CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Married people in West Virginia could be charged with certain acts of sexual abuse against their spouses for the first time under a bill passed by the state Senate. The bill pushed by former prosecuting attorney Republican Sen. Ryan Weld would remove marriage as a defense to first- and third-degree sexual assault. There are two crimes of sexual violence outlined in West Virginia code. One is penetrative assault and the other is the forcible touching of a person’s sexual organs, breasts, and some other areas by another person. For the latter offense, there exists a martial exemption that shields a person from conviction if the crime is perpetrated against their spouse.
Confusing headline.
WV finally introduces bill to outlaw marital rape.
Yeah, I was thinking it was one of those laws that mentioned things like “you can beat her with a stick no wider than your thumb” from 1820 but nope, they just straight up had a law allowing penetrative rape.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but the article says the latter offense has the exemption, not the former offense. The latter being touching, not penetrating.
I saw my state mentioned and immediately came to jump in with the “JFC, really?” but this isn’t awful for once. More of an “about time!”, but I’ll take it.
Going to have to read the whole bill because as much as I want to, I do not believe we’re actually passing helpful legislation without some kind of horrible addendum lurking underneath.
Yeah, I’m wondering what the catch is.
The bill pushed by former prosecuting attorney Republican Sen. Ryan Weld
Well that was unexpected.
It is West Virginia. 31/34 state Senators and 89/100 delegates are Republicans. It is a Republican show through-and-through. Anything that happens there is going to be Republicans.
I think the unexpected part is that it’s Republicans passing something sensible. When I read the headline I assumed they were doing the opposite, which is more on brand.
It’s an obvious slam dunk, and one that there is little opposition to, on top of generally being uncommon. Also makes them look like they give a shit about women in the post Roe v Wade world, which is important cuz that issue is going to rock the GOP come November.
I don’t think anyone in the West Virginia GOP is worried about Democrats staging a comeback, no matter what they do. They’ll even pick up Manchin’s senate seat.
Broken clock scenario?
Happy for any good news out of these conservatives when we get it, as it’s exceedingly rare.
Holy shit, an ® attached to a bill that is a positive step forward?!? I need to look outside and see if there are any cops flying through the sky.
This is functional conservatism. Of course they are going to get to all this human rights shit eventually, if we’d all just quit whining for one goddamn second.
You have to remember, this is an ideology that is essentially built around procrastination.
Ya know what, there’s a lot of truth to this. Some of it will get done, it’s just that you gotta wait for at least one generation to die to do anything major.
I’ve heard conservatism described as “keeping what we have because it’s pretty good” but that’s always felt pretty hollow to me.
I’ve heard conservatism described as “keeping what we have because it’s pretty good” but that’s always felt pretty hollow to me.
It’s more “keeping what he have because we consider an unequal society to be natural and just”. So anything that preserves or increases inequality is considered a good thing by conservatives. And any moves to decrease inequality (see “wokeism” and any number of catchphrases that mean the same thing) is considered harmful.
Any actions contrary to that usually only occurs when they are afraid they’ll lose power, or they (or their direct family) are directly affected by it.
West Virginia also passes supplementary law making it illegal for women to say no to marriage proposals
#The Handmaid’s Tale
