California State Bill Demands Verbal or Written Consent for Sex on College Campuses

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2014-06-05 19:53

Article here. Excerpt:

'A newly amended bill from a California lawmaker would require college students to stop in the heat of passion and establish verbal or written consent before having sex anywhere on campus, reports L.A. Weekly.

SB 967, amended last week by state Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), would mandate that college students obtain "an affirmative, unambiguous, and conscious decision by each participant to engage in mutually agreed-upon sexual activity."
...
According to the language of the bill, "consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual encounter, and can be revoked at any time. The existence of a dating relationship between the persons involved, or the fact of past sexual relations between them, should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent."

Despite the bill's noble intentions, not everyone is sold on the proposed legislation.

In an article for LegalInsurrection.com, attorney Hans Bader argues the language of the proposed law could make ordinary people out to be sexual criminals.

"Since most people have engaged in sex without verbal consent, supporters of the bill are effectively redefining most people, and most happily-married couples, as rapists," he said.'

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Comments

I wonder about these laws are supposed to work in reality. If consent can be revoked at any point and "past" relationships don't count as consent, how often does the participant have to get consent? Once a session? Or every five seconds? If you touch a woman's breasts and then touch another part of her anatomy, do you have to get permission to touch her breasts again if it's been longer than five seconds. Or is the rule every second? Or nanosecond? In short, what is a "past" sexual activity?

And will legislators really start applying these rules to women? And jailing them if they fail to get the necessary consent? I think most women never worry about getting consent. If this law passed and was enforced against women, a lot of women would be in trouble. Fortunately for women, most guys won't file a complaint as long as they "got a little" and were not charged with rape themselves. But if a woman files a rape complaint against a man, she should not be surprised if he files a counter complaint against her. In theory, they could both end up going to jail.

One more thought: if consent can be withdrawn at any time, does that include after the sex is completed. If Susie wakes up the next morning and regrets having sex, can she withdraw her consent at that time?

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Submitted by el cid on Sat, 2014-06-07 13:27

"If Susie wakes up the next morning and regrets having sex, can she withdraw her consent at that time?"

Well of course she can. She can now. This idea of a new law changes nothing. She can say she never assented in the first place even if she did, or that she de-assented but it was never "recorded", or that despite the post-coital texts saying "how great that was!", those really don't count b/c __fill-in-the-blank__, and it'll be believed.

The point here is that whatever the girl says is believed and the boy is presumed always guilty of *something*. No matter what, it's bad enough to toss him out of school, or whatever. Male = guilty. As long as allegations of criminal offenses of *any* kind are being handled by colleges and not actual designated law enforcement authorities capable of doing proper investigations one can expect nothing like justice, fairness, equity in any matter involving a college student accusing another of something bad. This is especially so in the realm of sexual *whatevers* wherein the complainant is female and the target thereof is male. It's as predictable as gravity itself.

"He looked at me funny." That's all it takes.

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-06-08 00:57