DOD and thirty GOP senators oppose anti-rape amendment

October 21, 7:11 PMSonoma County Civil Rights ExaminerMegan Coffey

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GOP Sens. McCain, Thane and McConnell, all nay-voters on protection for rape victims. Photo: AP/Harry Hamburg

It is unclear which is more appalling—that any senators, let alone thirty of them, voted against an amendment to protect military contractors from rape—or that the Obama Defense Department opposed the measure as well.

The amendment, which passed 68-30 on October 6, was introduced by Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) in response to the nightmarish plight of Jamie Leigh Jones, a former contractor for KBR/Halliburton in Iraq. Soon after her arrival in Iraq in 2005, Jones was drugged and gang-raped by her male co-workers, then locked in a shipping container for over 24 hours when she tried to report the assault. KBR authorities “mysteriously” lost the rape kit a doctor performed on Jones, then insisted that Jones handle the assault through company arbitration, denying her the opportunity to bring a lawsuit against her employer because of an arbitration-only clause in her contract.

Franken’s amendment, which is attached to a larger defense spending bill, blocks the federal government from engaging in contracts with any company that forces its employees to accept arbitration in cases involving sexual assault or “other egregious violations of civil rights.”

A White House spokesperson told the Huffington Post that the Department of Defense was in favor of the “intent” of the amendment, but merely had concerns about its enforceability. However, at least one of the thirty Republicans who voted against the measure—Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions—used DOD opposition as an excuse.

Others, like Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, falsely claimed that the amendment would eliminate arbitration altogether as an option for employer-employee disputes. Still others (such as Sessions and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)) insisted that the government should not interfere in private contracts, as if taxpayer-funded employment contracts should not be a government concern. Sessions further complained that this measure was a purely “political” attack against Halliburton.

As the Daily Show's Jon Stewart points out, the hypocrisy of at least four of the GOP senators who voted against the amendment—Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-MO) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)—is transparent: under the pretext that a few ACORN employees have committed voter registration fraud (which ACORN itself reported to authorities), all four have aggressively lobbied for de-funding that community organization; yet these senators oppose de-funding companies that protect gang-rapists from liability.

For a list of the names and contact information of all the senators who voted against judicial recourse for military contractor rape survivors, see the satirical nonprofit website Republicans for Rape.