Maine bill seeks to make the inappropriate, illegal for sex offenders.

A couple of weeks ago, parents in Maine became outraged after it was discovered that a sex offender had taken pictures of a child and posted them on social media. Police didn’t arrest the man because it wasn’t illegal. The Constitution protects the photographing of people, places or things in public.

The pictures were not sexual in nature and there was nothing inherently illegal about what this man did, but is it appropriate for a sex offender to take pictures of a child? For that matter, is it appropriate for any adult to take pictures of children?

The reality is; what business does a grown man have taking and posting pictures of children who are not his own children or grandchildren? The same holds true with entering schools or playgrounds. Unless you are accompanying a child who attends the school or taking a kid to the playground and you are the guardian of that child, what business do you have being on a school property or in a playground? It would be inappropriate no matter what your history.

Maine, however, wants to make it illegal so Representative Matthew Pouliot introduced a bill that would make it a Class D Felony to photograph a child without the parent’s consent.

It seems like a harmless bill, but here’s where it gets dicey. In today’s world of selfies and snapchats, people are constantly using their camera phones to take pictures of the most random stuff. What if you snap a picture of a national monument and there, in the crowd, is a child? What if you take a selfie of yourself at a baseball game and two rows behind you is a kid? You may not have known the kid is in the frame, but in the midst of this witch hunt who is going to believe you?