Just as tobacco has all but been declared a poison (leaving smokers open to indictment for murder), via Ann Althouse I see that Wisconsin has declared alcohol to be a date rape drug:
“Alcohol is the No. 1 date-rape drug, and we’ve felt strongly that our statutes should reflect that reality,” said Jill Groblewski, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
The coalition started lobbying for the change in the mid-1990s, when language on intoxicants was added to the rape statutes in response to a surge in assaults aided by drugs.
“The change in legislation allows prosecutors to hold offenders accountable who use alcohol to facilitate a sexual assault,” Groblewski said. “It gives prosecutors additional charging options.”
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Under state law, having sexual contact with a person incapable of consent because they are under the influence of an intoxicant is defined as second- degree sexual assault. The offense is a Class C felony punishable by a fine up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to 25 years.
25 years in prison for drunken sex? Is that what they’re saying? Apparently.
Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said the change was “long overdue” and is a good thing primarily for the message about alcohol that it sends – namely, that it can be just as dangerous as other drugs.
Blanchard also stressed that the somewhat lower bar on consent standards for victims does not extend to perpetrators, who can be charged for crimes whether they have been drinking or not.
“Alcohol is not an excuse,” he said. “It’s our job to help jurors understand that people who want to commit sexual assault many times are going to take unfair advantage to get what they want.”
I’ve asked this question before, but what I’d like to know is what is a perpetrator? The feminists who define these things want, on the one hand, to declare that only men are capable of being perpetrators. But what is consent? And why can’t a man be just as incapable of giving consent as a woman?
If (as the feminists insist) we are to be non-sexist in our analyses, why must we continue to be so, um, “heteronormative”? Anyone who thinks I am being overly disingenuous, try to imagine this law as applied to a gay couple, both of whom had too much to drink, and both of whom had sex. The next day, both are regretful. Who’s the perpetrator? Who’s the victim? The one who manages to get to the phone first to call the cops?
My question is why does the law presume that a drunken man can consent, while a drunken woman cannot? Might there be a constitutional issue here?
If you think this is ridiculous, don’t look at me. I didn’t write the law; I am only trying to analyze it.
I’m not sure who’s behind this neoprohibitionist agenda, but drunken sex seems to be going the way of drunken driving.
However, I think there’s a key difference, as revealed in this statement by the campus police chief:
[UW-Madison Police Chief Susan Riseling] praised the change in the law, calling it “recognition that just because someone has used alcohol doesn’t mean they are any less a victim/survivor.”
She wouldn’t have said that about a drunken driver who survived a crash, as such people are not allowed to be seen as victims.
Not even if they are women who decided to drive home rather than face becoming victims of drunken sex? Let’s assume that someone is legally drunk — and therefore legally incapable of consenting to sex. Assume the same person (too drunk to drive) drives anyway. Is it really fair to call her a “perpetrator” if she climbs behind a steering wheel, but a “victim” if she climbs in her boyfriend’s bed?
What is consent?
Comments
7 responses to “driven to drunken sex?”
From what I read in the article, it means that the law recognizes that alcohol *can* impair consent, not that it automatically does. So if they’re unconscious lying on the floor, they obviously can’t give consent. We’ll just have to see how the law is used by prosecutors now.
You hit on one major problem when you wrote”
“Who’s the perpetrator? Who’s the victim? The one who manages to get to the phone first to call the cops?”
In a great many ‘domestic’ situations, the roles of victim and criminal are decided by who called the cops first.
Adam,
How do law enforcement and the courts determine when a person has passed out and been raped or simply regetted sleeping with someone? He said she said doesn’t strike me as particularly good law.
According to this definition I’ve been raped multiple times by fat chicks.
I’m not kidding.
CALL THE POLICE NOW!
I honestly feel that all these laws that have little or no objective basis are moving us in a simple direction. Instead of having laws for specific crimes, where everything that is illegal is immoral, we’ll have some vague law that might cover every action, so, with a jury trial, we hope to have everything immoral being illegal.
Honestly, if we start seeing jail time for particularly painful breakups (not even of marriages), I won’t be suprised.
We’ll soon move from a world in which you don’t have to fear the government if you don’t do certain things to a world in which any action you take might be spun by a lawyer in such a way that you are thrown in prison by an unsympathetic jury.
Do you guys just FEEL the rightness of this?
Why all this over-rationalization? Like reason is a basis for law. Duh.
After all “perpetrator” rhymes with “penetrator” so it all makes perfect sense.