metoo

On Sexual Assault, Due Process, and Supreme Court Confirmations

September 24, 2018 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

There’s no sense in my jumping into the Kavanaugh battle with a personal opinion; there are bazillions of those already, and I have no experience that gives me any special insight into legal issues.

But I do find something waaay back in the writings of Moses that may give us a little something to think about.

The legal difficulty of sexual assault is that it typically doesn’t happen in the city square, with lots of witnesses. The nature of sex as a private function means that abuses of the sexual function, like its legitimate uses, tend to happen in private. And in private, there are just two witnesses. If the sex is abusive, then the two witnesses are the perpetrator and the victim.

He said, she said.

That’s how it almost always is.

In biblical times it was the same way, of course. I note that in those days, unlike today, rape was a capital offense. I’ve heard it argued that today it shouldn’t get the death penalty because if the rapist knows that, he’ll just go ahead and kill the victim, since that would eliminate a witness without increasing his penalty. I recognize the logic, but I still would prefer to see the death penalty for rape, particularly in a day when DNA testing can make the identity of the perpetrator absolutely certain.

But back to my point. In biblical times, rape got the death penalty. But here’s the thing: elsewhere the biblical law restricted the death penalty to cases where you had at least two or three witnesses (Num 35.30; Dt 17.6).

Contradiction, no? Rape gets the death penalty, but there are never enough witnesses to actually get it carried out. The woman loses, every time.

Patriarchy.

Ah, not so fast.

There’s a special provision for allegations of sexual assault. In the midst of some broad-ranging regulations in Deuteronomy 22 (help an animal stuck in a ditch [4]; don’t kill a bird sitting on a clutch of eggs [6]; build your house so that visitors are safe [8]), there’s a point about sexual assault.

²³“If there is a betrothed virgin, and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, ²⁴then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

²⁵“But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. ²⁶But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, ²⁷because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

Interesting.

If the attack happens near other possible witnesses, then we assume that in a nonconsensual encounter the woman would protest in ways that those nearby would hear. If she says later that it was rape, then she is judged to be lying since she didn’t scream during the assault.

Women lie sometimes too. Even about things as serious as rape. We have to take that into account.

But if the event occurs away from possible witnesses, the woman gets the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she did call for help, and there was nobody to hear her.

Now, a woman having a consensual sexual encounter in the woods might lie too. She could decide later that it was a mistake, and she could decide to get the poor guy in beaucoup trouble. That could happen.

But here, she gets the benefit of the doubt. As the only witness. In a charge that bears the death penalty.

It’s not a perfect world. God knows that. And he indicates that he expects us to do the best we can in these difficult decisions. We need to remember that women lie just as certainly as men do, for all kinds of reasons. And we also need to remember that sometimes we need to give a woman in a difficult spot the benefit of the doubt.

When do we do which? That’s a really tough call; as someone who served on a jury for a case of child sexual assault, I know exactly how difficult it is.

But if you support Kavanaugh simply because you’re a Republican, or you oppose him simply because you’re a Democrat, then you’re in no position to be heard in such a critical decision.

Which, I guess, disqualifies pretty much everybody this time around.

Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 4: On Solutions

December 14, 2017 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve this problem? Wouldn’t it be great if our culture treated women with respect, seeing them as more than just objects? If we saw everyone’s full potential as a unique creation in the image of God? Wouldn’t that be great?

We may be seeing a cultural sea change. We can never be sure of that in the middle of the moment; the defining points of history become clear only on later reflection. But many have suggested that the era of the casting couch in Hollywood is over.

We’ll see.

But there are some things that we can know, even as things are developing rapidly around us.

All of us, even those among us who don’t want to admit or accept it, know that civil behavior begins with fear—specifically, fear of punishment. That’s where we start with our children; that’s why state troopers drive around on the interstate, just being seen; that’s why people who aren’t powerful behave themselves in public. We don’t want to face the consequences of acting on our impulses.

Right now we’re in the fear stage. There are lots of brutish actors and athletes and news reporters and politicians who haven’t been outed yet, but they know they could be; and they’re keeping their heads down. Maybe some of them are even keeping their noses clean for the moment.

Fear works.

But nobody wants that kind of a culture for the long term. Parents don’t want their children to be afraid of them all the time; no husband and wife want to spend a lifetime in fear of one another. No respectful relationship can be based on fear alone.

