Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly wants Congress to hold up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act until it is altered so that it doesn’t benefit women. Schlafly, a long-time critic of the landmark law who believes that married women cannot be raped by their husbands, contends that the Violence Against Women Act goes too far in protecting women from abusive spouses and that the law is merely a feminist plot to tear down men:
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), now up for reauthorization, is in major need of revision. Its billion-dollar-a-year price tag spent by the radical feminists to pursue their ideology and goals (known as feminist pork) make it an embarrassment to members of Congress who voted for it.
For 30 years, the feminists have been pretending that their goal is to abolish all sex discrimination, eliminating all gender differences no matter how reasonable. When it comes to domestic violence, however, feminist dogma preaches that there is an innate gender difference: Men are naturally batterers, and women are naturally victims (i.e., gender profiling).
Starting with its title, VAWA is just about as sex discriminatory as legislation can get. It is written and implemented to oppose the abuse of women and to punish men.
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Women who make domestic violence accusations are not required to produce evidence and are never prosecuted for perjury if they lie. Accused men are not accorded fundamental protections of due process, not considered innocent until proven guilty and in many cases are not afforded the right to confront their accusers.
Legal assistance is customarily provided to women but not to men. Men ought to be entitled to equal protection of the law because many charges are felonies and could result in prison and loss of money, job and reputation.
Feminist recipients of VAWA handouts lobby legislators, judges and prosecutors on the taxpayers’ dime (which is contrary to Section 1913 of Title 18, U.S. Code), and the results are generally harmful to all concerned. This lobbying has resulted in laws calling for mandatory arrest (i.e., the police must arrest someone – guess who) of the predominant aggressor (i.e., ignore the facts and assume the man is the aggressor) and no-drop prosecution (i.e., prosecute the man even if the woman has withdrawn her accusation or refuses to testify).
