To paraphrase the late Tony Campolo, some of you already are more upset that I wrote the word “hell” in a headline than you are about the horror that headline addresses. Hang on to your pearls, because it’s time to be offended — greatly.
By now you’re no doubt aware of the atrocities committed by the so-called Cornell Seven.
New York prosecutors are reopening investigations into an alleged gang rape in 2024 that was so well documented and investigated that students were expelled, suspended and reprimanded by the university but, strangely, no criminal charges were brought.
Mark Wingfield
Jane Doe filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York this month claiming multiple male students drugged her and passed her unconscious body around for the twisted pleasure of their fraternity brothers.
The allegations were so severe that Cornell shut down the Chi Phi fraternity in response. But no criminal charges were brought.
All this is horrible, but there’s one fact about this case that ought to keep you awake at night worried about the future of the world: As these seven frat boys were sexually pleasuring themselves with an unconscious, unconsenting woman, they participated in a group chat in which they invited at least 50 other frat brothers to come get some “free pussy.”
“There is no indication that any of those 50 young men reported the crime.”
And there is no indication that any of those 50 young men reported the crime, called 911 or did anything to help a female student in distress. Fifty men did nothing.
You cannot convince me those 57 students were raised in homes where their mothers, fathers, sisters and grandparents didn’t teach them better than this. Yet faced with a real-life test of conviction, they all failed. Every damn one of them.
This happened three weeks before a slim majority of Americans voted to send a convicted rapist back to the White House. Put back in office primarily by people who claim to care about truth and justice and morality.
Dear parents, you can lecture your children all day about morality, but when you continue to support the most blatantly immoral president in American history and laugh off his criminal actions, what do you expect your sons to learn? It’s time for you to wake the hell up too! Actions speak louder than words.
Or in the words of John the Baptist, “Repent!”
Repent for turning a blind eye to a politician who has multiple sexual assault and rape allegations against him, who bragged that when you’re a celebrity you can “grab ’em by the pussy.”
That’s just what these seven male students did: They grabbed an unconsenting, drug-addled young woman by the genitals and raped her. And if they didn’t penetrate her themselves, they watched and said nothing.
There are so many unsettling facts to this case it’s hard to single them out. The Cornell administrators who made some of the frat boys write essays as punishment but didn’t bother to call the police to report a rape. The local law enforcement who somehow mistook the testimony of a gang rape victim as iron-clad evidence that she must have consented to taking the drugs and giving her body over to assault. The New York Legislature that has not fixed a ridiculous flaw in state law known as the “voluntary intoxication loophole,” which says prosecutors can’t bring charges of sexual assault against someone who raped a person who voluntarily became intoxicated beyond ability to give consent to sex.
All these issues are horrible and need to be addressed immediately. Administrators need to be fired. University policies need to change. The Legislature needs to pass a bill tomorrow to close that horrible loophole.
“Underneath it all lies a culture in which men do not take seriously the humanity of women.”
But underneath it all lies a culture in which men do not take seriously the humanity of women. And that blames lies squarely at the feet of the complementarians in the evangelical church and the MAGA adherents who have pledged their undying devotion to an unrepentant rapist.
And then to make matters worse, in a twist usually seen only in made-for-TV movies, the Trump Education Department this very week announced it is rescinding Title IX protections for students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. All because Trump’s evangelical base hates and fears transgender people.
Let’s point out the obvious once again: None of the Cornell students who perpetuated, covered up and failed to report a grievous sexual assault were transgender.
If you want to protect women from assault, you don’t need to worry about transgender folks. You need to worry about frat boys and the families and politicians who have trained them up in the way of their savior.
It is time to wake the hell up to wages of this sin.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.