rahter than categories.
I would suggest degrees of rape instead of separate categories as RAPE IS RAPE the same way murder and manslughter are murder and manslaughter.
I do, however, have some tripidation that a more violent rapist will be able to plead down a charge.
I also think that the mistake the author makes is to fail to consider that the charges of rape where violence is concerned are usually accompanied by charges of battery and other various charges so that renders her classification a bit moot.
I also think that she trumps up the incentive for false charges as they are no more prevalent than in other crimes. There is no more incentive to plead false charges of rape than any other crime.
Finally her suggestion that it forces a defendent to make an affirmative defense of consensual sex is baloney since even in charges of violent rape, if DNA is present a defendent will make such a defense..so her logic is fuzzy. But I would exppect nothing less from an author who wrote an article entitled "Why I would not vote against Hitler"
<snip>
WHY I WOULD NOT VOTE
by Wendy McElroy
At the last Liberty conference in September '95, an intellectual brawl erupted during a panel discussion on terrorism.
Since I consider electoral politics to be the milk-toast equivalent of terrorism, my opening statement as a panel member was a condemnation of voting. My arguments were aimed at LP members who consider themselves to be anarchists, yet who jump to their feet in ebullient applause upon hearing that a fellow libertarian wants to be a politician.
In the two raucous hours that ensued, a question was posed to me: "If you could have cast the deciding vote against Hitler, would you have done so?" I replied, "No, but I would have no moral objection to putting a bullet through his skull." In essence, I adopted a stronger line -- a 'plumb-line' as Benjamin Tucker phrased it -- on eliminating Hitler as a threat.
I consider such a bullet to be an act of self-defense in a manner that a ballot could never be. The difference is that a bullet can be narrowly aimed at a deserving target; a ballot attacks innocent third parties who must endure the consequences of the politician I have assisted into a position of unjust power over their lives. Whoever puts a man into a position of unjust power -- that is, a position of political power -- must share responsibility for every right he violates thereafter.
http://www.zetetics.com/mac/hitler.htmOn edit: Perhaps the thread starter did not know he was using a regular contributor to the NATIONAL REVIEW to make his point.