Right to Forced Sex

Consider the results of a survey conducted in 1988 by the Rhode Island Rape Crisis Center. Some 1,700 students between the sixth and ninth grade attended adolescent assault awareness classes conducted in schools across the state. Each boy and girl was asked if a man should have a right to force a woman to have sexual intercourse if he had spent money on her.

The results were shocking. Nearly 25 percent of the boys and 16 percent of the girls said "yes"! Then 65 percent of the boys and 47 percent of the girls in the seventh through ninth grades said it is okay for a man to force a woman to have sex with him if they have dated for six months or longer. And 51 percent of the boys and 41 percent of the girls said a man has a right to force a woman to kiss him if he spent "a lot of money on her"&md;which was defined by 12-year-olds as $10 to $15.

I must admit to being shocked by these findings, and yet, not really. These young students merely learned the lessons they were taught by the value-free educational system. Their teachers taught them in sex education classes that there is nothing right or wrong, no standard for moral judgment. "It all depends on how you see the matter, Johnny." It turns out Johnny sees it rather brutally.

Johnny's older brothers learned their lessons well, too. In a classic study at UCLA, Malamuth and Feshback found that 51 percent of male sophomores said they would rape a woman if they knew they would never get caught. This is the legacy of moral relativism, just one generation removed.