The Scarlet Letter

Whenever you put some physical stigma on someone who's done something wrong, something like this is bound to happen. Now, the question is what's worse? Murder or sexual offenses?

Well, that has always been my question, after this law to mark all sexual offenders with the state's scarlet letter. However, murderers are not marked. There is a long list of offenses that an offender/criminal does not have to deal with being marked. Except for sexual offenses.

Are sexual offenses that bad, worse than murder, that everyone needs to be made clearly aware of the offender's presence anywhere? What is the purpose of the sex offender list? How does such a list help to keep our neighborhoods safe?

The sex offender list is a prime example of making people paranoid, creating legal gossip about the offender, and stigmatizing that person for the rest of their life. Might as well just force them to wear the scarlet letter on their apparel.

Now that the scarlet letter has cause two people to needlessly die, will states that have enacted these sex offender lists rethink their law? I hope so.