You'll change your tune when you find out what it takes...

...to become a "registered sex offender."

People have the quaint, misguided notion that "registered sex offender" = "baby-raping p(a)edophile." This is the image that law enforcement and legislators want people to believe, because it creates an awesome tool for hysteria and fearmongering--"You have FIFTEEN SEX OFFENDERS living in YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!! Only CONGRESSMAN BOB can PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN! Vote for CONGRESSMAN BOB!"

In reality, sexual predators are rare, even on the sex offender lists. Most people who are registered sex offenders have never attacked or harmed anyone and have been convicted of nonsense "crimes" like having sex in the wrong position or in the wrong orifice (in many US states, sex offender databases are litetered with people "convicted" of consensual sex acts with other adults), or simply people who go ton the wrong side of some law enforcement officer.

Here's a good one for you: In Florida, exposing one's genitals in proximity to a child is a "sex crime." So the father driving home on the interstate late at night who stops to take a leak on the side of the road while his kid is asleep in the passenger's seat is now a "registered sex offender."

You Brits have a great word for this kind of nonsense: bullocks. "Protect the children?" Sheesh. How naive do you have to be to believe that rubbish?