New bipartisan leadership charts a moderate course.

While pro-rape and anti-rape groups continue to spout divisive rhetoric, a new bipartisan group, the Coalition to Reduce Rape, promises to represent the more moderate majority.

“Everyone wants fewer rapes. But to outlaw rape entirely—that doesn’t sound like America to me,” said Senator Greg Madison (D-NZ) in a recent speech to fellow Coalition members. Madison, like many other policymakers and all of mainstream America, believes that while rape is often regrettable, it also has its place in a free society.

“For some individuals, rape is the only possible avenue to sexual health,” Madison continued. “Rape can also be an appropriate management tool. And rape is often an expression of the entrepreneurial spirit, which, may I remind you, is what built this country and keeps it great.”

Of course, rape often has less legitimate motives. While it may be appropriate to make rape illegal in certain isolated situations, the key to reducing rape, according to the Coalition, is not draconian anti-rape laws, but “education, legal prostitution, and more federally funded programs.”

Naturally, sensible solutions don’t sit well with those on either end of the rape spectrum.

“Rape is a right,” said Larry Sanger, pro-rape advocate and vice-president of Leadership Love, a national pro-rape advocacy group. “When the Founding Fathers said, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ they didn’t write any exception clauses. It’s real easy for people in consensual relationships to censor rape. Get it out of here! Make it illegal! We don’t want to think about it!

“Reality is different. Reality is a 300-pound 17-year-old with zits and an abusive father. Tell him to ‘get a girlfriend.’ Sure. That’s compassion.

“Bottom line: when rape, any rape, is illegal, you force people to use back alley prostitutes. So you spread STDs. You hurt the economy, because prostitutes don’t pay taxes. And you perpetuate a cruel discrimination against some of society’s most underacknowledged victims.”

While pro-rape advocates like Sanger have justifiable apprehensions about even minor legal curtailments, extreme anti-rape activists will not be satisfied with anything less than the criminalization of all rape.

“We’re talking about raping people,” frothed anti-rape bigot Rosita Juarez. “Of course, I don’t have any complaint with an incremental approach to ending rape. In 1860, a law that only freed half the slaves would have been a big step forward. But I can’t see Harriet Tubman cutting a check to anyone aiming for ‘fewer slaves.’”

Juarez, a self-styled “rape victim,” is not only Catholic, but Mexican Catholic.

“Like most anti-rape activists, Juarez manifests heavily embedded religious and cultural memes,” commented Dr. Reeve Glare, a cultural anthropologist at Quibbleton University. “It wasn’t even until the late 1960s that our own culture finally stopped embedding memes and started passing on objective values. Sigh. One day the rest of the world will be like us.”

Fortunately, the majority of Americans are meme-free, and agree that rape is not an all or nothing issue. From those who favor a more permissive approach to those who would allow rape only in the case of abortion or incest, Americans can finally look to the Coalition to Reduce Rape for balanced leadership.

“We are here to give solutions, not moral absolutes,” said Madison, a comment in his speech that drew thunderous applause. “Moral absolutes are the mark of the fanatic.”

Among those clapping the loudest were representatives from the Coalition to Legalize Graft, from the Cheerful Child Abusers of America, and from the Foundation for the Advancement of Ritual Torture.