Last week, Kenneth Parnell, a 71-year old convicted sex offender and kidnapper, was arrested for trying to buy a 4-year old male child in Berkeley, California.

When arrested, he admitted he was trying to buy the child, but when interviewed by a local newspaper in jail, Parnell's defense was he was trying to buy the child to have a family. He further stated he was getting on in age and he just wanted to have a son to love and be loved by as any normal human being. Normal?

This may seem normal to Kenneth Parnell, but it cannot seem reasonable or normal to too many others. The way to have a family is not to buy one ingredient here and another there. The police department, however, speculates that Parnell was attempting to buy the young child to raise as his sex slave.

Too often in the San Francisco Bay Area anything goes as simply an alternative life style instead of labeling it as aberrant. In Berkeley a quite aberrant group called the Man/Boy Love Society, or some similar name, is actually attempting to get legislation in California making is legal for men to have sex with under-aged boys. It is said that their motto is, "Get them before eight because after eight it's too late."

For more aberrant acts: In this San Francisco Bay Area, a man left his family--wife and children--had a sex change operation to become a woman. After becoming a woman, he became a lesbian. His confusion of circles was only to find himself back at his starting point.

Another couple divorced after having a child. The parents got joint custody and bought adjoining houses so their daughter could easily go from one house to the next in the parents' joint custody. The father lived next door with his homosexual lover, while the mother lived next door with her lesbian lover.

These are the types of strange lifestyles existing in the area. Now Kenneth Parnell, who kidnapped and raped Steven Stayner for some seven years, was trying to buy a child to build a family? That is the rationale he wants us to accept. At some point tolerance must come to an end as we protect our children from predators like Kenneth Parnell and others who claim alternative lifestyles that harm others.

Gibbs staff