1. It is uncertain where consent ends and force begins. Because that is largely a religious question that cannot be determined by science, it has no place in our criminal statutes. Such determinations are also influenced by culture and no one culture is superior to another.
2. Every year thousands of men commit the crime of rape in back alleys. This is a less-than-ideal situation. In fact, it is a problem that requires a legislative solution. Everyone knows that back alleys are unclean environments. And everyone knows that people have a right to commit crimes in safe and sterile environments - even if this means decriminalizing an act that has been unlawful for time immemorial.
3. Women are smaller than men and therefore cannot be said to possess the same rights as their male counterparts. When people suggest that our rights vary with body size it really makes a mess of human equality. But it has been said that some animals are more equal than others.
4. Every man has a right to choose what to do with his own body. It would therefore be unfair to restrict bodily autonomy by restricting a man’s choice of violence. It would be hypocritical to apply force to him simply because he chose to apply force to another living entity.
5. Every man has a right to control his own reproductive choices. Reproductive freedom is a basic human right. This much is self-evident.
6. The circumstances of many men leave them no choice but to commit rape. As a society, we have evolved far beyond the idea that crime is a function of “free will.” It is not. In fact, crime is caused by society. It is therefore unfair to target specific individuals. This does nothing to get to the root causes of crime.
7. I’m personally against rape, but I am pro-choice. Everyone is free to believe what he chooses. We just don’t have the right to impose our beliefs on others.
8. Rape is currently illegal, yet it still exists. If banning rape has failed then it is time for us to stop wasting precious resources trying to stop it. We need to think about victims of rape. But we must also consider the over-burdened taxpayer who is asked to fund our failed War on Rape.
9. Anti-rape laws violate Separation of Church and State. Our laws need to have a purely secular, non-religious basis. Any religious support for a given prohibition negates its validity.
10. Anti-rapists don’t care about women. Because they seldom do anything to personally stop rape from occurring, they have no legitimate basis for arguing that it should be banned.
After this column makes its rounds on the internet and gets quoted out of context, the university will be flooded with calls for my firing. And that will be sad for three reasons. First, the people calling will have failed to understand that they are reading social satire. Second, they will mistakenly assume that I give a damn what the pro-abortion UNC administration thinks about any given moral issue. Third, they will all be abortion-choice advocates completely out of touch with their own sanctimonious hypocrisy.
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