Change laws that allow marital rape
Way past time to do right thing
The Rhode Island legislature is in the process of changing its rape law to remove a provision that allows men to rape their wives, so long as their wives are drunk and helpless.
Seriously. If a man is married to a woman with a drug or alcohol problem, he can basically do what he wants to her while she’s intoxicated.
Even if a man videotapes himself brutally raping a completely unconscious woman, he can show the tape to police and confess and police will simply send the guy home so long as the woman in the video is his wife. And since it’s legal, any woman who gets pregnant during such a spousal rape has no hope of persuading a family court judge that the guy shouldn’t have custody or visitation rights, even though he’s a rapist.
Because it isn’t a crime to rape your incapacitated wife in Rhode Island, police aren’t even required to count the number of incidents. It’s literally an invisible crime.
The law doesn’t only apply to women incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, it also applies to men who rape their disabled wives.
For example, women with serious mental health issues or physical disabilities that prevent them from protecting themselves from spousal abuse are not protected.
Think about that. A man who is married to a woman who develops multiple sclerosis or has a stroke can do what he wants to his wife, sexually, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him.
In a civilized society where women have equal protection of the laws, Rhode Island lawmakers would never have passed such a law, but women in America have never been entitled to fully equal protection of the laws under the U.S. Constitution. Without equal protection rights for women, laws can be enacted even if they fail to provide women with adequate protection from horrific abuse.
No state in 1921, much less 2021, should have a law on the books that permits a man to rape his wife under any circumstances, yet Rhode Island is not alone.
Similar laws exist in other states where men effectively have a “right” to rape their wives, including Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Nevada.
While it is a crime to rape your wife under any circumstances in Massachusetts and many other states, prosecutors rarely file charges because they still see wife rape as different. It isn’t.
Giving men “rights” they can assert against women because they married them is the stuff of “The Twilight Zone.” Lawyers in these godawful states should be filing class action lawsuits because the legislatures may never get around to fixing things.
Between now and then, it might be a good idea for married women with physical or mental disabilities, or drug or alcohol problems, to put something under the mattress and use it when necessary to prevent rape.
And for those women who have not yet walked down the aisle, think long and hard about saying “I do” in any state where a marriage license is also license to rape.