In a sadly unsurprising and rapey move, South Dakota’s Joint Legislative Procedure Committee slammed the breaks on an amendment that would bar legislators from having any sexual contact with pages and interns.
Wednesday, the Argus Leader reports, South Dakota state Senator Stace Nelson (R-Fulton) presented a simple and reasonable addition to the Joint Rules of the Legislature:
1B-3.1 Sexual contact prohibited. No legislator or legislative employee may have sexual contact with any legislative intern or page.
Unfortunately, the committee decided they didn’t want their “freedom” to have sex with pages and interns taken away. It was voted down with a 9-5 vote.
This move is particularly disturbing because this type of ban is a no-brainer. And, once again, opponents to the measure have a pretty pathetic excuse. They insist that sexual harassment is already banned, so why bother? They cite this rule:
1A-4. Sexual harassment prohibited. All members are responsible for ensuring that the workplace is free from sexual harassment. All members shall avoid any action or conduct which could be viewed as sexual harassment. A member shall report any sexual harassment complaint to the presiding officer of the house to which the member belongs. If the situation is not resolved, the member shall forward the complaint to the Executive Board of the Legislative Research Council
Except that rule clearly has not been doing enough to prevent sexual harassment in the state government. In fact, the amendment seems more than necessary for these group of legislators. Sen. Nelson even alluded to a history of South Dakota lawmakers sexually harassing interns and going as far to violate high-school-aged pages. Matters went so far that a former page sued a state senator in 2007 for groping him.
State Sen. Nelson points out amendment would eliminate a gray area I’m sure predatory lawmakers have exploited:
Unfortunately there’s been some things that have been discussed that warranted looking at making it more explicit in our joint rules so that there was no misunderstanding, so that people didn’t—the grey area that has been allowed to be there, this takes it away.
One of the most glaring problems with the current rules is that the onus is on the potential victim to gauge whether they’ve been harassed or not. Instead of acknowledging that all sexual contact between a grown adult and young staffer involves an uneven power dynamic, these lawmakers were more concerned about a rule cramping their style.
So, things will stay as is. They wouldn’t want a little ethics to ruin their fun to abuse their power, now would they?