If that’s liberal…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Thursday that a transgender woman cannot change her name because she is on the state’s sex offender registry and the law does not allow people on the registry to change their names.
The conservative majority, eh? So the “liberal” majority were in favor of letting a man change his name to a woman’s name despite being a convicted sex offender? Could there be any downside to that I wonder? Any downside that ought to be apparent to people who style themselves liberal?
The court’s 4-3 decision upholds the rulings of two lower courts, which rejected the woman’s requests to change her name and avoid registering as a sex offender.
Sex offenders are victims and the people they harass or assault or rape are the oppressors. Right?
The woman, identified in court documents only as Ella, was required to register as a sex offender after being convicted of sexually assaulting a disabled 14-year-old boy when she was 15. She is now 22.
And he’s not a woman.
According to court records, Ella was about 6-foot, 5-inches and more than 300 pounds (135 kilograms) at the time of the assault. The victim was 110 pounds, blind in one eye and autistic. After the assault, Ella taunted the victim on Facebook and told other students what happened, perpetuating his “victimization and trauma,” the court said.
Yeah yeah yeah but respect her idennniny.
The dissenting justices agreed that Ella’s arguments alleging an Eighth Amendment violation of cruel and unusual punishment fail. But they said she should be allowed to petition a court to legally change her name based on First Amendment rights.
The majority “discounts the burdens Ella faces as a result of the restriction,” Ann Walsh Bradley wrote. A person’s name is an essential part of their identity, she wrote, citing Muhammad Ali and Caitlyn Jenner as high profile examples.
Well Jenner did kill that woman by ramming her car on the Pacific Coast Highway, so the comparison makes sense but it doesn’t much convince me that the 6’5″ guy should be helped to persuade people he’s a woman.
“Requiring Ella to maintain a name that is inconsistent with her gender identity and forcing her to out herself every time she presents official documents exposes her to discrimination and abuse,” she wrote for the minority.
His. And it is interesting to see trans activists pushing for a trans-only exemption to the law applicable to all other people – I thought the fight was for poor trans people to gain the same rights as everyone else?
It’s a fraud. Registered sex offenders should not be allowed to obscure their crimes by changing their names.
All the world and its grandfather knew Muhammad Ali = Cassius Clay and Bruce Jenner = Katie Jenner. And neither did it to hide from sex crimes.
It is considered “harmful” to use a trans-identified person’s former name (“deadname”). (Nobody seems to care as much when we’re talking about other people who changed their names for other reasons.) So, not only are the activists demanding the name change be allowed, they want all connection to the original name to be severed, exactly the problem with changing the name in the first place.
Damn. This is hard for me, because of the permanent nature of sex offender registries, no matter how many years one has not reoffended. Should a crime committed when one is 15, even one so apparently vile, determine one’s place in society for the rest of one’s life – that is, “this person is a sex offender, only a sex offender, and always and only a sex offender, no matter how long they shall live”? If Ms. Benson thinks so, I will disagree, but with reservations to my disagreement because of the nature of the crime. (FWIW, I have worked in prisons with adults convicted of such crimes, and have learned about the registry system pretty well.)
clamboy:
I have a friend here in Australia who as a young teenager made the fateful decision one day to climb a cliff. He slipped off and fell onto the rocks below, breaking his hip and leg so badly that the surgeon saw no alternative but to amputate the leg where it joins to the pelvis, including the entire ball-and-socket joint. Which was duly done.
He went on to a successful career in engineering, but never married; though one woman sympathetic to his plight and with a mature family of her own did form a relationship with him that gave him some comfort.
He had much difficulty getting a suitable series of artificial legs thereafter, and would often leave his current leg off, and just hop about with a crutch for support.
Young people need to be aware that decisions they make can lead to irreversible consequences; like say, the decision to become a rapist or some other kind of sex offender. The general population, including possible future targets, arguably have a right to be warned of their history.
It’s a bit like a decision to commit suicide; once committed, there’s no way back.
clamboy,
I share your misgivings about such lists, the question appears to be about whether trans people should be given an exemption from a law that other people must abide by. Given the existence of these lists as our starting point, must all people be stuck with them except those that subscribe to the silly fad? What about in a world where sex offender lists are limited in term rather than life long? Point being, I see no reason to grant trans people a freedom that no one else has.
I don’t fully understand how a criminal record doesn’t follow with a name change, and in the US, the name change doesn’t change their SSN, or other ID numbers.
To Holms @ 7 – There is the trouble. and thank you for clarifying what I was thinking. I believe the current registry systems in the U.S. are brutally unjust – for instance, (based on a true story) a young man who confesses to a therapist that he has terrible temptations that he has never acted on may be placed on a registry for life, or at least an uncertain time, unable to live or work almost anywhere in an urban area, because the therapist is required to report him. BUT, within the unjust system we have, I agree that granting certain persons special exemptions like the one outlined in the article is also unjust.
It seems to me there has to be some happy medium between for life registration and no registration. If a person offends, but rehabilitates and doesn’t offend again, removal from the registry would seem appropriate.
And if a person confesses feelings to a therapist, but doesn’t act on them, he doesn’t belong on a sex offender registry. We are not supposed to penalize thought. He is going to therapy in hopes to deal with them.