Rape is rape no matter what the circumstances. And yet, there can be no doubt that some rapes are worse than others. The gang-rape of a nine-month-old baby in the Cape some years ago cannot be compared to what is commonly known as "date-rape".The one involves an act so terrifyingly violent as to be incomprehensible, so utterly beyond the bounds of sense that one can't imagine mitigating circumstances.Whereas with date-rape we can find ourselves on more slippery moral ground, where "No" can conceivably be argued to have meant "Yes", even if, in such matters, "No" should always mean "No".And yet, in the tragic case of someone like Khwezi, for example, in which a date-rape unleashed forces so unbearable that one might argue that they ultimately amounted to murder, the distinction blurs out of all recognition.And, of course, similar complexities inevitably inhere in cases of "corrective rape", "prison rape", "marital rape" and so on - all of which we're so good at that we've earned the unenviable accolade of being one of the rape capitals of the world.What cannot be disputed, however, is that rape is rape, and although there might well be different factors that weigh on how we determine its severity, and its punishment, old age should not be one of them.In many instances the old are no less vulnerable than the young, and are no less worthy of our protection.If it is the case that a society is to be judged by how it treats its old people and its insane, what does it say about us that our mentally-ill are needlessly dying, and that our elderly are being raped without due consequence?There are misgivings about this new law which have to do with some being seen as more worthy of protection than others.But its promulgation should be lauded as a step in the right direction, and one that goes some way towards putting in place what should have been there all along...