Meet the Law Professors Who Want to Ruin Sex
Taking the concept of consent to absurd levels.
Sexual consent laws on college campuses are already reaching absurd levels, but if the American Law Institute has its way and loosens the concepts of consent, it will easier to accuse participants of crimes.
Stuart Taylor Jr. writes at Real Clear Politics:
Legal Group Weighs Radical Expansion of Sex Crimes
Imagine the following case: Two recent college grads meet in a bar, talk, begin kissing, and go to her apartment. After a little more talking, they resume kissing there. He undresses her and initiates sexual intercourse. She neither objects nor resists. He leaves, and they have no further contact. A month later, she files a criminal complaint with police, complaining that this was rape because she never expressed verbal consent and was physically passive.
Under the law as it has been from time immemorial, the woman’s complaint would be rejected because her failure to say no or resist would be considered consent.
But under proposals that will be put to a vote on May 17 at the annual meeting of the American Law Institute, the nation’s most prestigious drafter of model laws, the man could be charged with of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Under the letter of the proposed new law, his defense — “she never said no, or stop, or I don’t want this, and she never tried to push me away” — would not save him from being convicted and imprisoned even if the jury and judge believed him.
These proposals, by a powerful faction of the American Law Institute, are deeply offensive to prominent civil libertarians, feminists, scholars and practicing lawyers, and have provoked a controversy that has deeply divided the ALI.
Taylor names names at the link. No surprise, the most aggressive proponents of the change in the consent standard are radical leftist law professors:
More than 100 ALI members have mobilized to oppose the proposals of the radical faction’s leader, Professor Stephen Schulhofer of NYU Law School, the sex-crime project’s powerful chief “reporter.” The genteel but fierce debate has raged since 2013.
Schulhofer and “associate reporter” Erin Murphy explained in an “introductory note” to an earlier draft that they wanted to criminalize “commonplace or seemingly innocuous” behavior in order to change “existing social expectations” and reshape social norms.
This reflects their view that many millions of women are routinely pressured to have sex in ways that are not now—but in their view should be—illegal. The current Schulhofer draft would also impose unprecedented limits on defendants’ ability to introduce evidence suggesting innocence.
Professor Jacobson has featured the video below in prior posts on this subject but it’s worth re-posting here. Witness the new Orwellian version of intimacy:
Here’s more from the article linked above:
The proposed definition of “consent” specifies that “[n]either verbal nor physical resistance is required to establish the absence of consent.” It also implies that passivity does not show consent, and it is dangerously unclear as to when silent, mutual foreplay does and does not “communicate willingness.” Another section 213.0(d) adds that “[c]onsent may be revoked at any time…by behavior communicating that the person is no longer willing.”
These and other proposals advanced by Schulhofer and his allies would give prosecutors who cannot prove that an actual assault took place an easy way to coerce guilty pleas. The many other proposed expansions of sex crime liability that are to be voted on at a future meeting or meetings include a proposal to make it a 10-year felony to have sex with a partner who is “in a state of mental torpor as a result of intoxication.”
Also, if you think this applies only to college students, guess again:
Other provisions of the ALI’s March 2016 preliminary draft, to be voted on at future meetings, would:
–Make it a crime even for a spouse or “intimate partner” to initiate sex unless he could prove that he “reasonably believed that the complainant would welcome the act.” This standard could, critics say, invite further proliferation of the strategic accusations of sexual and child abuse that already plague divorce and child custody matters.
–Make a felon of anyone providing professional treatment for any mental or emotional health problem, no matter how slight, to a mature adult if the two develop a mutual romantic attachment that leads to sexual penetration.
Hat tip to KC Johnson:
My colleague @staylor5448 on troubling–&below-the-radar–efforts to transform the criminal def for sexual assault:https://t.co/qrPRApiDvl
— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) May 14, 2016
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
On campus, males are aggressive sexual predators that young women cannot resist.
On American junior and senior high schools, young males have a federal right to share private spaces with girls, with no supervision.
Seems schizophrenic…
Kinda resembles the mixed messages in a Madonna video, doesn’t it.
I can say with some pride I’ve never seen one.
