it protect the Church? The Church would have to know ahead of time that this person was going to re-offend and not let them in, but what Church knows that.
Also, if a registrant does re-offend and the Church knows he/she was there then that would look even worse.
To sum it all up, this is another sub-conscious way of making registrants appear as though they are a danger and registrants only. No other felons.
I gave up on churches long ago, as I have found many to not be worth the very words they preach in regards to being a Christian.
Churches are full of Human people. We are all sinners. We and they all make mistakes. We expect the Pastor to be better than us but because He / She is human and puts their pants on the same way as us, they fail sometimes as well. The Disciples were some of the biggest misfits around and often messed up big time, but Jesus loved them all the same.
Look at Saul, he use to persecute and even kill Christians. When he converted and became Paul, he ended up writing a large portion of the new testament.
My biggest complaint about churches is, the pews are so uncomfortable it is hard to not fidget in my seat.
When my family member was on probation, he could go to church but was told by probation officer that he could not talk to or even respond to anyone under 18. Even if he had known them all his life. And if he did it would come out in a lie detector test. Therefore he never went to church. And this is right here in Florida
As a former law enforcement officer, I can tell you, lie detectors are faulty. They do not detect lies or truths. They detect your reaction to a question.
I applied one year to the Tampa police department. I did not get the job because they said I was deceitful when asked if I had ever used Cocaine? I wouldn’t have known what cocaine looked like if it slapped me in the face.
So to prove the machines were BS, the next department I applied to asked if I had ever done ANY drugs. I had used Marijuana once but just said no and passed the test and got hired.
So in closing, I told the truth to one department and was told I was lying. The next one I lied and was told I passed with flying colors. To add to that, it also has to do with your conscience. I had decided I was not going to get hired either way so didn’t care. Since I was just saying no not worrying about failing it, the needle never moved as I was calm and at peace that no matter what I wasn’t getting hired. However I did.
An added note. The first guy at Tampa P.D was a former NYPD cop who was very rough around the edges and I was shaking the entire time. He treated me the entire time like I was an inmate getting the exam instead of a police recruit.
The examiner at the next department made me feel so comfortable and calm that after I got hired I could never look him in the eyes again after lying . ( Although Smoking MJ once is not an earth shattering event )
Not once in 4 years of probation was I ever asked to take a polygraph although every visit I had to do a drug test. Never failed one.
I know what you are saying about lie detectors. Years ago when I was required to take those silly tests, the examiner came to the conclusion that I was trying to groom a kid in my church. Well, such a conclusion really pissed me off. So in the presence of my counselor and the evaluator I laid a hundred dollar bill on the table and challenged them to do the same. If they could come up with one name in six months the hundred dollar bill was theirs. If not their hundred dollar bill was mine. All I did was piss them off, but I knew I had hit a nerve. To this date 15 years later I have yet to hear or see a name. As you might guess, they had the courage to condemn but not to put their money where their mouth was.
Any church that discriminates and turns a person away and violates their freedom of religion and freedom to worship should lose their tax-exempt status. We are supposed to have complete separation of church and state. The government should not be making rules that dictate anything in regard to religion if no law is being broken. This also violates the 1st Amendment because it forces a registrant to say something he or she may not want to say.
Candice
I agree completely. It appears the law would be mainly directed towards the church. To force the church to follow a certain line of thinking like discrimination against a certain individual when that is not there normal teaching on the matter , is the state taking on the role of dictating to a church how they should teach there congregation. Is this really the road this country should go down. If it is just imagining the laws that will follow. The church’s will become nothing but tools of the state like in Russia .
Capt. Muncey jr. thank you for your service.
I agree our constitution was found on mostly Christian principals that’s why it has endured this long. I also grew up as a Methodist. But just because it was founded on Christian principles doesn’t give the state the authority to tell churches how they are to run there churches as long as there following the laws unless those laws conflict with Gods laws , then a Christian has an obligation to obey God’s laws. This bill is frightening lay close to crossing that line.
David, the laws in this nation were established on Christian principles. People were to be treated in accordance with principles laid out in the Bible. The ‘separation of church’ clause came into effect only where the Congress was restricted from passing any law establishing a religion, i.e. no state religion. Congress cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion. The term ‘separation of church and state’ came into use twice in our history. Once when a church wanted to ‘import’ a foreign pastor and were told that they couldn’t because of laws then in place. Congress swiftly got educated on that restriction. The other instance was when President Jefferson was dealing with the Barbary pirates. He wanted to make sure that they knew in dealing with the United States it would not be a ‘religious’ conflict but a conflict of political systems…thus ‘separation of church and state’.
Maybe I’m misreading the law, but the amendment seems to apply only to church services held in places like schools, parks, etc. It does not require registrants to get permission to attend church services, generally.
It rather makes an exemption to the presence restriction, allowing a registrant to attend a church service held at an otherwise prohibited place.
