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It is good that US Courts recognize that there are some rights one cannot surrender through contractual arrangements. One of those rights is the right to file suit against your employer if your co-workers gang rape you and the company mishandles the evidence, at least in the 5th Circuit. Franken seeks to make sure that the US government does not do business with companies that block employees from seeking legal redress in the court system for both minor and egregious problems. I was never a fan of Franken on SNL, but I like this "skit." Shine a light, Senator.
Apparently, 30 male, Republican senators (including Orrin Hatch[1] my own Senator Kit Bond (R-MO)) do not think that it is appropriate for the US government to require certain behavior from companies to which we taxpayers give money. See The Daily Show's* take for significant mockery of their position.
This would also be a good time to remind you all that every cent of revenue generated by this blog are being and will continue to be donated to Doctors Without Borders in a project that began with the initial Silence is the Enemy effort.
*I cry almost daily for the fact that Comedy Central may have the best news program on TV. 1: Orrin Hatch voted for the amendment. Thanks to Barbara for pointing out my mistake.
You are absolutely correct. I had Hatch on my mind because of a different article (don't right 2,3,4,5 things at once) when I meant to pick on my state's Kit Bond (R-MO). Great catch. The article will be updated to reflect the accurate information in mere moments. A correct list of the 30 can be seen here in pretty tedious article at the almost always tedious Huffington Post.
the right to file suit against your employer if your co-workers gang rape you and the company mishandles the evidence, at least in the 5th Circuit.
Maybe I've been reading rather a lot of Chesterton lately, but mishandling the evidence seems to me to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Any other get-out comes under this condemnation:
The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action any thing else—mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.
which is from his article about The Boy who painted the statue of a Swiss General bright red.
One thing you might like to do is to direct your Republican friends to my small cache of Chesterton Links, and get them to read his article about Abraham Lincoln.
Without getting all wishy-washy with post-modern moral relativism, the term "sinful" carries particular connotations of judgment by an objective giver of morality (i.e., god) in the modern era. Calling something "sinful" implies that the speaker is in tune with some absolute set of rules and not expressing an opinion. Modern journalism, while it provides opinion, goes to great lengths to appear not to give an opinion.
It should also be noted that traditional views of "unclean" and "sinful", in the context of the magical nature of traditional religions, do not equate with our modern views.
I was responding to your general point about the unwillingness in the media to use strong language to describe an action. The term "sinful" carries cultural connotations. That is the context within which a journalist would operate. Culturally, the word "sinful" is meaningless outside of the religious context. The technical use of the term in theology is not relevant to this particular discussion. Furthermore, not being a professional theologian, it is not much of critique to say that I do not know my theology.
I would call both acts wrong, unethical, and gross violations of the individual's rights. I have no knowledge of the opinion of God, god, or gods' position on the matter, but from my various readings of scripture I suspect their opinion will be more nuanced than mine.
From the definition stand point, saying an act or a person is "sinful" implies that the individual applying the label is aware that the action/person is out of line with the "right" action, which necessitates some knowledge of "right" action.
Since the article you cite simply discusses inaccurate perceptions of risk behaviors, it seems reasonable.
But despite popular beliefs, police have found no evidence that rape victims
are commonly drugged with such substances, the researchers said.
Dr Adam Burgess from the university's School of Social Policy, Sociology and
Social Research, said: "Young women appear to be displacing their
anxieties about the consequences of consuming what is in the bottle on to
rumours of what could be put there by someone else.
This does not change the evaluation of the rape (i.e., taking advantage of an unconscious individual) itself. It would seem to affect assumptions of pre-meditation, but I am not a legal scholar. So, I cannot comment on how or if this affects the legal treatment of rapists.
Since the article you cite simply discusses inaccurate perceptions of risk behaviors, it seems reasonable.
I'm glad you think it's reasonable, so do I. But once things like this get into the press, the word "simply" loses its force. My worry was that it might be picked up by the "she wore a mini-skirt so she deserved it" brigade.
Also, "simply" is a bit like the word "just", which gets me reaching for my warpaint.
Of course, if it raises a few more pennies for MSF, I could be provocative and say that your rejoinder does sound a little stuffy!
"Simply" was simply intellectual laziness due to being in a hurry.
The headline does make it sound like the article is saying that date-rapes are urban myths, including those blamed on spiked drinks. What the article actually says is that the rapes are real, but the intoxicant is not correctly identified. The phenomenon (date-rape) is real, but the cause (spiked drinks) may not be. This myth seems to me to be part of victim blaming. Because there are strategies to avoid having your drink spiked, the only people that get their drink spiked are fools. It makes it easy for non-victims to explain how that would never happen to them. You cannot blame the victimization on something almost everyone has experienced, such as getting drunk. Of course, the victim's behavior/clothing/etc is irrelevant. The rapist had to make the decision to commit rape. The preventitive medicine campaign has similar characteristics.
