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Tuesday, October 31, 2006 12:00 AM

"No" means nothing once sex has started

A terrifying new ruling from a Maryland appellate court.

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  • Tuesday, October 31, 2006 02:24 PM

    You can't legislate everything

    Yes, I can imagine extreme circumstances where a person may be in the process of having sex and change their mind. What I can't imagine is sitting on a jury and convicting a man of rape because he was in the middle of having consensual sex and the woman changed her mind. Sex isn't like buying a pair of shoes. People tend to get pretty involved when it's happening, making funny sounds and thrashing about and losing a bit of common sense. Where do we draw the line? How can we know if the woman made herself clear enough that the man heard her through the fog of passion? Where do we draw the line? If a woman remembers that she forgot to take her birth control pill just before a man comes, and asks him to pull out, and he doesn't... is that rape? It certainly is wrong, but would we really want to convict a man of rape for this kind of thing? Sometimes things are "wrong", without being criminal offenses. I think that if a woman actually started to fight and the man hurt her, he might be charged with assault. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and "Yes" means "Yes", just as much as "No" means "No".

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