Rape is Not a Political Issue

Warning! This is another rant, which means you can expect conversational sentence structure, sarcasm, and my opinions. Here it goes!

We Americans are something, aren't we?

Or maybe the entire world is messed up. Yeah, it's probably that.

Anyway, we Americans have the knack of taking any issue and making it political. Example: abortion. Killing unborn human children in the womb. Appalling, right? Beyond even consideration in a civilized culture that takes human rights seriously, right? Right?! Nope. We have to debate it because I'm a Republican and you're a Democrat. It's a political issue. That means we have to come to a bipartisan answer that suits everyone, including people who tear fetuses limb from limb in the womb.

We Americans suck, don't we?

Well, here we go again, making a moral issue into a political one. We have managed to make rape a political issue. Your guy should resign because he did [fill in the blank], but my guy should stay in office because he's innocent, sorry, or so old that it doesn't really matter. The next time you hear someone accused of rape, think deeply about how you instinctually react. Is your reaction politically motivated or informed? What is your gut telling you?

Mt thesis today is simple. Rape is not a political issue. It is a moral issue. All issues, of course, are moral to some extent, but some issues are moral to the exclusion of being political. Rape is one such issue. As such, we as a nation should be uniformly opposed to it. If a woman is sexually assaulted, we should all be outraged, regardless of what part of the country the accused calls home or what letter is beside his name on the ballot.

To maintain balance, however, we must remember that justice is not a political issue either. Justice also transcends politics. It's transpolitical, if you will. We can debate over the best way to do run a government, but we should have complete agreement when it comes to the fundamental rules of justice. A man (or woman) should never be presumed guilty based merely on allegations. Without proof there must be no conviction, whether the perpetrator was accused of murder, rape, or stealing a Yoo-Hoo from his local convenience store.

Rape is a unique crime. I get that. It is often difficult to prove because it, like most heinous crimes, is usually done where no one is around to see it. Rape also leaves the victim in a fragile state, which complicates a trial. Despite these realities, we simply cannot abandon such a fundamental rule of justice, even for such a sensitive crime. Doing so opens the door to untold opportunity for corruption.

"But people will get away with rape!" you cry.

People get away with bad things all the time. It sucks, but it's part of living in a depraved world.

Remember the old saying about two wrongs not making a right? Yeah, that applies her.

I would rather see 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished wrongly. We're so used to convictions based on circumstantial evidence that we've totally lost sight of what really constitutes proof of guilt. We so badly want someone...anyone...to pay for crimes that we're willing to risk false convictions for the sake of closure. This is just one of the many problems with our justice system.

Those of us who believe in God, however, don't need every single crime to be solved. We know that God will punish those criminals who get away with crimes here on Earth. At the end of it all, no one really gets away with rape. Or murder. Or petty theft. Men aren't omniscient, but they don't need to be. God will make sure justice is served.

So, basically what I'm trying to say is, if we could stop politicizing rape, that would be good.

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