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Thanks for the ping.

This is why God’s clear morality matters. It reminds me of a story:

My friend sat on a jury in a rape trial. The accused was a Jamaican, very handsome and sharp. His wife had just delivered their baby and was in the hospital. After the birth he stepped out to visit a mutual female friend of his and his wife’s, a woman he’d dated and had sex with before.

It was late night or early morning when he arrived at the woman’s apt. She let him in, they had some wine and he began to have sex with her. She told him to stop and get a condom on. He refused and continued the sex. Later that morning she called the police and pressed rape charges.

Now the case is before the jury and it’s 11-1 to acquit him. My friend is the lone hold out. The rest of the jurors berate him. It’s obviously not a rape, they argue, because she let him in, she consented to the preliminaries and they had sex - end of story.

My friend argues thusly: “She told him to stop. He didn’t stop. For any number of reasons she didn’t physically resist (she’d mentioned being afraid of him as he could react violently and had in the past), nonetheless it’s a rape as soon as someone says stop or no.”

It went back and forth for two days. Eventually his “no means no” argument won the day and the jury was 12-0 to convict. The verdict is announced and the courtroom erupts in bedlam. The guy’s wife berates the jury screaming obscenities in the courtroom and is walked out by sheriff’s police. The guy is stunned and gets the perp walk out of the courtroom.

After the court is cleared the prosecutor talks to the jury and explains that this is the guy’s third trial across three different women with the same MO in each case, but this is the first jury to recognize rape for what it is - unwanted sexual penetration or attempted forcible sex.

Now I got this story 2nd hand, not from my friend (I didn’t even know he was on a jury), but from my mother-in-law. She’d come home and tell us about this nut on the jury. My wife and I called it a rape, but my in-laws felt the woman had brought it on herself. They don’t anymore, their views have changed forever and all because one man stood up for what was right, despite popular opinion and despite getting hammered for it.

The easy thing would have been to give in and not waste another day on a problem not his own, but he didn’t and we shouldn’t either.

The fight is worth it and we must never quit.