Davis’ Comments on Spousal Rape
The comments of state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita) in regard to the proposed tougher penalties for spousal rapists were not only ignorant but degrading to women and himself (Aug. 15). Your article quoted Davis describing the Legislature as “terrorized of late by lobbies of women” and referring to the lobbyists as “women that men would never touch.”
Davis obviously feels threatened by the increasing political and professional power that women are gaining. In an attempt to keep his chauvinistic world in order, Davis and other opponents of this bill would have husbands continue to subjugate their wives bodily and mentally under state sanction.
Rapists are rapists, regardless of their legal relationship to their victims. Wives are not the property of their husbands, and the state should not treat them as if they were. There is absolutely no reason that a husband should be subject to a lighter penalty for rape than a stranger, but the law currently provides that the husband and wife’s prior intimacy is an excuse for a present brutality.
MARY ROUVELAS
Venice
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