Violence Against Women Act Submitted Changes, Phyllis Schlafly and convicted Felon Timothy Johnson Opposed. Surprise Suprise.

VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) is being held up in the two different houses of the USA’s government.   Please Note: This law does not just cover women, but men who are abused are covered as well under this act. 

I hesitated to write about this, because I was confused as to what they were fighting about in congress.  The media is so biased that you can tell which side of the aisle they are on just by their writing style, and its hard to make out what the true issues are.  You can always figure out what their issue is, but you can’t get a straight answer as to what the true issues are.  Politics shouldn’t be played with people’s lifes in this way.

I will first mention some of the changes some members of congress wish to see happen to the VAWA, and end with a “Christian” organization that opposes it altogether.

Domestic Violence: A New Tool To Help

There are times in which its hard to prove domestic violence.  Victims have a hard time standing for themselves for a number of reasons.    I have heard today about a potential tool that could help all involved.  Its called a ALS or Alternative Light Source machine.  There are different ALS machines for different purposes.

 

Strangulation is one aspect of domestic violence that has been hard to prove, because it doesn’t always leave marks.  Waneta Dawn sent me a link on a News Story from USA Today. 

 

States cracking down on strangulation attempts

 

 

 

Attempted strangulation cases have long vexed police and prosecutors seeking stiff penalties for attacks. The act can leave victims close to death, but unlike blows that produce a black eye or broken nose, it generally leaves few, if any, external signs of injury needed to prove a felony assault charge. An attempted murder charge is also hard to sustain in cases where suspects intend to frighten rather than kill. As a result, advocates say, suffocation cases have historically been handled as misdemeanors that don't reflect the act's severity or carry meaningful punishment.

Debra Holbrook of Mercy Medical Center is in the above video, and she speaks about using Alternative Light Source for documented proof of strangulation.   Alternative Light Source is also known as “ALS”.  It has been used in the past for sexual abuse, sexual assault, or rape.  The process reminds me of Luminol.  Instead of the blooding glowing – the popular known use of luminol that you may be familiar with – marks from the strangulation can be seen.  Alternative Light Source or “ALS” you don’t need the chemicals like you do with Luminol.

 

This process takes the ‘he said she said’ option off the table.  It can be done at the crime scene or in the hospital.

 

William Umansky, a Defensive attorney was noted in the USA article to say:

he thought his state's law was flawed because it allows for felony prosecution without objective proof of a victim's injury. He said it gave prosecutors too much leverage to secure guilty pleas.

"Domestic violence is always bad, but the way I see it commonly prosecuted, there's no ligature marks on the woman's throat, no evidence of bruising. Just the verbal allegation, and all of a sudden, there's a felony charge," Umansky said.

The process of Alternative Light Source, or ALS does tend to take ‘doubt’ out of the equation.  As noted in the video Debra Holbrook states bruising is not needed, because the process shows the perpetrators hands on the throat – “they light up like a Christmas Tree!”  This can even happen days later when victims come to the hospital complaining of a sore throat.

 

This has to be a huge validation for the men, women and children that fall victim to strangulation.  This is a new technology designed to detect hard-to-see injuries and has been successfully used to prosecute domestic violence suspects.  ALS or Alternative Light Source is used to detect bruises hidden under a victim's skin.  Forensic Nurse Debra Holbrook states, "you can actually see hand marks, fingerprint marks, on somebody's throat."  Marked Woman is an article in which she goes into detail. 

Holbrook also stresses that women can come to Mercy even if they are not ready to involve the police. In Maryland, healthcare workers are not required to report domestic abuse cases to the authorities. "We're here to help," Holbrook says. "We will collect their evidence. We will take the pictures. Everything we do goes in a locked file, their insurance company won't know, their significant other won't know, their private doctor won't know. It's confidential and when they're ready to report, we can bring all these cases forward and can use them all to help them."

Keep in mind every state or country may be different as far as reporting domestic violence.

This is new technology, and I’m sure not all areas have this to use.  Hopefully, with time it will be more readily available.

 

Get in touch with your hospitals, and local domestic violence agencies to make sure they are aware of Alternative Light Source. 

 

New Use of Technology Shines Light on Strangulation is an article about ALS or Alternative Light Source.

 

Debra Holbrook

 

Power and Control has other medical videos, and is the source of the one I used in today’s video above.

Strangulation is the topic of today, but the same principal could be used for other parts of the body that bruising hasn’t surfaced.

Chuck Phelps and the BJU legacy lives on

Chuck Phelp’s legacy lives on.

Another member of Trinity Baptist Church - Joshua Budgett – has been charged with sexual assault of a minor.  Joshua is no stranger to law enforcement, because he has been convicted of it before. 

Sex offender released on bail

Sex Offender Faces New Charges In Underage Assault

What makes this story worse is that Chuck Phelps actually married this man to a lady in his congregation while he was still in a half way house.  They actually married AT the half way house.  She had a small child already, and later had children of their own.

So lets get this straight.  Its okay for a convicted sex offender to ask Chuck Phelps to marry them at the half way house after his conviction (the first one it seems), and to come to church, etc. 

Its not okay for a raped teenager (Tina Anderson) that gave away her baby – fathered by another church member – to come back to school there. 

One would be a bad example for others (especially their children), and the other most won’t know about so its okay.  (head spinning)

Trinity Baptist Church also issued a letter of support for Joshua Budgett’s family.  One sentence seems to stand out for me. 

Besides bearing the hurt of these disgusting allegations, suddenly the primary wage earner removed from their house has caused immediate financial difficulty for (blank) and her children.

