PETITION: Tell President Obama and members of both houses of Congress to oppose the Campus Rapist Protection Act

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post contains a link to an online petition; the link is located at the bottom of the blog post.

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U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican who represents the 5th Congressional District of Arizona, has proposed federal legislation, officially called the Safe Campus Act (H.R. 3403), that, if enacted, would require colleges and universities in this country to effectively cover up sexual assaults that occur on campus, unless police become involved with a particular case.

I’m not making this up at all…that is an actual bill that has been proposed in Congress.

While the bill is officially called the Safe Campus Act, it might as well be called the Campus Rapist Protection Act, as that’s a more accurate description of what the proposed legislation would do. The legislation would make it a lot easier for college students to get away with the criminal act of rape, and, therefore, make college campuses far more dangerous than they currently are. Furthermore, the legislation would, if enacted, result in fewer people attending college out of fear that they might be raped on campus.

The legislation is backed by numerous fraternity groups, which apparently think that their members have an unfettered right to have sex with every woman they can find, even if the women don’t consent to sexual activity. No person in this country has an unfettered right to sexually assault anyone. In fact, sexual assault is a crime, and it should be treated seriously, not swept under the rug.

I’ve created a petition calling for President Barack Obama and members of both houses of Congress to oppose H.R. 3403. You can sign the petition here.

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NARAL and Planned Parenthood send out joint press release praising Republicans who oppose reproductive rights

Cecile Richards, the daughter of former Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards and the national head of the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood, praised Republican U.S. Senators-elect Cory Gardner (CO), Joni Ernst (IA) and Thom Tillis (NC) in a press release issued by the reproductive rights organization NARAL Pro-Choice America, despite the fact that Gardner, Ernst, and Tillis are all strongly opposed to reproductive rights:

“If you remember one thing about election night, it should be this: Far from women’s health and rights being a losing issue, it was an issue that helped both Democrats and Republicans win. That’s a huge shift,” said Cecile Richards, president, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “Politicians like Cory Gardner, Thom Tillis and Joni Ernst won by moderating their positions on access to birth control and abortion. This data clearly shows that voters didn’t elect them to restrict women’s access to health care, and voters will hold them accountable to what they promised.”

Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, and Thom Tillis did absolutely nothing to moderate their far-right opposition to reproductive rights. All three of them ran away from and/or outright lied about their opposition to allowing women to control their own health care decisions and their support for extreme anti-women’s rights measures like the Personhood Amendment. That’s not being moderate, that’s being afraid to admit their real anti-woman agenda, which would, among other things, result in more unsafe, backalley abortions and women being legally unable to obtain birth control.

What Cecile Richards said about Gardner, Ernst, and Tillis (doesn’t that sound like a shady law firm to you?) amounts to Richards giving political cover to Republicans by allowing them to lie about their medieval views on women’s issues and get away with it. What Richards said in that press release would make her mother roll over in her grave.