For most of the past week, I have been gathering my thoughts to write an article about the now-viral Brock Turner rape case. I still believe it's incredibly important that none of us let him and what his case represents fall too far from our thoughts. Forgetting about him and what he did is exactly the sort of thing that lets rape culture continue to thrive in our society. But I also can't ignore the horrifying mass shooting, the worst in our country's history, because again ignoring or forgetting about these things is exactly why they keep happening. But as I was wrestling with my feelings about both of these important issues I realized that there is something that connects them and allows crimes like them to repeat. And that something is commonly known as "traditional values."

I'm not saying traditional values directly encourage rape or mass shootings, but the strict adherence to such values, and the idea of tradition in general, leave room for people to make excuses for deplorable behavior. I know this from personal experience. When I first got to college, I joined a fraternity and it became a large part of my life until three years later our chapter was shut down because of a hazing incident. We gave the excuse that the activities we had pledge brothers perform before they could be initiated were traditions that went back as far as any of us knew. Some of them, we thought, went back to our founding members so why should we be the ones to do anything different? Do you see how easy that is to slip into indifference? Defending traditions is incredibly easy, but standing up for progress is just as hard.

"Tradition" is what kept women locked away at home and out of the workplace for so long. It's what kept the LGBT community from getting the same rights for so long. It's what made the civil rights movement in the '60s so difficult. It's what makes arguing with something written in our nation's Constitution so difficult. And it's the resentment of having those traditions taken away or limited in some way that propagates rape culture and gun culture. Traditions make people feel safe, fear makes them feel weak and weakness leads them to lash out in violent ways. We are allowing the cowards in this country to take away "the home of the brave" and we've been doing this for far too long. In reality we are "the home of the indifferent."

Tradition is not a reason, it's an excuse and an incredibly poor one at that. The Constitution is not a reason to let our laws remain static, it is the tool by which we can change the laws to encourage change. There is a reason our Founding Fathers gave us express power to amend the Constitution, they knew the laws they had created when there were just 13 sparsely populated colonies would not always reflect what was best for the country if it was going to continue growing as much as we have. They couldn't have predicted that one day there would be a population in the hundreds of millions, consisting of so many different races and religions. So they gave us a document that we could change as our country did. Instantly dismissing change over tradition is lazy and cowardly. It takes a much braver person to consider everything they know to be true and then admit that some of it may be wrong or misplaced.

Today we live in a country with completely out of control rape and gun violence, where state lawmakers are hard at work making sure their local LGBTQ communities know that they are not welcome to live their lives because their love is seen as different and wrong. Religion is often cited as the reason for this, but religion and tradition are nearly inseparable. Religion is also largely to blame for our current rape culture by suggesting that it is a woman's responsibility to take extra precaution against being sexually assaulted.

I was raised Mormon and as far as I knew "modesty" was just something that girls had to be worried about when they were getting dressed. They were responsible for any sexual feelings I might start developing for them, not me. Every aspect of that idea is so obviously wrong that even as I started puberty it bothered me. Girls shouldn't have to worry about me, I am not some mindless beast that sees a half bare thigh or a swatch of shoulder skin and loses all control. I can be responsible for myself and I am ashamed to have ever sat by silently while being told otherwise by the patriarchy.

But we don't need to abolish all religions and traditions to become more progressive, we just need to be more aware of how those traditions can affect our society as a whole. Everyone agrees that rape and mass murders are bad, but no one wants to discuss the part they had to play in making others think that it was acceptable. This is why I want Brock Turner to remain in the national discussion. It's not enough to just discuss it. The conversation needs to become so loud that the people with the power to create actual lasting change hear it. Traditions aren't inherently good or bad, it's the people who believe in them and how they use them. But right now we live in a country where one group's traditions are being used to hurt another group by completely dehumanizing them. It is cowardly, wrong and it needs to change fast.