Charleston, WV — Cementing their position in the vanguard of neo-medievalism together with Texas and certain tribal areas of Afghanistan, West Virginia yesterday announced new legislation granting unparalleled recognition to the previously nonexistent paternal rights of rapist fathers both in and out of prison. The so-called “Rapist Bill of Rights” is a bold bit of political theater that few analysts could have predicted, let alone believed, even in West Virginia.
West Virginia State Senator, Saxby Mannschaft, addressed a somewhat incredulous press corps on Thursday to announce the new bill, beaming down from an ornate podium featuring bas-relief carvings of chastity belts and whalebone corsets wreathed around a stripper’s pole.
“For too long, society has ignored the plight of the rapist father, barred from celebrating the beautiful child created by his moment of inspired-but-criminal passion ” offered Mannschaft in an opening sentence that most listeners agreed had never before been heard in the entire history of the world. “We’re here to redress that historical wrong by promoting Paternity instead of Prison, which I’m sure you’ll agree is the right thing to do because of the jaunty use of alliteration.”
An inexplicably giddy Mannschaft went on to outline the highlights of the new Rapist Bill of Rights, including:
- Mandatory pre-marital counseling to help rape victims iron out any trivial, pillow-talk disagreements standing between them and successful marriages with their aggressors.
- Minimum 15 “World’s Greatest Dad” t-shirts for use by rapist dads in future Father’s Day celebrations.
- Laminated business cards with toll-free numbers for chemical castration services.
Undaunted by the slack-jawed disbelief now afflicting wide swaths of his listening audience, Mannschaft took his rhetorical shovel in hand and continued to dig enthusiastically as he explained the peculiar biology of rape in West Virginia and possibly 21st century India:
“When a child is born of such a miraculous-but-often-illegal union, we are clearly witness to God’s divine will. Otherwise, the female body would have shut that whole thing down, either by secreting spermicidal, anti-rape-baby secretions or by preventing juices from flowing altogether. It’s all in the secretions and juices. We don’t know why God wants these rape babies, but he clearly does. Roofies may not work in mysterious ways, but the Lord most definitely does.”
Representatives of feminist organizations and the remaining sensible people in the United States were largely unavailable for comment on this story, presumably because they were either forcefully and repeatedly thumping their heads against the nearest wall or they were pricing real estate in Canada. Possibly both.
