Here’s an old, but amusing example of a clown of reason cutting himself with the razor of logic:
If a woman consents to extramarital sex, she is committing a moral offense which is equal to that committed by the man who engages in consensual sex with her, or by the man who, in the absence of such consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of sins. Since only the woman who is not entertaining the possibility of sex with a man and is subsequently raped can truly be considered a wholly innocent victim under this ethic, it is no wonder that women who insist that internal consent is the sole determining factor of a woman’s victimization find traditional Western morality to be inherently distasteful.
Vox Day wrote the above. Like so many things which Vox Day writes, this vile little rant almost screams out as a sign of sociopathology, but I’d like to focus on an interesting aspect which might go overlooked. As disgustingly immoral as his position is, it’s also logically inconsistent and incoherent.
Allow us to assume, for the sake of argument, the premises that there is no hierarchy of sins and that a women who sins (as with having extramarital sex) is not an innocent victim when raped. Clearly it’s not the case that only sexual sins prevents a woman from being an innocent victim — after all, there is no hierarchy of sins, with sexual sins being worse than others. A woman who blasphemes, lies, shoplifts, or who commits any other transgression cannot be a “wholly innocent victim either.” Since it’s a basic Christian doctrine that we are all sinners, this means that no woman is a wholly innocent victim.
Austin makes the clumsy mistake here of applying the general to the particular due to a failure to grasp context. The context was a comparison of the immorality of rape with the immorality of extramarital sex. A woman who blasphemes, lies, etc. cannot be wholly innocent in general, to be sure, but she can certainly be a victim wholly innocent of sexual immorality despite the physical act of sexual congress in which she was forced to engage. The same is clearly not true of the woman who was engaging in immoral sexual behavior prior to withdrawing her previously given consent. Still a victim, just not a wholly innocent one and therefore it is correct to view her situation differently from a moral perspective.
After all, we regard those shot while committing bank robberies very differently than those who are shot while sitting peacefully at home. And before anyone is silly enough to say anything about the legality of extramarital sex versus bank robbery, please keep in mind that legality is neither morality nor under discussion here.
So that it all might be made more clear to Austin, I wonder if he would criticize the logic of the statement if it read as follows:
“only the woman who is not entertaining the possibility of sex with a man and is subsequently raped can truly be considered a [victim wholly innocent of sexual immorality] under this ethic.”
Unless he has an issue with the coherence or the logic of that, it should be quite clear that his only problem with the previous version is that he failed to comprehend the context, which is rather strange since the entire column was dealing with the question of morality, rape and sex.
The very idea of viewing the statement from a general point of view is a profoundly silly one, since one could easily and pointlessly add that since Austin and I have both told lies at some point in our lives, we are as immoral in the eyes of God as the rapist. And the rape victim. And Vladimir Putin. Which is all true, of course, but hardly germane to the matter being discussed in the column.
Finally, on what basis can he possibly claim my position on the moral equivalence of rape and extramarital sex is “immoral”? What ethic, what moral tradition can he, the godless disbeliever in all things supernatural, cite to demonstrate this, beyond “Austin’s personal dictate that Rape is Immoral and Sex is Moral”?
Honestly, the haphazard way in which these memetic parasites sling around the very words they simultaneously claim to be meaningless is downright embarrassing.