NEWS

April 17, 2008... The Baltimore Sun reported on a Maryland Supreme Court ruling that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman's calls to stop, even if she had previously consented to sex.

The case involved an incident in 2003 in which a boy, age 16, and a young woman, age 18, had sex in a car. At some point during the act of sexual intercourse, the woman withdrew her consent. At trial, when asked how long the boy remained inside of her after she told him to stop, she answered, "About five or so seconds." He said he stopped immediately.

A jury convicted this boy of first-degree rape. A Maryland Appeals court had reversed the conviction on the grounds that a rape could not occur once sexual intercourse had begun.

The Baltimore Sun reported on NCM's position as follows:

"Mel Feit, director of the National Center for Men, based in Long Island, N.Y., said the facts of [this] case have been lost in the larger argument about a woman's right to say no.

"'The courts got it wrong then, and they are getting it wrong now,' said Feit, who has followed the Maryland case. 'There is no way that anyone is ever going to convince me that a five-second delay is first-degree rape.'

"He said that he, too, believes that a woman should be able to withdraw consent during sex. But he said the evidence showed that [the boy] did comply with the victim's demand to stop and that the jury in the case 'threw common sense out the window' when they convicted him.

"'This is a dangerous ruling,' he said. 'What the court is saying is that every act of sexual intercourse in Maryland is potentially a rape, and if a man doesn't stop on a dime, he's going to jail.'"

For NCM, this case raises several interesting questions for further discussion:

1.) How can the legal system fail to distinguish between a delay of about five seconds and a violent sexual assault? Have the courts been overrun by the forces of political correctness?

2.) Why do so many people want to see the young man in this case remain in prison? (He was sentenced to fifteen years, five of which must be served.) What kind of social pathology is driven by such an apparent hostility for men and male sexuality?

3.) The Sun quoted the legal director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault: "[This ruling] says that, yes, women do have the right to make decisions about something as intimate as sexual intercourse." When will public discussions about sexuality recognize that, in this culture, women already make most of the decisions about sexual intercourse?

4.) Sexually intimacy involves making another person's needs more important than your own. Are there times, during sexual intercourse, when consent cannot be withdrawn? What are the responsibilities that intimate partners have to one another?

Since the article appeared in The Baltimore Sun, Mel Feit has discussed the issues raised by this case on talk radio shows in Baltimore and Cincinnati and on a nationally syndicated show hosted by Bill Cunningham.

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