Failure and equality

I don't care if it "qualifies" as a pagan issue, it is a human rights and safety issue which should concern everyone, pagans and buddhists, catholics and protestants, athiests and fundementalists.

Watch this video, and read this article.

"The epidemic of rape in the military may have finally reached a turning point with the case of Lt. Colonel James Wilkerson. After being convicted by a military jury last November of aggravated sexual assault, and sentenced to a year in jail, Wilkerson was set free by Lt. General Craig Franklin, who dismissed the case using power granted to commanders in the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

“I was assaulted. I reported it. I endured the public humiliation and the end result is that it was all for nothing,” said Wilkerson’s accuser in a statement.

“The Secretary of Defense has absolutely no voice on his country’s policy on Israel…Even on military deployment issues and military budgets, the Secretary of Defense is merely one of the many voices the president will hear when the president makes decisions about our tactical military choices in Afghanistan and elsewhere…But the Defense Secretary does have sole jurisdiction over how to handle what is now an absolutely out-of-control crime wave in the United States military for thousands of American soldiers; the military has become a rape club.”


This is a failure. I don't care who you are, but with all of the supposed "progress" the military makes in the direction of equality and rights, a convicted rapist can walk away without punishment and be put back into a position of power. People have been raving about it within churches for a few years, but why are we silent on the issue in the US military? It is not OK to be silent, at all, this needs to come out, and needs to be said. Rape is never OK. There is no such thing as "legitimate rape" Rape is rape, whether you fight, or you are drugged, or are coerced, rape is ALWAYS RAPE!

This is the situation for every woman in the military. Not every woman has a chain of command support system to help them. If the person who is the problem has powerful enough friends, you are nothing more than a target, or a conquest. If you do not have proof that it was rape, then in many cases as far as your unit can be concerned, you were never raped. This is not right, and this should be taken care of.

Life is amazing, and inherently magical. No part of it is evil or wrong or dirty. Nothing that any human is born able to do is unnatural. People are nature and it is all a part of the divine.

Maybe that’s the problem, people forget what makes a person a person, and we allow one another to lose their divinity. We stop seeing people as other people, and start seeing them as problems, or annoyances, or in our way. Maybe that is why some people see themselves as better or more important, or endowed with some aspect of divinity that others lack, which simply is not the case.

I am no better than you, and you are no better than me. We are all equally human. Whether we are talking about someone’s right to their body and its autonomy, or about being unable to afford sufficient healthcare to lead decent lives. We are all the same. The same as no one has a right to decide what’s good for me, I have no right to tell you how to raise your children, (and believe me there are people some days…) No one has the right to rape or kill another person, ever. I don’t care if you think women should be subservient to men, or you feel like the woman wants it and is teasing you, it doesn’t matter (and this does not just apply to women, men are raped as well, and in larger unreported numbers, than many people have been lead to believe.)

You can think you are better than me, and you can do what you like with that thought, but if you decide to act on this, and you decide to do something that harms another person without their consent You deserve what the law and a jury of your peers says you deserve, and sometimes, much more. What two consenting adults do to one another with one another’s permission is not my concern, it is what happens when there is no consent that concerns me.

When the way people live and the culture we are a part of makes it ok for a person to lose part of what it means to be a person, in order for someone else to feel more important, or to glorify someone else’s belief in an angry vengeful deity, then it is a time for a change. A big overarching change.  A change like we have not seen in many years. We need to change our culture and our society, we need to erase this perception of gender roles, and inferiority for groups of people. We need to look at all people as though they are equal. Whether you feel like people were created, or designed, or a random chance. Being alive is amazing, and natural, and even sacred. We need to treat our own and everyone else’s bodies as such, and stop trying to take autonomous control of bodies which are not the ones we were born in.


One man can overturn the decision of a jury and make all of the humiliation of rape and reporting and testifying be for nothing. Think on that for a moment. Then we can talk about equal rights...


Article and quotes courtesy MSNBC Video from youtube