Since humans have no souls (we evolved from germs or something), interactions are simply transactions. Relationships are a construct by those with white privilege…or something. Isn’t this proposal an attempt to make an interaction into a verbal contract? What if one party was very drunk? Could one then legally consent? Eventually, we would be assigned a mate for the good of the state.
For some reason, this sounds like a path leading to eugenics.
I’d often heard that revolutions devour themselves. But having survived the sexual revolution, I’d never imagined this!
Of course, as some wise philosophers once opined, “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!”
Wouldn’t it be easy for someone charged under that interpretation of rape to counter-charge rape against the accuser? How could either side prove or disprove that kind of charge?
However, in this nutty world of preposterous laws if it goes into effect I’m starting a cottage industry:- Consent Condoms!
Here’s how they will work. Each condom will be wrapped in fingerprint sensitive plastic that holds a clear fingerprint impression, and each package will have printed on it this admonisition:
“Tearing Open This Packett Signifies My Consent To Have Sex With It’s Bearer.”
The legal experts can tune up the language.
The Consent Condom is a product to protect males from false accusation of rape – they are the partners most likely to be charged. But I’m sure equivalent ‘concent’ products can be developed for women too, those involved in lesbian relationships for example may need lubricant jelly packs.
If the dumb interpretation of rape becomes law, I see big bucks down the road. And anyone who wants to get in on the ground floor and invest in the project, let me know. In a year or two I can see us on Shark Tank, pitching the company, handing out samples to Mark Cuban, and Mr. Wonderful, etc. With all the accusations of sexual impropriety against sport’s athletes, I bet Cuban would be interested in making a deal!
I think you’re onto something there, Jason. But I think I would adhere a little more closely to the software “shrink wrap” license, and sell *male underwear” instead, which would be imprinted with the following words in very large bold type:
“BY REMOVING THESE BVDs, YOU IRREVOCABLY CONSENT TO SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH THE WEARER”
I mean, it worked for Microsoft, right?
Sorry, won’t work. All the woman has to say was that you told her to open the condom and that she was so intimidated, she was too frightened to refuse and complied under your perceived threat. Simple ! You’re still SOL .
Forgive me for not quite getting it but both or all participants are required to obtain consent, right?
Not really, the law is directed at men. The general idea is to make all men criminals.
The infantilization of women proceeds apace. The radical left is doing to women what it’s already successfully done to blacks—convince them that they’re helpless; utterly unable to do anything useful by themselves; are all-around useless shufflebutts constantly victimized by … [well, something … white hegemony? the Patriarchy? the Space Unicorns? it hardly matters]. So, they need someone to look after them and enforce their rights. And that someone is the all-encompassing State.
Mussolini called it “totalitarianism”. Though the theory has been developed a bit since his day. What is needed is both an enemy and victims. Neither need be real. Here, if helpless peons don’t exist, it will be necessary to invent some.
Obviously, Hillary’s “equal pay” crusade is another part of the same process.
Anyone advocating this should be required to prove that they have been following these guidelines themselves for as far back as the statute of limitations for rape.
My opinion of these people is that when they were attempting sexual relationships through college, they faced multiple rejections, and even when ‘successful’ may have been ridiculed by some of their partners.
They either know or believe their past is whispered behind their back and this antagonizes them to the point of developing a mental disorder.
So, they will try their damnedest to ****over everyone, striking out in retribution.
We wind up with irrational crap from out of their tormented psyche. That’s the only explanation I can get out of this. Their underlings dare not show the slightest sign of regarding it as the crap it is, but must suck it up simply because the reputation of these people makes their pronouncements akin to being handed down on tablets from Mount Ararat.
I have one more thought, but for the sake of peace and quietness, I have never committed it to writing.
Women and men were deceived by the hope and change promised by the dysfunctional revolution. Pro-choice is a doctrine of legal, scientific, and religious/moral principles that are internally, externally, and mutually inconsistent.
The left despises the West. Just another way to ruin relations between men and women in the West and to sow suspicion and discord between them.
In the meantime, illegal alien Mexicans are procreating with underage illegal alien girls in the U.S.A., and the parents ask the authorities not to prosecute, because they think it’s a good thing.
