Monday, February 13, 2006

Toto, I'm Afraid We're Still in Kansas

I love the thesaurus as much as the next word nerd. Finding a big, juicy synonym for an overused word can make my day. So I was very confused when I read that Kansas Attorney General, Phil Kline, was trying to make a case for "rape" and "mutual consent" as synonyms.

What started as an effort to toughen sexual abuse laws has turned into Kline's wacko legal interpretation requiring "all health-care workers, doctors, counselors, social workers, and others to report every single instance of intimate contact between consenting teens under 16, on the theory that each such incident constitutes a rape, regardless of the parties' mutual consent."

Clearly this guy's a product of intelligent design.

I don't know about you, but the last time I checked the word "rape" in my thesaurus, I didn't find "mutual consent" among the synonyms listed. Rape is an act of violence. Even in Kansas. And when a couple of high school kids choose to grope each other in the backseat of a Buick, it ain't rape.

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