There has been a bit of a stir about the alleged Republican attempt to “redefine rape” in H. R. 3, the “no taxpayer funding for abortion” act^[a].  I am no supporter of the law itself. I am torn on the idea of abortion’s legality (unlike many on either side of the debate, I can’t bring myself to say that the rights of either the fetus or the mother completely override teh rights of the other, which leaves me in a moral dilemma when I consider my stance), but if one stipulates that abortion is legal, I see no problem with the government covering it like any other medical procedure.

That said, I find the assertion that section 309.1 of this bill represents a Republican “redefinition” of rape to be a pretty significant stretch. To infer that this is somehow meant to return us to the standard of “utmost resistance” and that it represents Republicans’ secret desire to subjugate women and return them to the status of second class citizens requires one to basically say that Republicans are evil to the core, which is a sure-fire way of stifling debate^[b]. Many of those vilifying Republicans for this bill were decrying the “violent rhetoric” in political discourse in this nation; I believe that deliberately taking the worst possible interpretation of the bill’s language to be just as harmful.

Technically speaking, even if you don’t give even the slightest benefit of the doubt to the bill’s author, this bill has nothing to do with the legal definition of rape. Even if one is being uncharitable, one could say that Republicans are trivializing some types of rape, but not that they are using this bill to redefine some types of rape as not being rape at all.

That said, I really don’t think the intent here is to exempt some types of rape without exempting others. It looks to me like this is an unfortunate reuse of a meaningless term (all rape is forceful, so the term is redundant) that was probably pulled from elsewhere. The FBI uses the term in their Uniform Crime Report, where it is defined as carnal knowledge of a victim against the victim’s will – rapes where the victim is drugged or otherwise unable to give consent fall under this category.

There is one problem with my interpretation, though, and it ties directly into a second criticism I have seen. The second clause of section 309.1 addresses the exemption for minor victims of incest. Some people seem to be interpreting this to mean that minors are only covered in cases of incest. That interpretation holds no water. The law says that rape is exempted, with no conditions on the age of the victim. The existence of a second clause exempting a minor under certain conditions does not remove the exemption under the first part of the section. Rape itself is sufficient condition for exemption, minor or not.

The existence of this second clause does pose a small problem for my interpretation that “forcible rape” is a redundant phrase, though. Minors cannot legally give consent, therefore any sex with a minor is rape. Given that, if all rape is forcible, then the forcible rape condition makes this condition unnecessary. The inclusion of the second clause would seem to indicate that the writer did not believe that first clause precluded the need for the second. 

I have two explanations for this discrepancy.  First, the writer has already shown, by use of the phrase “forcible rape,” a propensity for redundancy.  Given that leaving the incest condition to be implied would have been political suicide, the writer could have been creating this redundancy on purpose.

A second interpretation is that the writer wanted to exempt situations of minor incest where the question of rape is ambiguous (two minor siblings where both are incapable of legally consenting) without exempting instances of consentual adult incest.  I find this to be most likely, though I have some problem with it. Consider the recent case of the professor who had had a relationship with his adult daughter. While the relationship was theoretically consensual, I would argue that she was likely “groomed” during her childhood, and was a victim as deserving of every possible protection as any other.

There is plenty to criticize Republicans for in their actual philosophies and policies – vilifying them by accusing them of trying to deny that women who are roofied, for example, seems unnecessary and dishonest.  I am not a Republican, myself, but I do lean rightward politically and have a number of friends who are Republicans. I know that they are not secretly working to bring back the days when women were simply objects to be used as a man pleased. Tarring them with that brush merely because of some ill-considered language in a bill that probably isn’t really even intended to pass^[c] is counterproductive, especially considering the cries for more civil discourse we’ve had recently.

Is this bill a sign that lawmakers need to be more clear and precise in their wording? Sure, just like some of the most odious stuff in the healthcare bill was a sign that bills should be sorry enough for legislators and constituents to reasonably read and understand. Is it a sign that Republicans as a whole are barely concealing their desire to treat women as property? I don’t think so.