The Bible says that “perfect love casts out fear” (1John 4.18). As a healthy relationship matures, we move from being fearful to being just nervous, then to being comfortable, then to being attracted, and finally to love—to being so fiercely devoted to the benefit of the other person that we’ll make any sacrifice for it.

That’s the way a marriage ought to be. That’s the way a society ought to be.

Perhaps raw fear will keep the predator numbers down, but it won’t bring us a healthy culture. We need love to do that. And that means learning one another, experiencing one another, as much as possible. It means interacting with our neighbors beyond the greeting from driveway to driveway. It means spending time with people who are not like us, the kind of time that allows us to learn why they think as they think and why they do as they do.

It means hard work.

Will our culture do that? Will we? Only time will tell.

But there’s more.

We can improve our society by these sorts of actions—social contracts, shared experiences, shared efforts. It’s been done before, though usually not without some motivating external influence, and usually a negative one, such as a war or a famine or a plague (remember 9/11?). But it can be done; it does happen.

But this kind of development doesn’t really solve the problem. It usually lowers the problem’s incidence and weakens its effect on the larger society—temporarily—but the problem is still there. There’s still rape, and theft, and murder. And beyond that, there’s still lust, and greed, and hatred.

These tendencies go deep; they’re part of who we are. And we can’t eradicate them by trying hard, or by singing Kum-Ba-Ya, or by buying the world a Coke, or by thinking globally and acting locally, or by visualizing world peace. You don’t get rid of a deeply embedded infection by taking something for the headache; you have to hit it hard and deep with really strong stuff.

So how do you heal a culture?

You heal it by healing its people, one at a time. And you do that by going after the infection, hard and deep.

That infection is called sin, and our culture not only doesn’t have anything with which to heal it—we don’t even believe that it exists. And until we do, there’s no road to a solution.

But there is a solution, and it has worked reliably, one person at a time, for thousands of years. It’s called repentance—turning from your sin—and faith—turning toward its Victor, the Christ. The solution to sin is found in the One who has already defeated it decisively, through a consistently victorious life, a powerfully overwhelming death, and an explosive resurrection.

With turning—conversion—come the mercy and forgiveness that heal our relationship with our Creator—which was our real problem all along—and then the grace and the guidance to change from the inside out, to change our thinking so that our behavior will naturally follow.

And that is the only solution.

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 3: On Causes and Effects

December 11, 2017 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

Part 1 Part 2

A lot of people have expressed shock and surprise over the revelations of brutish behavior by so many men they had previously admired. How could these men have done such things? And further, how could so many of them have done such things? What have we come to? What is wrong with us?

What I find shocking and surprising is the shock and surprise.

For decades, our culture has engaged in the very kinds of thought and behavior that virtually assure that we would end up right where we are. For starters, we have used one of God’s delightful gifts—our creative energies—to trivialize another of his delightful gifts—sexuality—by reducing it to mere biological function. We have created, and rabidly consumed, entertainment that makes women mere collections of body parts to be ogled (we call that PG) and fondled (we call that R). For the most part, the women in our movies, our television shows, our game shows, our sports broadcasts, and even our news programs (!) are no more than eye candy, there for the shot that deftly catches the angles most likely to focus the viewer’s mind on the external and provoke a merely physical response. One news analysis show sports a “leg chair” featuring a clear shot of a female pundit—always a female—in a short skirt—always short. This is about news analysis, and the woman is a lawyer, for crying out loud; what’s the real objective here? Oh, and this is the politically “conservative” channel.

Yikes.

If we take in a steady diet of material that sees women as meat, we’re going to think of them as meat, and we’re going to toss them around like so many beef carcasses.

We’ve reaped what we’ve sowed.

A second practice is our elevation of creatures to the status of creators. We’ve made gods of mere men.

We all want heroes, and genuine heroism should be thanked and celebrated. The generation of young men who took on two world powers at the same time, on opposite sides of the world, and by dint of grit and guts and discipline and determination ground them into powder—the Greatest Generation—are rightfully heroes. But I’ve noticed that those men, real heroes all, didn’t really ask for anything special. They didn’t want to talk about their exploits except to deflect praise to others, especially those who died by their sides. They wanted simple, ordinary pleasures—a wife, a child or two, a house, a back yard, maybe a picket fence. Peace.

