California outlaws drunk, sloppy, reckless consensual campus sex
Why not apply the new affirmative consent standard off campus, to the legislators who passed the bill?
We’ve written previously about California’s proposed “affirmative consent” bill, which codifies — for lack of a more delicate terminology — what constitutes acceptable foreplay between consenting adults on college campuses.
On Sunday, that bill became law.
Via Fox News:
[Bill author Sen. Kevin] De Leon has said the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults. Rather than using the refrain “no means no,” the definition of consent under the bill requires “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.”
“With one in five women on college campuses experiencing sexual assault, it is high time the conversation regarding sexual assault be shifted to one of prevention, justice, and healing,” de Leon said in lobbying Brown for his signature.
The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent.
The bill holds hostage funding for colleges and universities unless “the governing board of each community college district, the Trustees of the California State University, the Regents of the University of California, and the governing boards of independent postsecondary institutions shall adopt a policy concerning sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking…”
That policy is strictly defined within the bill, and mandates new, uniform procedures for the reporting, counseling, and investigation of alleged sexual misconduct on campus.
The terminology used in the bill itself is vague to the point that it endangers the rights of the accused, and the dignity of the accuser.
Section 1 of the bill states that “the accused’s belief in affirmative consent” cannot have arisen “from the intoxication or recklessness of the accused.”
It also states that “it shall not be a valid excuse that the accused believed that the complainant affirmatively consented to the sexual activity if the accused knew or reasonably should have known that the complainant was unable to consent to the sexual activity under any of the following circumstances: (A) The complainant was asleep or unconscious; (B) The complainant was incapacitated due to the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication, so that the complainant could not understand the fact, nature, or extent of the sexual activity.”
Coupled with the campus “kangaroo court” system currently in place at so many American universities — including California — this bill is a recipe for disaster.
Real talk: sex happens. Drunk, sloppy, reckless sex happens on college campuses and there’s not a bill in the world that can eliminate the oft-depressing reality of “the morning after.”
This bill not only assumes a drunk male is guilty of assault, but assumes a drunk female is incapable of consenting to sex, and does not define what it means to be “incapacitated.”
Now, by law, in a situation where a substantial amount of alcohol is involved, consent cannot exist, the aggressor is by default a rapist, and an even-willing partner is by default a victim.
It’s insulting.
Not surprisingly, throughout the entirety of the bill, there is not one provision dedicated to ensuring the preservation of the rights of the accused.
I don’t think there’s an honest lawyer or advocate alive who would argue that consent can exist when someone is drugged, or unconscious, or asleep; but to sign into a law a bill that is so one-sided as to assume the guilt of the accused is beyond the pale.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Are we really going to fill up our prisons with people who got drunk and had sex? Or, are they going to be forced to register as Sex Offenders?
We don’t put criminal, border-jumping illegal alien felons in prison … so there’s plenty or room available for students who did the horizontal bop.
“Are we really going to fill up our prisons with people who got drunk and had sex?”
Yes, where they’ll be forced to have sex sober.
But then it will be politically correct because it will be gay sex, and likely with somebody with brown skin. So that’ll be all good, or something.
“Are we really going to fill up our prisons with people” – no, just men.
And thus we white males cry, “Muh privilege!”
When we’re all extinct, who’ll be the next scapegoat group?
Oh, the usual. You know, the Jooz.
Idiots.
Can’t wait for women to start crying that they can’t find any good men … ohhh wait.
Leave it to a bunch of puritanical stooges to get into your bed
How long has the Left demanded that the collective “we” stay out of the bedroom of two consenting adults? Now, I roll over in bed, and there is the Left!!! Just staring. All simian-like.
And before, it was just the dog.
They told me if I voted for Romney, young college-aged men would be “raping” co-eds right, left, and down the middle, and a nest of radicalized sexist puritans would suspend due process based on gender.
But, hey, if you want to rid a college campus of bright, promising young men, there is no better way to do it.
again, why are schools allowed to have their own governments, police forces and laws?
its simple, you get assaulted call the cops.
disband all these student governments. who the hell was retarded enough to think those were a good idea…
BRAVO!!!
The Foil Future Filners Bill.
Where are all the people who used to want to keep the government out of our bedrooms?
Half the progressives are Useful Idiots who will do and say whatever OFA or the Party Organ du jour tells them to think and do.