1. The acronym guys must be on vacation – no catchy name for this boondoggle. [↩]
2. That, in turn, is a great way of convincing people that non-violent options for fixing problems have expired… [↩]
3. its sponsors know it faces a huge uphill battle in the Senate and would likely be vetoed even if it were to get over that hurdle [↩]

I’m not dead. I just haven’t had the time or desire to update this site much. Mostly, my time’s been eaten up by my day job, my second freelance/part-time job, and Champions Online. I will leave it up to the reader to determine the exact percentages of my time eaten up by each item.

Finally got Master of Orion 2 to work, no thanks to Digital River and Atari. Instead, I requested a refund for the purchase, and ordered a used copy from Amazon. Add Dosbox, and the game’s working great!

I’m not a big fan of his in general, but kudos to President Obama for his support of new nuclear power plants. Granted, this isn’t so much an instance of his doing something right as an instance of his continuing a good policy that President Bush laid the groundwork for, but it’s still a good thing.

I’m also pretty pleased by recent moves to lift the stupid DADT policy. I may be pretty conservative and prudish personally, but I see no reason why an individual should be disqualified from serving one’s country simply because of their sexual orientation ^[a]

1. Incidentally, I also wouldn’t mind supporting homosexual marriages, if it’s a.) passed as an actual law, not forced into place by a judge with delusions of legislative power and b.) passed with language that explicitly states that a wedding officiant cannot be sued if he/she refuses to perform a homosexual marriage for whatever reason (I’m actually thinking of ethics/religious objections, but prefer to err on the side of freedom for the officiant here). [↩]

Rush Limbaugh was taken to the hospital with chest pains.

As an interesting little experiment, before I’ve seen any such responses, I suggest you go around the internet and look at liberal responses to this, then come back here and look at conservative (or conservative-libertarian) responses to hospitalizations of Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd (among others). Then see which side of the political spectrum is really “compassionate.”

My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Limbaugh.

Also, a quick, unrelated note: I have internet again, no thanks to the storm a couple of weeks ago. Just in time to get hit by a new storm this weekend. Yay.

According to the BBC, one of the world’s leading climate research units has been hacked. The BBC article doesn’t say (as of this writing) what the hacked information has revealed, but a file that allegedly contains the hacked data has appeared on the internet, and, if true, it seems to show a pattern of hiding and/or altering data to fit the theory of global warming.

I have no idea, honestly, whether these e-mails are legitimate or not. I believe they are, but, at this point, I am skeptical. Even assuming they are, this wouldn’t disprove the theory that the earth is warming, or even the theory that said warming is being caused by us. All it would prove is that some scientists deleted, edited, or otherwise falsified data in order to support the theory of global warming. It damages the theory’s credibility, but doesn’t utterly destroy it.

I suspect that these scientists are so confident that their theory is correct that they’re willing to throw out a single set of data that disproves it. Unfortunately for them, we’ve only got one planet, and, therefore, that single set of data is all they have. This isn’t a guy flipping a quarter ten times and having it come up heads all ten times (which would happen about once every 1,024) and then throwing out that particular set of data as an outlier. This is the opposite – a man trying to prove that quarters almost always come up heads and throwing out his first 1,023 experiments simply because they don’t prove his theory.

It probably will take the wind out of the sails of those individuals (See: Al Gore) who’ve made a career out of using the threat of global warming as a selling point for the idea of stripping various freedoms from pretty much anyone who isn’t Al Gore or one of his friends. Unfortunately, though, there are more of these people, who have various other crises (manufactured or otherwise) that they intend to use as an axe to chop away at our freedoms.

I’m anxiously waiting for further developments in this story.

From Tuesday’s Gazette comes the story of a man sentenced to three years probation for repeatedly molesting his five year old niece. From the AP today comes another story about a man sentenced to three years in prison for having sex with a horse.

There’s something very, very wrong with this picture. I’m certainly not approving of abusing an animal, but it certainly isn’t as severe a crime as repeatedly assaulting a five-year-old girl. I realize that these two punishments were ruled on by two different judges in two different districts, but all this does is give the impression that Americans are much more concerned about the molestation of a horse than about a young child.

Judge Zakaib should be ashamed of himself.