Sometimes the manufactured outrage obsession that exists in our culture is oddly humorous. As exhausting as it can be, sometimes you just can’t help but laugh at people who find a reason to be offended in nearly every situation they encounter. But then there are times that it seriously damages our society’s ability to function coherently and justly.

Take what is happening on college campuses and the so-called “Rape Culture” that the Obama administration sought to combat with campus tribunals rather than actual courtrooms of justice. Candice Jackson, a woman who survived a rape herself, is the Trump Administration’s chief at the Office of Civil Rights under the Department of Education. Recently she addressed her concerns with the Obama-era tribunals and their tendency to tip the scales of justice in favor of the accuser regardless of the truth by pointing out that:

“90 percent of cases ‘fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.’”

I don’t need to tell you what happened next in our victimhood culture. Jackson was berated and attacked for her comments, with otherwise seemingly rational people deriding her as insensitive to victims of rape. Keep in mind that this is a woman who was raped herself. But simply because she expressed concerns about whether constitutional justice and due process were being properly extended by these tribunals, she is labeled a rape apologist by our jacked-up society.

As expected, Jackson was forced to issue an apology. And as expected, that apology simply wasn’t good enough for the posers and posturing politicians who pretend to be freedom fighters when they’re fools and frauds. Among them, Democrat Senator Patty Murray, who called for Jackson to either step down or be fired. 

This is where we are in a social justice society: people expressing concerns that justice be carried out fairly are now subject to firing for not properly paying dues to the victimhood obsession that shackles our nation’s sense of right and wrong. Jackson wasn’t defending rapists; she was expressing concern that the horror of rape is being watered down by instances of consensual, but later regrettable, sexual intercourse.

The real enemy to our society here is Patty Murray. To placate the demands of radical feminism and this “rape culture” narrative, she is willing to throw the Constitutional rights of the accused out the window.

Before I go further, let me suggest that I am quite confident I believe in harsher penalties for rapists than Patty does. If left up to me, rape would be a capital crime that once proven in a court of law would result in the execution of the rapist. I’m guessing Senator Murray does not believe in such a harsh penalty for rapists. Thus, let’s be clear that I am not defending rapists. I am defending the notion that someone must be proven a rapist through Constitutional jurisprudence before being punished as a rapist. If you disagree with that, as Murray apparently does, I think you are a danger to our way of life. I’m not alone:

“[T]ypically the accusee doesn’t know the precise charges, doesn’t know what the evidence is, and can’t confront witnesses,” writes Northwestern professor (and card-carrying feminist) Laura Kipnis in her recent book, “Unwanted Advances.” This is a violation of their rights as U.S. citizens. There can be no excuse or argument for abrogating Americans’ rights in order to give feminist hatemongers excuses to exploit victims of sex crimes for fundraising and political power. Ensuring due process for all those assaulted and charged of assault is key to prosecuting rapists, not an obstacle to that righteous pursuit.

During the presidential campaign many folks poked fun at Hillary Clinton’s awkward tweet that,

“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

If there were a more hypocritical statement made during the campaign, it would be tough to pinpoint. After all, Hillary Clinton’s entire political career has existed on the back of silencing, discrediting, and destroying survivors of her husband Bill’s sexual assault. But there’s something very instructive about that reality.

People like Patty Murray would scoff at the notion that Bill committed those assaults or that Hillary helped cover them up. And she dismisses the truth of those allegations because none of them have been “proven” in a court of law with the full extension of due process to the Clintons. In other words, Patty’s own denial of the rape endured by Juanita Broaddrick is predicated upon her belief that it was a false allegation. Therefore, she implicitly acknowledges the truth of what OCR Director Candice Jackson is saying -- that due process of law and the constitutional provision of innocence until proven guilty is critically important to our civilization.

Yet she still calls for her firing because, politics. That pretty much confirms that if anyone should step down for the sake of our way of life, it’s the esteemed Senator from Washington.

Peter Heck is a speaker, author and teacher. Follow him @peterheck, email peter@peterheck.com or visit www.peterheck.com.