Friday, September 06, 2002

Teenage sex revisited The Free Press' Brian Dickerson posts another column on this topic -- "It's high time to overhaul sex statutes".  He notes: ". . . Teenage boys need to know that they can go to prison -- and be branded unto middle age as sex predators -- for what a more innocent generation used to call heavy petting.                          *   *   * "Legislators also must provide the means for prosecutors to distinguish between defendants who are roughly the same age as their underage sex partners and those who are significantly older. A 17-year-old having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend is simply different than a 25-year-old having sex with someone 10 years his junior -- and Michigan's criminal statutes should acknowledge the difference." I noted much earlier in this weblog, in connection with an entry on the decision by Federal Judge Victoria Roberts declaring unconstitutional the internet posting of the Michigan Sex Offender Registry, that Dickerson had published several well-reasoned columns on this subject. (Since that posting, the Sixth Circuit has stayed Judge Roberts's injunction, which puts us back to our original position while it considers the issue.) My comment from my original piece deserves restatement: "The ALI's Model Penal Code, as we recall, defines statutory rape as sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of consent only if the defendant is more than three years older than the 'victim'.   This one change would go far toward ameliorating the situation that many teens find themselves in when they are caught." 7:45:04 AM     Go back and try again This item received some publicity yesterday.  From her own web site: "Secretary of State Candice S. Miller today unveiled the Michigan Secretary of State Publius Voter Information Center, an online source providing Michigan residents with all the information they need to cast their ballots. . . The Voter Information Center is found on the department’s web site at www.michigan.gov/sos." That is the main page for the Secretary of State, not for the VIC.  There is a purported link to the VIC on that page, but it brings up no more than a brief introductory paragraph and then another link, this time to http://65.42.172.210.  Thus, no one will be able to access the site by entering a direct URL.  A series of two links must be found and navigated from the main SOS site before the VIC site is displayed. The main page at the VIC asks for the user to enter his name to provide information on such things as polling location, type of ballot, and voting instructions.  This will immediately turn away some users, who are justifiably leery of any web site which asks for a name. If a name is entered and is in the SOS database of registered voters, it will provide some information, including a copy of "your ballot".  Only the partisan ballot and the proposals are reproduced, however.  The non-partisan ballot, including races for Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and local judicial races, is nowhere to be seen. 7:14:09 AM

© Copyright 2002 Franco Castalone. Last update: 10/1/2002; 7:47:29 AM.