And they cared for their people, because they had fought for them.

But opportunities for real heroism on that scale don’t come along very often, and in those in-between times, we want heroes. So we make them up. We celebrate actors, and athletes, and musicians, not simply respecting their legitimate accomplishments or their disciplined devotion to their craft—which are worthy of respect—but pouring adulation and worship on them, making them idols, American or otherwise. And then we adulate those in power in those industries or in politics. And eventually we even make gods out of people who just read the news.

Humans aren’t designed to be gods; they’re designed to be worshipers. When we make them gods, they respond poorly, like anyone else who’s in a position for which he is completely unqualified. They are corrupted by the power, they feel undeservedly invulnerable, and away we go.

There’s irony here.

We pride ourselves on our modernity. We’ve outgrown our ancient superstitious ways. We’re scientific. Yeah, that’s it.

How scientific is it to compile terabytes of data on physical and psychological human sexual response—something we’ve put an inordinate amount of time and resources into studying—then do all of the things that incite the raw hormonal reaction, and then act surprised when the chemical reaction occurs? How scientific is that?

“Officer, I just poured gasoline all over the building and then lit a match; I had no intention of burning the place down.”

And to increase our guilt, we’ve criticized those who said, “Um, you keep that up, you’re gonna burn the place down,” as joyless prudes.

That’s not gonna stand up in court.

Part 4

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 2: On Celebrating Sin

December 7, 2017 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1

One interesting feature of the recent scandals is their breadth. The current wave began with revelations about the office atmosphere at a conservative Republican—leaning (!) media outlet, Fox News, with the most visible examples being founder Roger Ailes and star talent Bill O’Reilly. Then there was a bit of a pause until revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was not, um, conservative or Republican. And then the dam broke—media personalities at the left-wing Vox and at NBC, powerful Hollywood icons, a fashion designer, and the usual string of libidinous politicians, both red and blue.

This breadth has given us an opportunity to watch partisanship in action. When a politically conservative abuser is uncovered, the left calls for his head; when a leftist is uncovered, the right does the same. But when the perv is “our guy,” each side rushes to the ramparts and defends The Cause against Scurrilous and Unfounded Charges by Evil or Manipulated Women Out to Make a Fast Buck or Just Get Attention.

Yikes.

We call that hypocrisy. And nobody likes it—when it’s practiced by the Other Side.

There’s a reason why we don’t like it, at least in other people. Because we’re created in the image of God, there’s something deep inside us, even as broken and sinful people, that wants to be like him—that resonates with his qualities, even if we have difficulty putting them into practice.

And this particular quality is truthfulness. God is true and faithful and trustworthy. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for that quality, ‘emunah, is the source of our English word amen (“May it be so!”). We celebrate his truthfulness, and we seek it in others. Every government makes it a crime, or at least a misdemeanor, to break your word, to fail to keep a contract, to slander or libel someone. We expect truthfulness.

And that’s why we jeer at the opposition for their hypocrisy, even as we excuse it in ourselves. That’s different, you see; ours is a completely different situation. Apples and oranges.

Nonsense.

When we engage in such sophistry, defending vice against virtue when it suits our cheap temporal goals, we have descended to the level of the perverts themselves. We despise them for being one thing on TV, or on the Senate floor, and being something very different after they’ve pressed the button under their desk to lock their office door. They’re hypocrites.

Just like us.

Others have noted that sinfulness is not necessarily hypocrisy; a legislator can vote for a law against fornication while being a fornicator who is trying desperately to stop. The hypocrite is one who does not see his sin as sin—who continues it while demanding that others stop. And neither side in this controversy shows any interest in stopping the partisan hypocrisy.

As evil as all this is, I think there’s another element to it that’s even worse, especially when practiced by believers.

In his classic passage on love, Paul lists a number of admirable characteristics of genuine love. Among those is the remarkable statement that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1Co 13.6). And love, you’ll recall, is both the first and second great commandment, according to Jesus (Mt 22.37-40).

I think we’ve all had this experience. There’s a new allegation; a new perp is uncovered. And he’s on the Other Side.

There a place deep inside us that feels really, really good about it. Oh, yeah, the other guys have another sleazeball.

