IT'S A PURITAN COUNTRY:

A funny thing happened on the way to sexual liberation: we took a wrong turn back to a new, bizarre, secularized Puritanism. And the leading edge of this Puritanism--not by coincidence--is in the very same dens of louche materialism produced by the Sexual Revolution: the universities.

This turn backward is heralded by a new law passed in California defining what counts as "sexual assault" and can therefore result in expulsion from the California State University system. This has been dubbed the "yes means yes" law, meaning that for a male student to be accused of sexual assault (and it is almost always a man), the young lady does not need to have said "no" to him. Rather, all sexual contact is presumed to be an assault unless the woman gives "affirmative consent"--and such affirmations "must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity," which presumably means that she has to sign off on every move her lover makes.

Now, part of the purpose of this law was to make it clear that a woman who is incapacitated--by alcohol, of course, since binge drinking is endemic on campus--cannot give consent. Or that a woman who initiates a sexual encounter retains the right to break it off if she changes her mind. But it's not clear whether such a law would be necessary, given existing statutes and policies, nor does the law restrict itself to those provisions. Instead, it creates a very broad and vague presumption against all physical contact.

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