MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT



Did you know that God may be sanctioning "legitimate rapes"?

That's the take-away from a comment made by Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. According to The Hill, Mourdock said during a Tuesday night debate with Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Hoosier Democratic Senate candidate,

"I struggled with it myself a long time but I came to realize that life is a gift from God, that I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen."



Due to the uproar that ensued, Mourdock was forced to hold a subsequent news conference -- as Missouri Republican Todd "legitimate rape" Akin did in August -- in which he expressed regret at how his statement was "misunderstood," but "stood by" those remarks according to USA Today.

Message to GOP US Senate candidate Mourdock: God doesn't rape women; men do.

This is a horrifying extension of misogyny into victimizing a female rape victim twice -- once for being raped and once for not wanting to bear the child of a rapist. Beyond that, from a theological sense, it implies that the rapist is performing an act of divine intention. This defiles not only the concept of God, but the very basic principle that a woman should be protected from sexual assault.

Of course, Murdock says that's not what he meant. But there is little else to conclude from his words.

The terrifying candor of fundamentalists who assert patriarchal control over the bodies and safety of women has come out of the closet this year. It is a grotesque violation of women, but it is also representative of a view that women are vessels whose role is to receive the divine seed stored within the bodies of men, even if it involves rape.

BuzzFlash at Truthout can't speak as to whether or not there is an afterlife, but in our existence, here on earth, it is men who rape.

There is nothing divine about it.