And we rejoice.

Oh, we tell ourselves, as we shake our heads, it’s just a shame. Those poor victims—how they must be hurting. How sad that it took so long for their abusers to be unmasked. Such injustice. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let’s see that justice is done, for the good of all, and for truth, justice, and the American way.

But we still rejoice.

We’re glad it happened. This’ll look really bad on the Other Side’s resume. How many House seats will this give us in the next election? How many more Supreme Court justices will this give us? How many decades of Our Side winning?

Yaaaaaay!

When we think that way, we’re not thinking like God. We’ve taken sides against him.

Time for us to change too.

Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Some Thoughts on the Sexual Harassment Thing, Part 1: On Abuse of Power

December 4, 2017 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Who is it today?

Who’s been outed as a sexual harasser?

The parade goes on, day after day; another famous person, it turns out, has been creepy all along. And the “outing” is happening because suddenly, people are starting to speak up.

Good for them.

Everyone I know hopes that the parade of perp walks continues until justice has been done for everyone. And maybe, just maybe (hope against hope!), this is the beginning of a sea change in our culture, one that changes fundamentally the way we address our sexuality. (More on that later.)

As I’ve watched all this unfold over the past few weeks, I’ve had a few thoughts that I’d like to share in the next few posts.

First, as I suppose everyone knows, most of these cases have been about a fundamental imbalance of power. Someone in power—perhaps a boss, or someone else in a position to affect the victim’s career significantly, seeks sexual favors from the victim, with the explicit or implicit promise of good career prospects if the victim consents or the threat of bad ones if she (usually she) refuses. Many of the victims said that they gave in because of this pressure. I’ve found it interesting to note that in this latest wave, some Democrats have finally spoken out against Bill Clinton’s misbehavior, more than two decades after the fact; is it just a coincidence that with Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election, the Clintons are now not in any position to retaliate? Is the two decades of silence simply part of the same power imbalance?

This is a serious problem, first because it involves the deepest urges of every human, and second because it crosses cultural and chronological barriers: it’s been going on for a long time, and wherever human beings interact.

We would expect, then, that the Bible would have something to say about it. And it does.

We could start with Jesus’ teaching, specifically with the fact that he elevated love of others to the second great commandment, below only our relationship with God himself. If you love someone else, then you sacrifice your own well-being for hers; using others, whether against their will or not, to satisfy your own needs is precisely the opposite of how Jesus lived his life and how he expects us to live ours—indeed, how he demands that we live ours, with open threat of future judgment.

But the Bible speaks even more directly to what we’re seeing play out on our newsfeeds day after day. The Old Testament prophets raged against those in power who used that power to abuse others. Amos condemned leaders in Israel “who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted” (Amos 2.7), who “turn aside the needy in the gate” (Amos 5.12)—that is, who withhold justice from those appealing to the court system. Amos’s contemporary Isaiah joins the chorus, calling Israel to “seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isa 1.17). And more than a century later, Jeremiah turns his fire on neighboring Judah:

Execute justice in the morning [i.e., immediately], and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of your evil deeds (Jer 21.12).

Judah, as we all know, ignored the warning and spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon. After they returned, God sent more prophets to warn them against returning to their old ways. One of them, Zechariah, said,

Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart (Zech 7.9-10).

Is this all only for Israel? Did God judge other nations for allowing the weak to be persecuted by the powerful? You can find the answer to that question by reading the book of Obadiah. It’ll take you less than 2 minutes.

Micah lyrically sums up what God expects of those in power: Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God (Micah 6.8).

Perhaps the clearest example of this kind of abuse comes from a surprising figure, King David himself, the sweet singer of Israel, the man after God’s own heart. In a moment of lust, he takes to himself another man’s wife. (Of course she assents; what choice does she have?) God sends the prophet Nathan (2Sam 12.1) to tell the satisfied king a story about a rich man who takes his poor neighbor’s one little beloved lamb to feed to a guest. The outraged David orders the rich man’s immediate execution. Nathan violently jerks the potentate’s chain with the simple words, “You are the man!” (2Sam 12.7).

Speaking truth to power. It’s a thing.

And governments should have protections in place to prevent the powerful from using their power to abuse the powerless.

That’s what God says.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash