To the editors

Because we both have been in the Chicago news business for 20 years, you may understand what I am going to say here somewhat better than many who have not made their living in the news business or in related businesses such as law enforcement or social work.

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Sex is John Gacy strangling 33 young boys and men and having intercourse with some of the corpses. Sex is every child who was ever raped by a father or other relative, some of these victims driven to madness. Sex is every girl or woman spread eagled on a floor or in a stairwell or on the pavement, in poor neighborhoods and rich, with a knife at her throat being raped and screaming–often silently–but screaming. Sex is a man bashing in a girl’s skull because he has molested her and wants to cover it up. Sex is a serial killer cutting off the penis of a live and screaming young boy, then cutting up the boy while he lives and until he dies and putting the parts in plastic bags and forcing some of the gore down the bathtub drain until it clogs. (Did I cross a line there for newspapers? You will decide.) Sex is a motive for murder, rape, and child molesting every day, always.

Substitute your own examples as you read, whatever examples impress you with the reality of sex crime. I remember seeing a tiny girl standing on a table in a large courtroom in the Criminal Courts Building, whispering. The judge leaned toward her and said, “Can you speak a little louder, honey, just turn toward me.” She is answering a question about whether her father penetrated her body and where.

If we keep all this in our mind, it may seem too much to bear. It may seem that from the extremes of love and beauty to the extremes of depravity there is too much contradiction to allow any kind of answer. So we might be tempted to throw away one side and base our decision solely on the other side, whichever side we choose.

We look to our knowledge of the existing world. What do our fellow men and women in other, contemporary societies on the earth do?

Why?