This was one of many reasons they did not wish to deal with Ernie Willis either.

Masculine versus Macho – real men or culture?

When I read ugly articles like the one Doug Wilson wrote about Effeminate Worship? I also tend to think about all their opinions on culture. We all know the speeches about how culture is bad, and church people are better.

Funny how they use ‘cultural’ aspects to have people agree with their point of view.

Culture and their definition of masculine

Extremes don’t represent culture in the majority, but it sure does seem to get the attention. In my opinion, only using the extremes is a sign that your points can’t be all that valid. If you can’t use an example that most can truly relate to in their real lifes, and not some imaginary most extreme model that people can come up with? You lost me, and honestly you lose others as well. People just can’t relate.

Eric M. Pazdziora has written an article called, ‘The Truth about “Effeminate Worship”’.

If we want to know the reason men are staying away from church, maybe we just found it. Maybe they see church people as bullies. When somebody tells me I’m not a real man, I don’t want to hang out with them. I had enough of that in the locker room in sixth grade, thanks. If that’s what I’ll find in church, I’ll pass—and so will every other man who doesn’t meet that narrow, culture-blinded, anti-biblical ideal of masculinity.

Enough is enough. This whole tired clichéd pointless insulting emasculating graceless sanctimonious frippery of bellicose machismo should have been laid to rest a hundred years ago.

As with most worship wars, the problem isn’t worship. The problem is lack of worship. We’re looking at culture, not at Christ. We’re preoccupied with effeminacy, not having faith. We’re teaching gender, not the Gospel. We’re talking about manliness, not the Son of Man.

It’s a wonder that preachers that preach the cultural definition of masculinity don’t realize this.  Here is Doug Wilson follow up to the criticisms.

Slutwalk Myths Encouraged By CBMW

Its sad that Mary Kassian is yet again spreading ‘I believe’ opinions as fact that can be disproven.  I started to speak about this in my part article called, Adventures in Missing The Point.

 

On her site “Girls gone Wise” she has a reprint of the article about the slut walks that I wrote about in the past.  She then responded to a comment left on her article.

 

Mary Kassian says:
April 7, 2012 at 2:12 pm

Daniella, I agree with a lot of what you are saying.

Yes. Rape is rape.
Yes. It’s wrong to blame victims.
Yes. Rape has nothing to do with the way a woman dresses.

Where we differ is this: I believe a culture that promotes sexual promiscuity will have a higher incidence of rape than one that promotes sexual continence. Encouraging women to embrace sluttiness is neither empowering, nor does it help to prevent the problem of rape.

Her last two sentences are falsehoods, and its clear she doesn’t wish to know the ‘true’ facts. 

 

A Culture that Promotes Sexual Promiscuity will have a Higher Incidence of Rape – False

 

I guess that would seem like common sense to those that don’t wish to fact check first.

 

There have been numerous reports in the world about this ‘myth’, and sadly it doesn’t line up. 

 

If you google worse places for women on the globe?  The United States (or Canada since that is where she lives) isn’t topping the list.  The worse places listed have a very high percentage of rape compared to the United States as well.  Imagine that Mary?!  No doubt they aren’t very nice to men either.

 

So Mary Kassian’s ‘I believe’ statement is at best irresponsible.  Dressing up your beliefs as fact in this manner is showing her agenda far to much.

 

Her ‘I believe’ statement is ‘wrong’ because it does blame victims.  She states that rape has nothing to do with dress, and yet in the next breath states that your dress does encourage it. 

 

For an organization that speaks about ‘confusion’ far to much in a accusatory manner towards others?  She seriously needs to take a good look at her own statements.

 

Targeted violence against females, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape. Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female foeticide (the destruction of a fetus in the uterus), genital mutilation and acid attack. A survey compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Woman*, puts Afghanistan at the top of the list of the most dangerous places in the world for women. TrustLaw asked 213 gender experts from five contents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six categories of risk. The risks consisted of health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking.

The countries listed above are very patriarchal.   Promiscuity isn’t rampant, and so Mary Kassian’s theory doesn’t seem to work there.  There is nothing wrong with speaking of modesty, but preaching outright falsehood is completely different.  People will not take your opinions seriously anymore.  Mary is so jaded against feminism that she seems to apply things as she goes along.  Sadly, she doesn’t seem to care if they are true or not.

 

Encouraging Women to Embrace Sluttiness is Empowering – False

 

You have to wonder if Mary Kassian even read any material on the slutwalk.   Despite her claims the majority of participates in this protest were not dressed as she portrayed.   If you look closely to the pictures in most places people can coats on.  If the purpose was to encourage being slutty would they NOT wait until it was warm enough to do so?

 

As I have said before, I’m not thrilled with the name of the march.  I understand WHERE they took the name from (Mary doesn’t seem to).  I am able to look past that to grasp the purpose.  It doesn’t bother me that much that I have to be completely blinded to it.

 

Its sadly a bald faced lie to say that the protest had a purpose to show women that dressing like a slut was empowering.

 

Frankly, it’s a regurgitating theme in most of her Mary Kassian’s material.  If you check out enough of her books, articles, blogs material and sermons?  Its something she states time and time again to any characteristic she sees as against her beliefs towards feminism.

 

No doubt there are some women that feels this is empowering, but the majority don’t seem to ‘live it out’ in the extreme manner that Mary describes on a regular basis.

 

Her response was not only contradictory towards facts that have been proven, but ‘confusing’ in content.

 

Does she live under a rock?  Seriously.  Is misrepresenting people a show a ‘true woman’?

Trustlaw.org

Choice.org