>> I can't help but wonder if maybe part of the price is having to deal with the reality that a few nuts and sickos will sometimes abuse those same freedoms and behave badly

You're right, of course. I guess I just get tired of all the attempts at showig just how sick a species we can be. I never understood, for example, the fascination with slasher films: they just seem... well, "silly" doesnt even begin to describe it. Beyond silly, I suppose. But those I can accept because they usually involve the removal of the dumbest of the herd from the gene pool (HEY, LADY, DONT WALK IN THERE, OKAY? NO, I MEAN IT, DONT WALK IN THERE! TRUST ME, YOU DONT WANNA -- oh well...).

But child abuse? And then mixed with bestiality? I simply cannot fathom the mindset, not one whit. That is just too out there, far beyond my comfort zone -- and that's spoken as someone who hung out with the hardcore SM crowd on Folsom Street for over a decade. Never participated, because it wasnt my thing, but I always appreciated the fact that these guys seemed to have their heads screwed on a little more tightly than most of us because they seemed to have come to some kind of acceptance of who and what they were/are/continue to be.

But this? No way, Jack. Yikes.

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