This is a somewhat distasteful, as well as controversial, topic. That's a dilemma for Christians. Liberals decide to make some new issue their great social cause du jour. The latest "crisis."
Ideally, we'd rather not follow them into the tawdry details, but if we absent ourselves from the debate and let them monopolize the discussion, they win by default. They win without a fight. It would be nice if we could sidestep some of these controversies, but we can't let them do all the talking. And, of course, the Bible itself is not for the squeamish.
As a Christian complementation, I'm ironically more egalitarian about men and women than feminists are. Let's hold both to the same moral standards.
Last month, George Will wrote a controversial column on the alleged rape epidemic on college campuses:
His column provoked outrage, and demands that he be fired. Several issues:
i) Will is not a stereotypical conservative. He's an atheist with libertarian leanings. So he doesn't fit the popular caricature of the rightwing theocrat.
ii) Critics accused him of blaming the "survivors." But I don't think that's what he was saying. Rather, I take him to mean that a culture of victimhood proliferates false accusations of sexual assault.
iii) Which brings me to the next point. It's as if his critics were willfully twisting his words. Do they deliberately misrepresent his position, or do they have a hair-trigger reaction that renders them incapable of even understanding what someone they disagree with means?
iv) Another issue which he alluded to is the relationship between intoxication and consent. But that's complicated:
a) Inebriation doesn't automatically negate responsibility for your actions. If get get drunk, get behind the wheel, and kill someone, the fact that you was driving under the influence is not exculpatory, or even mitigating. For although, at the time, you was in a state of diminished responsibility, you're responsible for getting drunk in the first place–with the resultant consequences.
b) Why do college students go to clubs, bars, or parties where they know there will be heavy drinking? Where they themselves go to get plastered? It's not exactly a secret that intoxication lowers sexual inhibitions. Isn't that why some people get drunk in the first place?
c) If inebriation negates consent, where does that leave the sexual transaction if both parties are drunk? Who's raping whom? Are they raping each other? Is the woman as well as the man a rapist under those conditions?
v) Secular universities aggressively promote a highly-sexualized campus climate, with coed dorms, coed locker rooms, &c. It's duplicitous to then turn around and scream about an epidemic of sexuality run amok.
vi) Will cites this case to illustrate his point:
Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:
“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”
Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped.
i) Notice that even according to her own testimony, she didn't put any physical resistance.
ii) Suppose we change the story:
“They’d now decided — mutually, he thought — just to be friends. When she ended up falling asleep on his bed, he changed into boxers and climbed in next to her. Soon, she was putting her arm around him and taking off his clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then she said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then she started again a few minutes later, taking off my boxers and performing fellatio on me. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let her finish. I pulled my boxers back on and went to sleep.’”
Six weeks later, the student reported that he had been raped.
Would feminists say the coed raped the guy in that situation? Would they demand that the coed be expelled and be prosecuted for sexual assault?
There is also the kangaroo court atmosphere:
Liberals have a habit of declaring some positions off-limits. You are not permitted to disagree, or even raise questions. You are not permitted to question the facts or question the logic. This false premise in turn becomes the basis for liberal policies.
It's necessary that we challenge these developments before they become entrenched. Consider the whole notion of hate crimes. That should have been challenged at the outset. Same thing with "disparate impact," "racial profiling," and other liberal axioms. We must not allow these to harden into indisputable presuppositions.
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