(Go to page 23 for the relevant section)
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tbi/documents/2016_Sex_Offender_Law.pdf
This is the clearest explanation of this bill that I’ve seen thus far.
We have talked about moving and know people in Tennessee so I looked into it. This is no surprise they would try this. They have or had something where some offenders could not live with their kids. Needless to say we are still in Florida. Sometimes the great looks greener, but normally it’s because it had lots of manure.
I just moved from FL to Tn, so far, been great, one word of caution, if you move to TN, you are automatically classified as violent until they receive all records for Florida before you are reclassified
Statistically, the most likely group of people to harm children in a church is the clergy. Therefore, the rules should start with them. Churches are free to make up their own rules currently. Churches could implement a policy to check driver’s licenses and run them at the door if they choose to. Despite the separation of church and state, The General House of Tennessee now believes that their authority extends to: “a house of worship for the purpose of attending religious services.” Basically a church leader who oversees a church with their own policy must disregard their current church policy and adopt a policy adopted by the General House of Tennessee. The law is meaningless since it cannot be enforced. Oh, perhaps they think someone will serve prison time because he attended church illegally. No church could survive that kind of hypocritical publicity.
I have tried to move to a better situation several times. Once I moved for 3 days to California. I put a deposit down on an apartment after quitting my then job and then went to the San Diego Sheriff’s office.
I read through the mound and pounds of boxes of rules, laws, ordinances, etc and went back to the apartment and begged for my money back. When they refused I said “I am a registered offender so you cannot kick me out since I cannot have a refund. The response was ” Let me get my checkbook”.
I came back to Florida and at the time you didn’t need to let them know you were leaving unless it was for a long period of time so it was like I never left.
When I was in Noway I was offered Asylum but I turned it down since at the time my Dad was having cancer treatments. (Yes God Healed him he is now 81) Plus I would not have ever been able to return without fear of arrest.
We are free to our own opinion. We too are planning to also move to Tennessee and despite this conversation are still planning to do so. As with all situations there is positive and negative. Until this unconstitutional registry is abolished each state and county will have their own garbage made up rules. Yes, Tennessee is far from perfect and although I am in a decent county here in FL. (Hernando) for my wife and I the Positive of the Tennessee Registry requirements far outweighs this state. 1) I would only have to register once per year 2) I would not have the local sheriff pull up to my house every 90 days. Therefore meeting these people a minimum of 6 times per year and having my wife deal with this. 3) In my particular reason to have to register I have the chance of being removed from the registry in 5 to 10 years in Tennessee. 4) If I should age to where my health goes and not able to re register in person, Tennessee is one of many other states which is understanding of this and would not prosecute me. So for my wife and I although we know there might be some things that are worse than Florida the GOOD FAR OUTWEIGHS THE BAD.
Still Hopeful,
these are same reasons I moved from Fl to TN, a couple of things
1, you still get the visit every 3 months
2, you WILL be classified as VIOLENT, and have to register every 3 months until you are reclassified, and that can take 6 months or longer, during this time, you will have to pay the initial 150.00 registration fee, then you will pay it again in March, and again the month of your birthday ( pay twice a year ) . Once you are reclassified, you pay it once a year, the month of your birthday
3. yes can apply for removal after 5 years on the TN reg.
Where I moved to , I only deal with 1 person, he does the checks every 3 months, and I register with him. Gave me his cell # to text/call should I have a question or problem.
So far, it has been nice, he doesnt bother me, very friendly, yet professional,. you still have to register cars, email. etc.
The DMV was also good to deal with, was very discrete when I told them I needed to code on my license
I hope this helps you
Just curious how this is better than Florida?
I get a home visit once a year and registration if free. Also the DMV here automatically places the notation on your license without having to ask.
Also you have to be classified for up to 6 months as violent no matter what is not good either. Glad it makes you feel at ease but that would cause me to get as far away from there as possible.
Thank you for the info. Not moving right away as I am waiting a few more years until I retire. My wife and I did visit this past year and when I checked in during our vacation there we couldn’t believe how great we were treated and the process. Thank you for your info as it was helpful and yes the good definitely outweighs the bad. I won’t mind the few things that are inconvenient or worse compared to the opportunity to get off the registry altogether.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all!
Alex
That’s true in a perfect world. King David in the Bible committed adultery and had Bathsheba s husband killed. But he repented, and never did anything like that again. He was favorably spoken of by God himself and called him righteous. People do bad things but they can and do change. God is perfect and yet he forgives. Scripture says if we can’t forgive than God will not forgive us. Do you want to take that chance.
There are those that support the Registry that are taking that stand.
DavidM, well said!!
Well said and right on
This is why our household attends church services every Sunday morning in front of the TV. No accusations, no escorts to and from restrooms. God knows our hearts, and I praise him for his forgiveness.
When one cannot attend a church due to some illegal law is a complete violation of religion freedom.