HANS BADER: New York Times inadvertently reveals stupidity of “Yes Means Yes” sexual assault policies.

Unfortunately, there is one shortcoming in the New York Times story: it repeats the erroneous idea spread by the San Francisco Chronicle that all drunk consensual sex is already legally rape on campus under California’s “Yes Means Yes” law regulating campus sex. In reality, as defense lawyer Scott Greenfield, legal commentator Walter Olson, and I have all explained earlier, that law only bans incapacitated sex, not all drunk sex. . . .

Although California’s “affirmative consent” law does not ban all drunk sex, some campus “affirmative-consent” policies do, invading the privacy of students (there is no logical reason why a married couple should not be able to have a glass of wine before sex). But California’s law does heavily intrude into people’s private lives, and create a climate of fear, as some of its most outspoken supporters readily acknowledge.

This micromanagement of adult sex lives — and college students are adults, you know — is a violation of the right of sexual privacy protected under Lawrence v. Texas.