How America's sexual extremists took over the public square

Article here. Excerpt:

'There is, first of all, the way sexual assaults are being handled on college campuses. The increased focus on such assaults over the past few years may well be justified, but the overwhelmingly bureaucratic response favored by both universities themselves and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is not. If college administrators wanted to do a better job of protecting female students from various forms of sexual assault, especially rape, you might think they would do things like — oh, I don't know — crack down on Greek life, enforce the legal drinking age on campus, and make clear to students that all accusations of assault will be turned over to local law enforcement.

Instead, growing numbers of universities are choosing to fight sexual assault by establishing offices to oversee the creation and enforcement of regulations, under Title IX, covering every imaginable form of sexual or quasi-sexual conduct, ensuring that in all cases such conduct conforms to legalistic norms of consent. Thinking of coming up behind an attractive sophomore and planting a surprise kiss on the back of his neck? Think again. That kind of reckless behavior could carry consequences, including a sexual misconduct complaint.

The result is a supremely creepy combination of liberalism, Puritanism, and the infrastructure of a police state. In addition to stifling free speech and the free exchange of ideas on campus, such regulations go well beyond punishing bad behavior to require a transformation in the way people relate to one another at an individual level. Ruling common forms of flirtation and seduction out of bounds, they aim to remake romantic and sexual interactions on the model of contractual negotiations among business partners.'