I am a guest columnist in today’s Utica Observer-Dispatch!
Many thanks to Dave Dudajek for doing me a favor and allowing me this slot.
Here is an excerpt:
When we as a society compare our sex offenders to garbage, we do the same thing to them that they did to us. In doing so, we stoop to their level and perpetuate the cycle of violence.
American society at large endorses such violence because no one is said to be more despicable than a sex offender. We seem to have made it OK to dehumanize and hate these people because of what they have done to others. We use them as scapegoats and a “dumping ground” for our own rage, frustration, and self-hatred. Again, we do to them what they did to us. We become what we judge.
With this housing crisis, I believe God is presenting us with an opportunity to rise above revenge and break the cycle of dehumanizing violence. We have a chance to stand in solidarity with Jesus, who ate with tax collectors and sinners, the scapegoats and “sex offenders” of his day and age.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
Another thing to consider on this topic is that “sex offender” covers a wide range. I think our minds automatically go to the most horrific of crimes, but “sex offenders” are also 23-year-olds who have sex with 17-year-olds, porn addicts who acquire child pornography not because they want it, but because it’s just in the mix. For me, as a parent, it took knowing a “sex offender” personally to help me get past my automatic knee-jerk reaction of revulsion and fear.