CA may take lead in codifying what is legally acceptable sex

The Nanny State impulse, when its most ardent proponents gain power, is a scary thing to witness. This is from the L.A. Daily News:

“LONG BEACH — A bill on its way to the state Assembly mandates that California’s public universities adopt a policy requiring college students to obtain ongoing consent throughout a sexual encounter.

“Senate Bill 967, introduced by state Sens. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, and Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, requires Cal State University, the University of California and community college districts to adopt campus anti-sexual violence policies that include an affirmative consent standard.

“The bill, which was co-authored by Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, passed the state Senate 27-9 on May 29 and was moved to the Assembly.”

Sex rules for 22 million students at U.S. colleges

Now I completely get that colleges need to treat rape with every bit as much seriousness as any well-regarded law-enforcement agency, and that some colleges have done from a bad job to an appalling  job dealing with rape.

I also get that alcohol is a big factor in this problem.

But between SB 967 and new federal rules ordered by the Obama administration, we haven’t just tiptoed up to the line in which government regulates sex for 22 million college students and possibly everyone in the same way it regulates restaurant cleanliness or handicapped parking — we’re already there and getting ready to vault far past the line.

We are on our way to colleges that don’t just have affirmative consent rules. We’ll see the rise of the assumption that anyone who has had even a single drink is incapable of legal consent. I’m 100 percent sure we’ll see this become the campus norm at a ton of colleges when it comes to students under the legal age to purchase alcohol, which is 21 in all 50 states.

Feds demand campus ‘conduct boards’ serve as rape juries

Here’s an NRO explainer of the federal regs I referred to:

“Through a series of heavy-handed executive actions, the Obama administration has effectively required universities to serve as investigators and jurors for felony offenses. By doing so, they have placed universities in an impossible position, created costly bureaucracy, trampled students’ due-process rights, and empowered a cadre of hypersensitive, trigger-happy gender warriors on campuses. 

“Campus conduct boards are best suited for handling academic infractions such as cheating or plagiarism. But in 2011, the DOE’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlyn Ali, issued a directive warning colleges that failure to aggressively pursue sexual-assault offenders would be considered a Title IX violation punishable by loss of federal funds. As a result … there are conduct boards composed of English professors, librarians, and math majors across the country determining guilt for what is generally considered the second most serious crime known to man.

 “To comply with the new rules of Title IX, universities have been frantically revising their policies. To be sure, many have added valuable resources and programs for victims of sexual assault. But for the most part, universities have responded to new federal guidelines exactly as you would expect — by hiring more bureaucrats to focus exclusively on Title IX compliance. … It’s hard to imagine how hiring more college administrators will help solve the problem of campus rape.   

“Despite the many resources expended in efforts to comply with Title IX, campus courts have unsurprisingly done a bad job adjudicating rape … . The result has been a surge of lawsuits from students who allege that their universities mishandled their sexual-assault cases … .”

‘The second most serious crime known to man’

This is such a stunning comment on authoritarian liberalism:

“… there are conduct boards composed of English professors, librarians, and math majors across the country determining guilt for what is generally considered the second most serious crime known to man.”

If it weren’t certain to ruin the lives of many students, I would actually be happy about this grotesque government overkill. If anything will ruin the reputation of a political movement among young people, it is the advocates of that movement telling them that sex after the consumption of a single beer or shooter is either illegal or in a legally dangerous gray area.