I write in response to Lance Webb’s April 3 editorial entitled “Premarital Sex Is Like Playing Scrabble.” He asserts that there is no moral significance to the act of sexual intercourse, that sex for human beings is really no different than sex for animals – there need only be mutual consent. But the very premise Mr. Webb denies lies behind the universally accepted legal tradition of treating rape as more egregious than ordinary assault.

According to Mr. Webb, a rape victim should expect her violator to receive no harsher a punishment than if he had punched her in the arm. After all, sex means only what you want it to mean – why should the rape victim’s exalted view of sex be privileged over the rapist’s?

But, of course, sex for human beings does have a meaning, given by nature (and thus by God, who created nature) and intuited by reason. Unlike the beasts, human beings experience desire, jealousy and regret with sex- emotions that make no sense if sex is simply like playing cards. Surely, the monstrous act of rape is worse than cheating at Scrabble.

G. Brent McGuire Associate Pastor, Our Redeemer Lutheran Church Director of the Lutheran Student Society. [email protected].