Thursday, May 11, 2006

Rape accusations in the news

A few weeks ago, Ann Coulter opened her syndicated column with a very hard-hitting statement:

You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money.

I was reminded of this statement when reading Kathleen Parker's May 3 column about a young man who claims to have been falsely accused of rape. Parker makes a very strong case in her column that the accusation was false and the man was unjustly imprisoned. However, allow me to paraphrase Ann Coulter: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you wait to have sexual intercourse until after you are married.

These two accusations of rape at Duke and Florida State illustrate the danger inherent in our anything-goes, no inhibitions culture when it comes to sexuality. Instead of sex being part of a lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage, it has been reduced and cheapened to a physical act that can be enjoyed with a number of people in complete anonymity. God created sex for a special bond between a man and a woman, for the perpetuation of the species, and (yes) for pleasure. Man, however, has degraded and demeaned it.

When one ignores God's plan for sex and abuses it, tragic consequences follow. The senseless slaughter of over 46,000,000 unborn children can be directly traced to the desire to have limitless sex without consequences. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases have killed millions of people, and countless more hearts have been broken and scarred by the abuse of sex. God's warning in I Corinthians 6:18 rings loud and clear: "Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body."

The New York Times has weighed in on another accusation of rape, this time involving Jacob Zuma, the former deputy president of South Africa. Zuma, 64, was accused of rape by a woman 33 years his junior. (He was acquitted.) The Times editors pump up their chest with moral outrage over the way Zuma hoped to avoid contracting AIDS from the HIV-positive woman and looks upon him with scorn over his admission that he felt it was his duty as a man to provide sex to a woman who wanted it.

I cannot help but wonder where the New York Times was in 1998 when disgraced ex-President Clinton was mired in a scandal involving a sexual relationship with a White House intern young enough to be his daughter. Clinton would later admit (after he left office, of course) that he used Monica Lewinsky sexually "because he could". Will the Times now say that Clinton is unfit for office and was unfit for office in the late 1990's because of his behavior and attitude?

Somehow, I doubt it. The hypocrisy is blatant and brazen.