Have You Heard The One About The Woman Who Wasn't Raped 'Cause She Isn't Married?

We heard such a good joke last night, you guys! Some real Absurdist Andy Kaufman-style next-level shit! It goes like this: so this chick is sleeping, and when she wakes up her boyfriend is making sweet love to her, all kissy and lovey with his penis in her vagina. Then she sees that it's not her boyfriend and she screams and fights him off. Wait, wait, here's where it gets good! We can't even ... laughing so hard ... ok, ok, so ... the court says she wasn't raped because based on an 1872 California law, you can be raped by "fraud" if someone impersonates your "husband" but not your "boyfriend" NEW TRIAL haha lolololol OMG! Can you imagine! What a slut!

So here's the law the appeals court in Los Angeles used in deciding:

[a]ny person who fraudulently obtains the consent of another to sexual relations escapes criminal liability (at least as a sex offender under tit. IX of the Pen. Code), unless he (or she) ... masquerades as the victim‟s spouse ...

Call it the Zorro law, maybe, after all those suavay rapscallions who trick the 1872 ladies into the sexin' (which they really wanted to do anyway, because Antonio Banderas).

The court suggests the legislature may want to update that law. From 1872. When Los Angeles was a sprawling metropolis of 5000 souls. A year after we lynched 19 random Chinese men and boys and burned down Chinatown in a "glorious victory" because someone killed a white man.

So, that was 1872 in these parts. (Also: lynched a lot of Mexicans.)

Meanwhile, in India:  

As India awaits sentencing of the men who gang-raped a young woman in Delhi, a politician was arrested on rape charges in the northeastern state of Assam, then stripped and beaten by a crowd.

Bikram Singh Brahma, a member of the Congress Party in Assam and president of a district Congress committee in the state, was arrested Thursday in the rape of a woman in Chirang, according to police officials. [...]

Sanjit Krishna, the superintendent of police in the area, said in an interview that Mr. Brahma was also beaten and stripped by local women. Local television stations showed footage of several women ripping off Mr. Brahma’s shirt and smacking him on the face and stomach before several men join in to hit him.

Trials, people. We suggest "trials." Of course, first you may want to make sure all your rape laws are a bit more up-to-date than the ones in Wild West Los Angeles.

[ LAWeekly / NYT ]