How messed up does a person’s thinking have to be when they sit at their computer and make plans to travel to another state to engage in immoral sexual behavior?

The better question might be, how much further into the quagmire of immoral behavior is this nation going to fall? As I read the report concerning the charges made against a person who designed a plan online with someone, not known to the person, to travel a long distance into another state in order to participate in a sexual tryst with a woman and her minor daughter, I thought of how sad the life must be for a person to have fallen into that depth of depravity. While we could seek to understand the inner workings of a person’s psyche motivating them to take such a strange and perverted action, we might better take a look at society at large and how we respond to such behavior.

We have the continual bombardment of so-called “bad girl (boy) behavior,” thrown at us from the entertainment world. We have the supposed anonymous Internet to tempt a person to take a peek on the darker side of life and the titillating promise of seeing something that is forbidden in civil society. Exposed naked skin is available with one or two clicks of the mouse and is proving to be too great a temptation for many people, young and old alike, in our culture. We are being enticed by the promise of what happens in certain cities known for scandalous and licentious behavior will remain there (tell that to Prince Harry). It would be good to remind the Internet generation that once a picture is uploaded online it is there forever. Once a behavior is known on the World Wide Web, it will never be deleted. There are people who continue to lobby for the “consenting adult” concept of partying. This “consenting adult” concept is that whatever happens in the privacy of a room between two consenting adults will never be known by anyone else. That sounds like a lofty goal, but we know that in this world of camera phones and technology allowing for samples of DNA to be discovered many years later, the goal of total privacy has slipped away. The attempts to redefine what sex is and what it is not should also stand as a stark warning for any person who thinks no one will ever know about the aberrant or perverted behavior.

This is not a defense of wrong behavior, the exact opposite is true. With news of the rich and famous as well as the unknown person suddenly being thrust into the public view for their alleged misconduct should be enough warning to each of us to check our conduct and as my mother would say, “Act like you got some raising.” From where I stand, that warning from my mother makes sense and needs to be applied in this fast moving party generation.

Is there any such thing as "total privacy" between consenting adults? Tell us in comments. 

Follow Ray Newman on Twitter — @RayNewmanSr.