Last Thursday, a former Stanford student was sentenced to six months in prison for sexual assault. A week later, the public is still outraged.

It’s not just the facts of the case. (For more, see Nick Pitts’s The Need for and Loss of Sacredness.) Brock Turner was found guilty on three felony counts, but this story is, tragically, not unique on America’s campuses. Nearly 100 colleges and universities had at least ten reports of rape on their main campuses in 2014; at Stanford alone, there were twenty-six reports of rape that year.

The case is generating headlines for a number of reasons.

In part, it’s because the crime was so horrific, a fact made clear by the victim’s extremely moving letter, which she read aloud to her attacker at his sentencing. Her letter describes what happened in graphic detail, giving voice to her horrible trauma and ongoing suffering.

In part, it’s because the perpetrator was a member of the Stanford swimming team and has been viewed as a child of privilege. His father’s claim that his son should not have to go to prison for “twenty minutes of action” was especially reprehensible to many.

But I think the continuing outrage over this crime has to do especially with the sentence imposed. Judge Aaron Persky of the Santa Clara County Superior Court sentenced Turner to six months in jail and three years probation. Turner should have received between eight and twenty years in prison for his crime, according to recommendations from the United States Sentencing Commission. The judge cited mitigating factors and determined that a longer jail sentence would not suit Turner’s rehabilitation as a sex offender.

Continue reading Denison Forum – WHY OUTCRY OVER STANFORD ASSAULT CASE CONTINUES →

Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. She won last night’s primaries in New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and California. CNN estimates that she now has 2740 delegates, far exceeding the 2383 needed to win.

So much of life is unpredictable. Who would have imagined a year ago that Donald Trump would clinch his party’s nomination before Hillary Clinton won hers? When Golden State was down three games to one against Oklahoma City in the NBA playoffs, who would have predicted that they would now be up two games to none in the finals? Who would have thought that a tech giant like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg could have his Twitter and Pinterest accounts hacked?

While change seems to be the unchanging principle of the universe, human nature doesn’t change. We still feel the same fears our ancestors felt. We still cherish the same desires for ourselves and our families. We still fight the same basic temptations. And we can still choose to live by God’s unchanging, perfect principles for our lives.

Consider the changing sexual ethics of our day. It’s conventional wisdom today that premarital sex is morally acceptable. However, a new study shows that women who were virgins when they married are far less likely to divorce than those with multiple partners.

Only six percent of women who were virgins when they married were divorced within five years. But thirty-three percent of women with ten or more sexual partners before marriage were divorced within that time. God can redeem our mistakes, but these findings reinforce the wisdom of his perfect will for us.

Continue reading Denison Forum – HILLARY CLINTON WINS NOMINATION—WHAT’S NEXT?          →