To be fair to GUEST, I think some may have misread her/his post. I don't think s/he was saying that Paganism has any particularly strong link to rape.

. . . . .

But s/he is accusing other posters here of saying that Christianity, Islam, and Judiasm of having a stronger link to rape than Paganism... and by her/his HTML language (the cyber version of body language), I'd say that the post above was meant as flamebait.

Let me charge up my fire extinguisher and try to give a balanced response to the issue, and not the post (kinda hard to do when the subject combines the three topics to avoid if you do not want a fight: Sex, religion, and politics -- but I'll give it my best shot).

1) No doubt, the ancient Pagans did commit rape, especially during wartime. But the ancient Pagans are no more.

2) No doubt, there are individual Neo-Pagans out there who are rapists, especially those who were drawn to the religion(s) for their general attitude of "sex is okay". But as many Neo-Pagan religions consider the feminine principle as at least equally divine as the male, the subjagation of women is not religiously sanctioned.

3) It is true that not all Jews, Christians, and Muslims consider the subjagation of women to be religiously sanctioned. But many of the self-proclaimed "Fundamentalists" do.* And many Islamic nations are theocracies, where the Fundalmentalist clerics are in charge of crafting and enforcing the laws that affect the fate of their women citizens.

*4) I suspect that all "Fundamentalist" rerligions, of whatever stripe, are vulnerable to pigeon-holing people into rigid gender and life roles because of their emphasis on keeping to ancient traditions and rules at all cost. This may happen with some Neo-Pagan religions in the future, but as we've only been around for about 2 generations, this movement hasn't yet developed.

In short, religion is only one factor among many that contributes to a person's and culture's attitude toward rape. And without taking all the factors into account, is a non sequitor.

There!

Was that pretty much balanced?