The Palin soap opera just took a disturbing turn

Bristol Palin's account losing her virginity sounds like date rape. Assuming she's not exaggerating, that's terrible. I don't blame those that point out that she has a huge motivation to minimize her own responsibility (blaming it all on the boy is typical for extremely religious girls who stray and it would give her an excuse to Mom not to marry her child's father, not to mention her abstinence advocacy career...), but the author of the piece is right that we can't let ourselves fall into automatic suspicion of rape victims. Nor should we automatically assume the men they accuse are guilty without trial. She didn't accuse him of date-rape, just made it sound like it, so there won't be any trial and so we'll never know whether it's the straight up truth or not.

What's interests me more is the authors editorializing about rape and the media on the second page:

This year, for example, the House of Representatives was forced to drop language from an anti-abortion bill that would allow only victims of “forcible rape” to access federal funds for abortion after activists pointed out that all rape is “forcible.” The latest trend in misnaming sexual assault is calling some rape “gray rape,” as if being assaulted weren’t a black-and-white issue.

I get what she, and the activists she quotes, mean when they say that all rape is "forcible," but I think the category is necessary. On the one hand you have rape that is committed through the use or threat of physical violence. That's a black and white issue. On the other hand you have rape that is sexual activity with the subjective consent of both parties but where one party is not legally capable of giving consent (because they're too young, too intoxicated, etc.). That most definitely does produce gray areas at the margins. Or is the boy who just turned 18 who has sex with his girlfriend a week before she turns sixteen on the wrong side of the state line the same as the guy who forcible rapes a woman in the park? Only a moron would say so. The fact that statutory rape laws vary so widely proves that it isn't a black and white issue.