The Future of Sex is Terrifying

Article here. Excerpt:

'The American Law Institute (ALI)—a respected body of professors, judges, and lawyers that draft model laws oft adopted in whole by state and federal government—has spent the past three years deliberating over sexual assault statutes (an area it hadn't revisited since 1962). A draft of the group's recommendations, released in May, endorsed "the position that an affirmative expression of consent, either by words or conduct, is always an appropriate prerequisite to sexual intercourse, and that the failure to obtain such consent should be punishable under" criminal law.
...
To this aim, ALI proposes establishing the new crime of sexual intercourse without consent, a misdemeanor, which takes place when a person "knowingly or recklessly has, or enables another person to have, sexual intercourse with a person who at the time of the act of sexual intercourse has not given consent to that act." (This is, of course, absent any sort of force, coercion, or indication the victim protested/resisted, which would remain felonies.) It would also expand the definition of criminal sexual contact to include any unconsented to contact with any body part if the perpetrator intended the touch amorously or lustfully.
...
"[T]he appropriate default position clearly is to err in the direction of protecting individuals against unwanted sexual imposition. ... Of course, a legal standard requiring the affirmative expression of consent to sex will—inevitably—entail many false negatives, in the form of findings of unwillingness when in fact passionate desire was present. But the contrary standard now prevalent in American law will—just as inevitably—entail many false positives, assumptions of willingness and subsequent sexual intrusion when such intimacy was entirely unwanted. Section 213.2(2) reflects the judgment that the harms that arise under the latter standard present far greater reason for concern."
...
"As with other areas of criminal law," caution the dissenting ALI members, "expanding the statutes in the ways set forth in the draft would fall particularly hard on individuals of color who are represented disproportionately at each stage of the criminal justice system." American law enforcement "has an unfortunate history of excessive punishment in the name of protecting women especially when issues of race are present."

People who want to solve social problems by reflexively invoking the power of state justice often overlook exactly whom and what systems will be enacting this justice, and how they've historically operated. It's not going to be pretty, or just, to turn virtually everyone into potentially prosecutable sex criminals.'