YOU are a rapist; yes YOU!

From David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit:

In the Future, all restaurants will be Taco Bell, and everybody will be a Rapist: YOU are a rapist; yes YOU! I don’t think this will help colleges and universities maintain the enrollment levels they need.

Cathy Young has an excellent column in Reason.com about a bill in California that would require universities in that state to use an “affirmative consent” standard for evaluating sexual assault complaints in the campus disciplinary system for complaints involving students. Two obvious questions arise: (1) Why just on campus? If this is a good idea, why not make it part the tort system? If that’s too drastic, let’s start, with say, members of the California legislature. For internal disciplinary purposes, their sexual activity should be governed by the same standard they want to impose on students. What plausible grounds could they have for rejecting application of a standard they would impose on students to themselves? (2) If we’re limiting things to campus, why just students? Why should students be judged under this standard, but not faculty and administrators? It’s hardly unheard of for professors, administrators, and even law school deans to engage in sexual relationships of dubious morality. The answer is that it’s not a good idea, and it’s a product of the current moral panic over the hookup culture.

But at least the affirmative consent standard leaves room for a defense that the complainant provided appropriate non-verbal cues that signified consent. By contrast, the Office on Violence against Women, a U.S. Justice Department subsidiary, informs us on its home page that “sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the *explicit consent* of the recipient.” This is not, in fact, the legal standard in any jurisdiction in the United States, and it’s not because it’s completely absurd. The vast, vast majority of “sexual contact or behavior” is initiated with only *implicit consent.*

I would love to make a constitutional amendment to the Kalifornia Constitution, all new laws must apply only to the Legislature for 10 years, before they will apply to the general public.