A local news item serves as a reminder that despite the prevailing meme of an "anything goes" culture, the legal system increasingly reflects a growing tendency to treat garden variety immorality as rape. Moralists who like to complain about defining deviancy down are generally silent about the expansion of rape to include the type of conduct traditionally regarded as sleazy.

Jeffrey Marsalis falsely claimed he was an astronaut and a physician, and the women who fell for it went out on dates with him and later had sex. Only months later (after learning months later that he was not the successful professional he claimed to be) did they report the sexual intercourse as rape:

The first woman to testify [...] came forward in November after seeing a news report of Marsalis on television. And she told a doctor of the attack two months after Marsalis allegedly raped her in January 2003 in his apartment at the Metropolitan in Center City. The doctor's note of the rape allegation was entered into evidence.

The New Jersey woman, who was 26 at the time, described meeting Marsalis through Match.com in December 2002.

Marsalis, who used the screen name "Doctor Jeff," posted various photos of himself on his profile, including one of him in an astronaut suit.

She exchanged e-mails, had conversations with him over the phone, and agreed to a date.

"He seemed like an average guy - very nice," she testified.

They spent the first part of their date at the Independence Brew Pub, at the Reading Terminal.

The woman said Marsalis told her that he was a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and that he also was an "in-flight doctor" for NASA.

He flashed her a badge, she said, apparently to prove he worked for NASA.

They sipped some small beer samples and then each ordered a pint of beer, she said.

Either while drinking that beer or starting a second, she left to use the ladies room, she said. Sometime after she returned and continued drinking, she said she "started to feel disoriented, very passive, very uncomfortable."

Marsalis suggested she go to his apartment and let the effects of the alcohol pass. She agreed.

She also acknowledged that she began kissing Marsalis and letting him remove her shoes and panty hose, but said she stopped his hands "climbing up my leg" and told him she did not want to have sex.

They continued to kiss, "and then I lost memory," she said.

She regained consciousness to find herself naked in his bed with Marsalis on top of her, she said.

"I remember telling him to stop. I remember telling him he was hurting me," she testified.

She said he expressed anger and told her: "Don't you want to please me?" She later passed out again and woke up hours later.

The woman, who worked for a public-relations firm, said she was intimidated by what she believed was Marsalis' status as a doctor and astronaut, and decided not to go to the police.

"I was scared and I wanted to let it go," she said.

Her husband, whom she met shortly after the date with Marsalis, later took the stand and said she had told him several weeks after they met about the incident but did not mention the man's name.

In November, he was watching a newscast when a report came up about a man who posed as a doctor and astronaut and was facing rape charges. He said he called his wife over to the TV.

"Oh my God! It's Jeffrey!" she said, according to her husband.

He said he then convinced her that she had to go to the authorities.

In the not-too-distant past, Jeffrey Marsalis would have been regarded as a liar and a con artist, and the women who slept with him as stupid and foolish. (Bear in mind he's charged with rape, not drugging the women.)

Common sense tells me that if you're raped, you know it at the time. In the old days, police and prosecutors looked for physical evidence of a struggle. A two month delay in calling the police in reporting sexual intercourse only after learning the man lied about his accomplishments undercuts the notion that rape is a violent and heinous crime -- and (IMO) challenges the very definition of victim.

This is not to defend lying or misrepresentation in order to obtain sexual favors. What the man did was unquestionably sleazy, and it's unfortunate that so many women fell for his con routine. But that does not transform what happened into a crime of violence, which rape is. If career misrepresentation can supply grounds for a rape charge, where does it end? We can all agree that lying on a resume in order to land a nice job is sleazy and dishonest, and normally the remedy is termination of employment. But suppose female co-workers meet the guy, fall in love with him based on his resume and his job, and have sex with him. Is that rape?

Suppose a guy takes off his wedding ring and claims he's single but he's actually married. (I think such scenarios have probably happened a few times.) Hopeful women go out with him and consent to sex based on their expectations, but he just keeps on lying and they keep on screwing. Should these acts of intercourse be chargable as multiple rapes once the woman learns she's been lied to?

I knew a guy who'd fathered enough children so he'd had a vasectomy, but he didn't want to tell his new girlfriend because he was afraid she'd drop him. Interestingly, this man had been falsely encouraged by the woman's claim that she had no interest in "ever" having children. While he never lied to her and said he was fertile, he finally decided to break the news of his vasectomy. She dropped him like a hot potato and never spoke to him again. When she said she never wanted to have children, she had (gasp!) lied. Why wouldn't acts of sexual intercourse with that lying woman who knowingly misrepresented herself have been rape?

Well? Do I detect a double standard?

Isn't this sexist? When was the last time a woman was prosecuted for lying her way into bed? Would a man be heard to complain that he had no memory of what happened, if he woke up in bed with a woman with whom he never would have had sex had he known she was lying? I think the police would laugh their heads off -- even if he called them the next day. If he waited two months to call the cops, they'd probably think about putting him under observation.

Like it or not, there is a huge double standard. I wish people would quit pretending that there is not.

The biggest problem with all of this is what it's doing to the popular conception of rape. The more people read about prosecutions like this, the more such prosecutions there will be, because it fills a need some people have to become victims in order to vindicate themselves. If acts of sexual intercourse which were once regrettable become grounds for rape allegations, then rape will increasingly be seen not as a crime, but as a game between contestants in a reality TV show.

Hmmm.......

Maybe I shouldn't have said that. I hate to provide sleazebag producers with new ideas.

But what the heck. I don't watch TV, so for all I know, there's already a show called "Your Dream Date from Hell" or something in which it's hard to tell whether the guy is a wonderful professional dream date or a slick con artist.

How many episodes until the "victim" learns "the truth"?

Do I really have to stay tuned?