Everything tends to the same goal: increase foreigners and decrease the number of Americans.
Under the letter of the proposed new law, his defense — “she never said no, or stop, or I don’t want this, and she never tried to push me away” — would not save him from being convicted and imprisoned even if the jury and judge believed him.
Unless the jury was aware of their authority to ignore the law, ignore the judge’s instructions, and to nullify bad law by refusing to convict under it.
Where would a jury like this come from? Our future jurors, educated in public schools and universities will know that all men are predators. Their teachers affirm men rape women all day long, forcing women to carry mattresses throughout the land.
Refuse to convict? Maybe if you got a jury of people educated abroad, or in private school.
It only takes one juror to prevent a conviction. If I, or one of my friends, were on the jury, there would not be a conviction. Do you educate your friends? I try to educate those of mine who aren’t already on board. They may not accept the reality in its historic entirety, but merely planting the seed may be enough for some of them to one day decide to stand fast against the weight of the system.
The idea is to coerce men into guilty pleas, so their cases never even *get* to juries.
I.e., “No jury — no jury nullification.”
Not everyone will be coerced. You’re much better off with a jury of 12, in hopes that at least one will hang it, finding error in the proceeding upon appeal, or a direct challenge to the law itself, rather than pleading guilty to an offense you did not commit.
Question for the legal eagles out there. If a law is subsequently found unconstitutional (or otherwise overturned), what appeal does someone have (if any) if they had made a plea bargain rather than face trial under the (bad) law? Have such persons not been placed (by the bad law) into an untenable position, and coerced into pleading guilty, by a law that ought not to have existed (indeed, had no force to bring the defendant into court to answer to it in the first place)?
Under this law, one more thrust after “Stop” makes a sexual assault out of what may have previously been consensual sex. But what if she’s on top and takes one more bounce after he says “Stop”?
It also implies that passivity does not show consent, and it is dangerously unclear as to when silent, mutual foreplay does and does not “communicate willingness.”
They don’t call it “foreplay” for nothing. The name of the practice strongly implies to the participants that the activity is a prelude to another activity. If you don’t want to participate in the latter activity, you shouldn’t participate in the former, unless the former activity is clearly remarked by the reluctant party as the furthest extent of intimate contact that he or she desires of her or his partner.
If one party charges rape the can’t the other? Or is it just women who can claim they were raped?
And all this because women can be feckless (more so I believe than men about this topic) about their sexual decisions.
Let’s not lose sight of the reason for all this; women deciding hours to years after an encounter that they didn’t like the results of that encounter and decide (and usually because of rejection by the male or their rejection of the male) that they were taken against their will.
Doesn’t matter that that will didn’t exist at the time or only became solidified after being radicalized.
Once rape could only be proved by actual physical harm having occurred. A reasonable factor when deciding if a crime took place. But then they came up with date rape. Where somehow some men have this overwhelming ability to hypnotize young women into having sex with them. (not talking about chemicals or induced drunkenness).
That’s when all this began to unravel. Then women could decide long after the fact that somehow these strong women who demand being treated equally were over powered by words and subtle senses and then taken advantage of.
Time to go back to the tried and true; no police report, no crime. No physical damage, no crime of rape.
I’ll be elsewhere while you all gang up on me and my politically incorrect and terrible ideas.
Isn’t this a type of profiling? Males are being preselected – set up – to fail at the hands of the feminazis.
And where do these absurd laws leave the LGBTQRTST…? There will be rape triggers all over the place with those who “suffer so.”
So would this mean that someone could sue themselves if they did not give verbal consent before masturbating?
Progressives have become more empowered since 2009. This is a prime example of both their methods and their objectives. Method: start by proposing radical laws, gradually relaxing them so they appear “moderate” and a “compromise” but still march towards your objective. Objective: use law to shape culture (their word – “inform” culture) and to alter power in predetermined ways.
This is all about defining male dominance and using law to change that power (as they see it, not as it actually exists). It perhaps explains why the consequences are not so important.
Make it a part of the nuptuals: “I will never refuse your sexual advances.”