That’s sort of what I was talking about. Now of course, I have no idea what he was actually doing - but he said he was charged as a sex offender. That can absolutely happen - but that’s not the thing I hear all the time. The thing I hear all the time is “you can end up on the sex offender registry for public urination” with no qualifications such as " if the woman passing tells a cop you were exposing yourself to her" or “if you were actually charged with and convicted of public lewdness.”
The case that seems to be mentioned most* as “you can get on the registry for public urination” is the one described here where the person was actually convicted of “open and gross lewdness”.
- I’ve actually never found specifics about any others.