The other half are wanna-be elitists who spout off against ‘government intrusion’ only when their ‘enemies’ are in power. Once they gain power their true fascist colors begin to show.
Notice how, after six years of Obama, we are hearing more and more progressives come flat out espousing things like trashing the 1st Amendment, or flat out replacing the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights?
They’re nothing more than a bunch of fascist jack booted thugs at heart. And they are precisely why our founders wisely included the 2nd Amendment.
Come and Take It.
So how is this provable? He said/she said as to whether or not affirmed consent was given.
So a tox screen showing legal or illegal intoxication is going to be a win for the plaintiff in these cases???
This is why I said the law is vague. Rape cases are terrible to deal with because of this exact problem. I’ve had a few people point out that there is a legal standard for “incapacitation,” but the problem with this law is that it doesn’t address the line while at the same time depending on the line, and using an “intoxication” standard elsewhere in the text.
It’s a mess.
Would it be an arguable position as a male to file counter-charges claiming that he did not verbally consent and was also intoxicated since the bill does not specify gender?
I think you could. Can you imagine the media fallout? MSNBC would melt down so hard it would literally go off the grid.
I can hear Jezebel-dot-com exploding from my front porch.
if you are dumb enough to live in California, you deserve to live under this law.
It sounds like a moral code. Everyone protest the religious fanatics! They want to take away free love.
“Ladies”, breath. You will still be able to abort/murder you baby in accordance with your personal faith (aka “privacy”). You can still be as slutty and as loose with your eggs as you want to be.
Here’s a solution: Planned Sex (PS). A faith-based organization, which will legally and morally indemnify its members, and act as a firewall to separate conscience and pleasure. This reminds me of a movie I watched, where all aspects of human life are perfectly sanitized.
What political party keeps claiming that it’s the Republicans who want to regulate what goes on in the bedroom?
The same political party whose young members used to march around waving “QUESTION AUTHORITY!” placards and blast “Rage Against The Machine” out their dorm-room windows.
The question not asked is why are students putting up with this?
I assume this applies to same sex sex as well as heterosexual sex.
What about a dissociative identity disorder do they have to get permission from all their personalities before they can masterbate?
It’s coming – watch for it: Liberals in CA now have a handy reg to target campus unwanteds, you know, like Young Republicans, veterans, middle-aged and older Republicans, ROTC, etc. Now they run something like a foreign government intelligence op – send in a ‘honey pot’, someone to lure the target into an ‘offense’, after which he/she is drummed out of school and off-campus.
I see what you did there. That’s a whole different kind of honey-pot than we see in network security.
I have yet to understand why an educational institution has any business pursuing charges of criminal activity.
Any claims of rape whether statutory, date or aggravated should be investigated by the Police of the locale.
That it is deemed okay or mandatory for the institution to pursue these charges is a throwback to the days when clerics could not be charged with a crime by local law but had to be brought before the Church for trial.
I believe that women now constitute a larger percentage of college students than men. So, many of them are going to be smiling at this new law. For some bizarre reason, rape charges are now replacing abortion as the symbol of feminism. Filing a claim of rape is sadly becoming a status symbol, which is a horrible thing to have happen to those who truly have suffered a forced rape. It’s part of the culture our younger generations have been raised with, believing that being a victim of some grievance elevates you personally.
Women, far more so than men, are attention whores. See also Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. What better way than to claim oneself to be a victim of rape to obtain attention, sympathy, and undeserved aid?
It is very important to ascertain if this gives men and women equal rights. If so, if they are both drunk, can they both be jailed (does it allow jailing?) for rape? As, for example, is the case with domestic violence, to the best of my knowledge. Looks like a new field for our self-defense expert.
If I got drunk and sexually assaulted myself, could I file charges or would my right against self-incrimination save me?
California LEOs and ADAs need to prepare for an onslaught of he said/she said cases.
From Camille Paglia, Time article:
“Wildly overblown claims about an epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses are obscuring the true danger to young women, too often distracted by cellphones or iPods in public places: the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder. Despite hysterical propaganda about our “rape culture,” the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides.
Colleges should stick to academics and stop their infantilizing supervision of students’ dating lives, an authoritarian intrusion that borders on violation of civil liberties. Real crimes should be reported to the police, not to haphazard and ill-trained campus grievance committees.”
http://time.com/3444749/camille-paglia-the-modern-campus-cannot-comprehend-evil/
Now, who’s going to enforce that law? An Army of Cotton Mathers?