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At a time when many states are busily showing how backwards, stupid, and hateful they can be, in steps Oklahoma for a bit of the idiot stakes limelight: Oklahoma court rules it’s not rape if you’re unconscious and being sodomized. From Fusion:
In a court ruling one prosecutor is calling “insane,” Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled late last month that state forcible sodomy laws do not apply if the victim is intoxicated or unconscious.
On March 24, the Oklahoma Watch (OW) reports, the court found that because the state’s sodomy law does not explicitly contain language about victims being intoxicated or unconscious, “forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”
“We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language,” the appeals court wrote.
Raw Story has also covered this story:
An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.
The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state’s criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape.
But legal experts and victims’ advocates said they viewed the ruling as a sign of something larger: the troubling gaps that still exist between the nation’s patchwork of laws and evolving ideas about rape and consent.
To say I am speechless (or textless) would be an understatement.
In the interests of absolute accuracy: unconscious? Passed out? It’s not rape as long as it’s your mouth that’s penetrated. Rape law only covers anal or vaginal penetration, and since this was an oral violation, the law says no harm no foul.
I’m not sure if that’s actually worse, as I’m unable to fully process this information and simultaneously hit myself in the face with my palm.
I see only one solution: drug all the members of that court into an unconscious state, then sodomize them to illustrate the error of their judgement. (/sarcasm)
Sonofrojblake:
It was also forcible sodomy, which is being given a pass. Basically, what they are saying is that if a rapist gets their victim drunk enough, or drugs them, hey, rape away!
Caine @3:
Which is a HORRIBLE way for any person, in authority or otherwise, to think about other people. They have just given potential rapists all the justification they need to rape with impunity.
Johnson catman:
Yes, they have. It’s not as though rape and sexual assault have great conviction numbers, hell, the report numbers are bad. Nothing like giving rapists a full green light.