How is the RFRA Issue Like the Rape Culture Issue?

How is the RFRA Issue Like the Rape Culture Issue? April 1, 2015

Photo by Justin Eagan via WikimediaCommons
Photo by Justin Eagan via WikimediaCommons

Been working on a project and late to the headlines, but something occurred to me after reading this and this and this and this and all of these, and watching this and this.

There is a staggering amount of hysteria and outrage being spewed about Indiana’s RFRA by many of the same people who — just mere weeks ago — were spewing in hysterical outrage about the nation’s growing so-called “rape culture”, and this despite disputed claims that 1 in 5 women are raped on college campuses, and a highly dubious accusation of gang rape on a college campus.

Rape, of course, is an indisputably heinous act; because it forces a woman to engage in something she does not want to do, it must always be roundly decried and despised by all sane people.

But, that being the case, what shall we make of the fact that, for the most part, the very same entities who (disputed “rape culture” claims aside) quite rightly insist that a woman should never, ever be forced to engage in acts against her will, have pivoted toward Indiana to demand that “other” people be forced to engage in acts against their wills?

Should governments, or new agencies, or pundits for that matter, really be positioning themselves over people and telling them that if they do not submit to what is demanded of them — and engage willingly — then they will be forced to take it, and like it?

Doubtless someone will say, “these two issues are not at all the same.”

I’d argue that to the people being shoved down, they look exactly alike.

I’m going back to my project. Comments remain closed.


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