Crimes of Power, Crimes of Passion

The year seems to be getting underway with a focus on a hard but painfully necessary discussion about rape.

In India, the rape and murder of a young woman, allegedly by a gang of five men, has the entire country debating the status of women, while Stateside a similar incident is shining an unpleasant light on a small Ohio town and the prevailing attitudes not only about women, but about the status of high school football players in small towns.

These days, of course, reflections of such incidents surface in electronic form. Two high school footballers in Steubenville, Ohio, are being charged in the rape, but a recording of another player mocking the girl has gone viral on the Internet, betraying an attitude held not only by him but by others around him. Now, many are wondering whether the authorities are minimizing the incident to protect the football team.

There is always collateral damage with these things now. In Steubenville’s case, the attention being paid to this is earning the town an unsolicited label – not nearly as permanent as Aurora or Newtown, of course, but one that could leave a scar.

Many of us may be pleased with this country’s growing tolerance for such things as gay marriage, and we may think of ourselves in general as being pretty enlightened on issues of equality. But let’s remember that women have had the right to vote here for less than a century. And on a very basic level, when it comes to the question of how women function, men can still display a surprising level of ignorance. Some of them get elected to Congress.

Rape is a crime I don’t understand. I wasn’t raised with any particular focus on respecting women, but it wasn’t a problem: the women around me were always respected, and while society may have accorded them a different role, they were never considered “less than” anyone else. Why there are those who feel this way is something of a mystery to me, but if this seems enlightened, I can’t take any credit for it – that’s just the way it was when I was growing up.

But if rape is a crime of power, and not passion, as they say, it means those who commit it are simply afraid of losing what they think they have or believe they are owed. And yes, even in 2013, we do need to have a serous discussion about where such attitudes come from, and how we’re going to deal with them.

Verbal Minefield

Today we have the story of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana saying that he’s opposed to abortion in the case of pregnancy due to rape, because if the pregnancy occurred, it must be “what God intended.” Putting rape, pregnancy, and God together is not a successful mixture, especially for a Republican.

The fur, as you might expect, is flying, with President Obama’s spokespeople calling the pregnancy remark “outrageous.” Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who was to make a campaign appearance with Mourdock, canceled, and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, while continuing to support Mourdock’s candidacy, said through a spokesman that he disagrees with Mourdock’s view.

While Mourdock was concerned that his statement would be misinterpreted and offered an apology for any offense caused, he also said that when he gave voice to his conviction about pregnancy, he was speaking from his heart.

To be honest, part of me admires Mourdock for standing by his basic conviction instead of trying to weasel-word his way out of it or saying that his tongue slipped. But he has no business interpreting God’s intentions to women. It’s up to the woman in that situation to hear from God directly, if she’s even listening for such guidance. Under the law as it stands, the period goes after the fifth word in the last sentence here.

Look, I am no fan of abortion; in fact, there are probably very few of those who are. The notion that a woman might consider this as a last-resort form of birth control is ridiculous on its face. The only way, it seems to me, that an individual can begin to be comfortable with abortion is by considering a fetus just a hunk of biological matter. If it’s life, well then, abortion is homicide, and no other conclusion is possible. But abortion is not something we’re supposed to be comfortable with. It’s one of those cases, again under the present state of the law, where we permit homicide under certain extenuating circumstances.

BTW, don’t read Roe v. Wade back to me or talk about viability. I’m sure I’ve stepped on a verbal land mine of my own somewhere in here. When all is said and done, words don’t work very well in this area. As a practical matter, we need lawyers – more than theologians and certainly more than politicians -- to define “life” and “death” for us so we can move on to more mundane matters.

But the take-away for any politician, especially a Republican, is you'd better practice your lines before you start talking about this stuff. And if you really believe what you’re saying, don’t back away from it. The voters need to hear someone running for office who actually speaks from the heart, even if it’s wrong. That’s where the phrase “courage of convictions” comes from.

Shootin' From the Hip

Congressman Todd Akin’s thesis that women who are raped are less likely to get pregnant is the latest entry in the political gaffe festival. But is “gaffe” the right word for this?

We usually reserve that word for insensitive slips of the tongue. Some come out as unsuccessful jokes. But others betray deeply held beliefs. You can apologize for the wound such a remark can inflict, due to a lack of sensitivity, but you can’t erase the existence of the belief.

Don’t worry, ladies (and others) – this guy can’t get elected dogcatcher now. There’s only one thing that can save him: data. He’s apologizing, largely because he doesn’t have it. And if you listen to the experts, he won’t. You can read more about it on Politico.

But I did notice when I typed “rape resulting in pregnancy” into Google that I pulled up a site that actually offered data to support Akin’s argument. Of course, their data isn’t as strong as what the other side has.

As to his comment that raped women have some kind of “shutoff” mechanism to prevent pregnancy, well, I don’t where that came from. But do you want to bet there are others beside Akin who believe it?

I’m not apologizing for Akin, but I would venture a guess (no data) that most of us, even the reasonable among us, have some kind of wacky belief that is supported by the flimsiest of anecdotal evidence. Hopefully, as new data becomes available, we learn to surrender that belief to the power of the facts. Or if we can’t, at least shut up about it.

In the words of the old cowboy, “When you’re shootin’ from the hip, pardner, take the gun out of the holster first.”