Connecticut is one step closer to ensuring college students are easily accused of sexual assault for not following a government-mandated list of rules for the bedroom.
The state senate, late Wednesday evening, passed an affirmative consent bill — or “yes means yes” legislation — designed to force students engaging in sexual activity to follow a question-and-answer formula. From the moment the students are about to touch, they would have to ask: “May I kiss you?” “May I touch you here?” etc.
Proponents of the policy insist this isn’t true, that the bill merely defines consent as an “active, clear and voluntary agreement by a person.” But that is not the only language in the bill. Similar bills have passed in California, Hawaii and New York, and while they allow nonverbal communication to count as consent, but there can be too much ambiguity in a nod or a moan.
The policy decouples context from the totality of the sexual experience. If a student fails to ask for permission before one escalation, but asks for it for a different escalation, the entire encounter can be considered sexual assault. If a student has been drinking (the bill doesn’t require an accuser to prove they were incapacitated), then all consent is negated. Further, once someone is accused, their level of intoxication doesn’t matter, even if under the same policy they could be considered too incapacitated to consent.
The policy also states that silence does not equal consent. But it doesn’t equal sexual assault either. Yet under affirmative consent, it does, unequivocally. Past sexual encounters between two people also don’t count as consent, so even people in years-long relationships are required to follow these rules or they’ve committed rape (unless, of course, no one reports it).
That’s the thing about these policies: No one has sex this way, which means every student (even the accusers) are sexual assaulters and sexual assault victims. The policies state that the person who takes things to the next level is the one required to ask for permission, but in a he said/she said situation, that responsibility is retroactively placed on the accused, who then has to prove he (it’s almost always a he) either did receive permission or was the one who should have been asked.
And let’s not forget that there’s no way to prove one followed or didn’t follow the policy outside of a video tape. All an accuser has to do is claim they were too drunk and that they were not asked for consent and the accused is considered guilty, thanks to pressure from the federal government. Following this policy to the letter means nothing if an accuser claims one did not follow it precisely.
Just one state senator, Joe Markley, opposed the bill, saying it “criminalizes what many of us would consider entirely normal.”
He added: “Almost any of us would say that we have done things under this policy which do not correspond to affirmative consent. To ask to change that behavior would ask to change human behavior.”
Markley offered an amendment that would provide due process protections to accused students, but it doesn’t appear to have been accepted.
From here the bill moves to the governor’s desk, who will likely sign it into law, threatening the future of thousands of college students.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
