Parents really love their kids, and from that love comes a desire to protect them.
But you know who else loves those kids? Pedophiles. Who's to say which love is greater?
Well, apparently the state of Louisiana is siding with the parents. [Gavel wave Simple Justice] A new law will require sex offenders to post their offender status on social media profiles such as Facebook. Failing to update your profile with the nature of your offense, jurisdiction of conviction, your address, and your physical characteristics is a felony offense, punishable by 2-10 years in prison.
Since no one is going to publish that information on Facebook, especially with how common it is for employers to search social networking sites, the new law effectively bans sex offenders from Facebook. And by "effectively," we mean it'll probably just be ignored. Lock down your profile though, so your parole officer can't see it, don't accept friend requests from people you don't know, and defriend anyone who might rat you out.
People who understand concepts like rehabilitation and that public urination doesn't make you a dangerous criminal are of course upset about the law. But given the weakness of the pro-sex offender lobby in most states (NY being a notable exception) and existing laws creating sex offender registries, this law is likely to stay and survive constitutional challenges.
There is a way to render it effective though. All you need is a large number of people who are not sex offenders to post on their Facebook profiles that they are. While sex offenders do have to register, there's no law against going around to your neighbors and starting a conversation that begins with "Pursuant to Megan's Law." The sex offender population is so small that it wouldn't take very many people falsely claiming to be sex offenders to make it such that someone claiming to be a sex offender was most likely not actually one.
Y'all get started on that. We're going to update out profiles ...you know, in a bit. We have some other stuff to do first. But you get on it now.
[Also, Facebook's policies forbid sex offenders from having accounts, so good luck with this.]
