The short answer is yes martial rape is a crime. A partner may be able to claim the marriage agreement has been violated if one partner continually refuses sexual ovetures, but a parnter should never have the right to force his or herself on their partner. A person's body is theirs; no agreement, marriage or otherwise, should void that ownership. It is amazing that the old notions of possesion still held some weight as recently as 1976, but today all 50 states and most countries consider martial rape a crime. An answer of no can be negoiated, whined about, but it can't be overridden; not in a civilized society. The bad news is that many states don't treat martial rape as seriously as a rape by a stranger; in my opinion this is a mistake.

I also believe that continual refusal without good reason is also not acceptable to a healthy relationship. One cannot expect a partner to be faithful if he or she is left with no sexual outlet. Courts would have to take the health of the couple's physical relationship into account in cases where a spouse is charged with infidelity.

No one can ever be given to right to violate another person. I understand that people preceive love in many different ways but I can't imagine how a partner could ever act so brutally and still claim to love their spouse. I fully believe that marriage is a partnership and that a spouse should not be looking for the door at the first sign of trouble, but if I were a woman and put in a position of being sexually violated; that would be a game only played once. I'd be gone before my partner could get his sorry ass off the bed and I would be calling 911 on the way out.

A woman has a legal right to have her husband charged and to have her day in court. Judges do hand out restraining orders when a husband is violent to his wife and this is just about as violent as you can get short of murder. I don't think a public disclosure of this kind of situtation would reflect badly on the woman. People, being the sexual news moggers that they are, would be all over the story, but I think the man would be the one to look bad. A woman should be considered, at least by anyone thinking, to be fighting for her rights as a human being.