Thursday, December 01, 2005

Background Noise

From the Time Could be Better Spent Dept. comes this story about an Illinois lawmaker who wants to require background checks be done on anyone using online dating services.
SPRINGFIELD -- A Southern Illinois Democrat is considering legislation requiring
online dating services to perform criminal background checks to weed out predators that might be lurking on the Internet.

State Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, said he was surprised to learn that these services were not required to perform background checks on members.

"One thing I was trying to come up with is a way to make sure you have a simple background check on somebody before you allow them to advertise," he said. "It seems to me that there should at least be a non-sex-offender requirement."
Oh, please. Perhaps we should also require background checks for anyone going into a bar or joining a singles group or placing (or responding to) a singles ad in the paper.

Look, meeting new people always carries some, mostly very small, risk. Use caution, yes, but requiring background checks? I don’t think so. It would be expensive, intrusive and not all that effective anyway.

A good dating rule of thumb is if you feel the need to run a background check on someone, maybe you shouldn’t be dating them. But if you want to be extra super-duper cautious you can always run a background check of your own on your special somebody-who-might-be-an-axe-murderer.

4 comments:

Marie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Gosh, Mr. Bradley (D - no guy on a motorcycle is dating my daughter), people on dating services are no more predators than state legislators are. And we don't need background checks to tell us that. Anyway, most dating adults have long since passed the age where their father's pre-screened their dates. We certainly don't need government to take up that role.

Anonymous said...

Someone might actually take this opportunity to point out that you, in fact, met your current wife using an online dating service many years ago. Oh no - you might have been an axe murderer!!!

LOL

Mrs TEH

Dave said...

What do you mean MIGHT have been? I operate in slow motion. Bwaa haa haa haa.