Rapists

[TaraJo]

There's a lot of gray area in rape, as much as we might not like to admit it, especially when drugs or alcohol are impairing the judgement of people involved.

This is true and something I wasn't thinking of. I assume you refer to the target drinking or using drugs and not the perp, right?

Maybe a little of both. It would be fair to say that if "the perp" has their judgement impaired, they might rape when they otherwise wouldn't have. I'm not saying that should allow someone to get away with it scott free, but I do think the impact alcohol has should be taken into consideration when deciding how to handle this person.

If the target is incapacitated or incoherent, they clearly aren't able to give consent and I would agree they need to be protected by the law. Rape isn't determined by the "no" but the absence of a "yes". The problem it's hard to come up with an objective blood/alcohol measure of when that line is crossed. Some people are knocked out with only a few drinks where others have a higher tolerance.

Agreed, this, again, is a bit of a gray area. I acknowledge that it can be easy to rape someone who is intoxicated and even easy to do it without their saying 'no,' but I also don't want to say that any intoxication turns sex into rape. That would automatically turn it into rape when people hook up at singles bars or at college parties or stuff like that. It's a bit too wide a brush for my tastes.

Statutory rape can certainly be a gray area as well, because, let's face it, we don't ask for photo ID of sexual partners before we get down and dirty and it's entirely possible for someone to lie about their age.

Agreed and also a point I hadn't considered. Of course, statutory rape is treated differently than 1st or 2nd degree rape.

Even in the case of statutory rape, though, there are shades of gray. It's one thing for, say, the 19 year old to have sex with a 17 year old partner. It's another for a 40-something year old to seduce a naive 14 year old. I've honestly never been that crazy about age-of-consent laws, though, because they can be so arbitrary. A family member of mine had down syndrome and was never going to age, psychologically, past say 10 years old. Yet when she was in her early thirties, she was raped. Problem was, she consented and was past the age of consent so she wasn't able to prosecute, but she was hurt as much as most victims would be.

Really? You're more comfortable with someone who had a temporary lapse of judgement than you are with someone who planned out a crime for maybe months in advance?

When it comes to rape, yes.

I can't say I feel the same way. A momentar lapse of judgement is something that can be remedied with better self control (which is also true of many other crimes). If you had time to plan things out over a length of time, you already had time to consider and tell yourself what you're doing is wrong. It takes a certain amount of malice or sociopathy to contiue doing something like that when you know it's wrong.

If anything, this only strengthens my case that there's gray area with rape and some rape, like child rape, is worse than others.

To be clear, pedophilia is something that needs a life sentence because we're starting to suspect it's a sexual orientation, not just a predatory behavior. This means it can't be cured and the perp can't be rehabilitated. Hence, they need to be locked up forever.

I could somewhat agree to that. I just don't much like the idea of giving someone a life sentence because of something that's beyond their control. I'd love if we could find a way to release them, or give them some kind of freedom, but still know they aren't going to victimize anymore children.

But even in cases of child rape there can be gray areas. There are places where it's a crime for a 19 year old to have sex with a 17 year old

That's not pedophilia. Child rape concerns a prepubescent victim.

But yes, the 19/17 year old couple, that's a situation that should not be prosecuted. I've sometimes thought a caveat should be in the law where if the age difference is less than four years, it doesn't count as statutory rape.

That wouldn't be a bad idea. But then you'd wind up with people who are four years and one month apart who argue that they should be able to have sex with each other and it would be hard to argue that they're any less able to consent than parties that are just a month closer in age. Hell, my boyfriend and I have a larger divide between our birthdays; that isn't rape, is it?