Scott Tibbs
Joe Biden proves he does not take sexual violence seriously
By Scott Tibbs, March 3, 2021
Rape is a very serious crime - a crime that the Bible says should be punished by death and actually was punishable by death in these United States as recently as the 1960's. Other than murder, rape is the most severe possible violation of a person's bodily integrity. This is why we should take allegations of rape seriously, and before punishing someone for that crime we should be sure he is actually guilty.
Joe Biden does not take rape seriously, as we saw with his promise to reinstate the Obama Administration's guidance on sexual assault. Bowing to radical feminists, Obama demanded colleges and universities change their policies on sexual violence, threatening to cut federal funding if they did not make it easier to convict men of sexual crimes. So universities started using a "preponderance of the evidence" standard" and restricting men's due process rights - sometimes not even allowing the accused to see evidence against them.
In response to this policy and the injustices that followed, a number of men have filed lawsuits against universities for violating their civil rights, and courts have sided with the accused. Here are a couple quotes from
a Reason.com report on an especially egregious case:
The University of Southern California found a male student, "John Doe," responsible for sexual assault and suspended him for two years. But his alleged victim, a female student, "Jane," maintained that the sex between them was consensual.
And...
The investigation process involved many of the same drawbacks common to university sexual misconduct cases: a process biased against the accused, limited methods for the accused to examine the evidence against him, or even the charges, etc. He was eventually found responsible on nine of the 11 charges and suspended for two years.
Even the "victim" said she had consensual sex with the accused, but he was punished anyway because of the actions of other men. This is not justice.
This is not the only case where this has happened. Another student was suspended for sexual assault even through surveillance footage showed he was too far away from the victim when the assault occurred to have committed it, and even though
another man admitted he was the guilty party. So in this case, not only was an innocent man punished, but the guilty man went free. (See
here and
here for more.)
This is obviously not to defend acts of sexual immorality. Sex should be confined to marriage. But there is a difference between a sin and a crime. There are many things that are sinful, but are not and should not be punished by law. We certainly should not conflate an immoral choice with a violent crime.
This is not to say that colleges should not have codes of conduct and internal discipline procedures. But rigging the system to prioritize finding men guilty is not the way to take sexual violence seriously. That decision is driven by politics, not by a genuine commitment to protecting victims.
Previous Articles:
Sexual assault, due process and protecting students
Fighting rape on college campuses
Sexual assault, due process and civil liberties
More thoughts on campus rape and due process
Due process and sexual assault, revisited
Due process, campus rape and false allegations
False accusations of "rape" are real
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