No need to be scared, Marcy. 
Actually, one of the issues that I expect the LPMA to pick up in the
next year or two is that Massachusetts still does not have an informed
consent law. What this means is that a middle-aged woman who
consensually participates in BDSM play with her middle-aged male partner
faces serious criminal charges -- domestic violence charges for him, and
accomplice to domestic violence charges for her. It's utterly insane.
And if she has kids, these ridiculous charges, even though they'd be
laughed out of a courtroom by our notoriously liberal judges and juries,
would still result in her children being taken away from her by state
bureaucrats (since family law doesn't have any real due process rights
for the accused). Hence, members of the BDSM community have to drive to
Providence, RI before they do anything, or else risk having their lives
destroyed by the government for private consensual sexual activities.
(This whole issue of sex laws no longer seriously enforced, yet kept on
the books with non-criminal consequences such as loss of child custody
and certain types of jobs like schoolteaching, is almost exactly the
same as the situation for gay people before sodomy laws were struck down
by the Supreme Court in Lawrence in 2003.)
California already has such an informed consent law, so I see why it's
not an important issue for the BDSM community there. But Massachusetts
is by no means the only state where these ridiculous laws still exist
that will treat consensual BDSM participants as criminals, with the man
as the abuser and the "abused" woman as an accomplice to the abuse. And
unfortunately, the Democrats and Republicans are as averse to dealing
with this issue as they were about gay rights or medical marijuana 20 or
30 years ago. If the Libertarians don't address this, nobody will.
Well, except for maybe Dan Quayle who famously said we need more "family
bondage" in this country. 
Rob
Amarcy D. Berry wrote: