Progressive Liberals, Christian Conservatives Unite to Criminalize Sex on Campus

An interesting facet of the “Yes Means Yes”
campus rape debate is the overlap between the progressive liberal
feminist position and the Christian social conservative position.
Libertarianism’s two main opponents on culture issues are taking
similar stances—albeit for different reasons—that college students’
sex lives should be encumbered for the greater good of society.

Over at National Review,
David French doubles down on
Heather MacDonald’s assertion that we are witnessing the
unravelling of the sexual revolution—at least on college
campuses:

It turns out that sexual “liberation” has not led to sexual
fulfillment, but instead to a landscape littered with broken
hearts, long-lasting psychic pain, and a consequent desperate
effort to create and enforce a bizarre “neo-Victorian” sexual
ethic grounded not in any real morality, but instead in an effort
to use institutional power to shift the emotional,
psychological, and legal consequences of sexual regret and
ambiguity to men and — as much as possible — men alone.

Just like
those on the left who say something must be done
to challenge campus rape culture, French favors a college
intervention of sorts. For liberals, the answer is a law that tips
the scales of justice against those accused of sexual assault,
which will result in more wrongful convictions, more legal
disputes, and quite possibly, less sex (sex is sex, sure, but when
the government increases the likelihood of being expelled for
having it, one would expect a discouraging effect). For social
conservatives, the answer is Christian sexual norms. In fact, the
current kerfuffle over campus culture is a “Vindication of
Christian Sexual Ethics,” writes French:

This is exactly the time when Christians should step forward
with a different ideal, the holistic, healthy, and proven model of
sobriety always, chastity before marriage, and fidelity afterwards
— all because marriage is sacred, our bodies are a temple to God,
and we love our spouses more than we love our own lives. …

We must propose to replace the current mess
with something – not just point our fingers and
shake our heads at other people’s desperate foolishness.

And that something isn’t a new law, nor is it exactly a new
culture. It’s an old culture, an old morality, one that we can
never live perfectly but will be better for trying. And it’s one
that has the benefit of pointing us to the oldest story, the
story of our Creator and Redeemer.

So, Christians on campus — to the extent you’re still
allowed to meet and speak – now is your time to step into
the breach with a sexual ethics that is actually viable,
sustainable, and life-affirming, a sexual ethics that is grounded
in eternal values. It will likely be the best message you will ever
share.

My reaction: They are welcome to try that, as long as no one is
forcing anyone else. Everybody is free to be an advocate for a
cause—just don’t ask the government to mandate it. (And to be fair,
in the specific case of public university campuses, social
conservatives are almost universally the ones being aggressed
against rather than the aggressors.) I don’t expect such an
approach to work, nor do I agree that restoring antiquated sexual
norms is an inherently good idea. But they are free to attempt it
in non-coercive fashion.

MacDonald, on the other hand, is totally in favor of achieving
the Christian conservative goal vis a vis the governmental controls
favored by the left:

Unlike the overregulation of natural gas production, say, which
results in less of a valuable commodity, there is no cost to an
overregulation-induced decrease in campus sex. Society has no
interest in preserving the collegiate bacchanal. Should college
fornication become a rare event preceded by contract signing and
notarization, maybe students would actually do some studying
instead.

That’s a more obviously anti-freedom view, and should serve as
powerful reminder that libertarianism’s foes are always lying in
wait, ready to use the powers of the state to enforce some dubious
social good.

In any case, since depravity is the justification for government
action, it’s worth considering whether campus culture is indeed as
depraved as the far-left and far-right claim it to be. An
interesting exploration of hook-up culture
conducted by Time‘s Maia Szalavitz last year cast
doubt on some of the hand-wringing over declining teen
morality:

Despite racy headlines suggesting that college kids are
increasingly choosing casual liaisons over serious relationships, a
new study presented at the annual meeting of the American
Sociological Association finds that just under one-third of college
students have had more than one partner in the past year.

And that’s exactly the same proportion of students who were
surveyed between 1988 and ’96, and between 2002 and ’10; both
groups also had the same number of partners. So kids aren’t hooking
up more than they ever were, or even more than their parents did,
which is what recent media coverage has implied. …

How students think of their liaisons with fellow students has
clearly changed, and so has the college culture, apparently. All of
the evidence points to the fact that college kids today
are drinking
less, taking fewer drugs and even having less sex than their
parents’ generation. Hooking up just isn’t what it used to be.

Many journalists have also criticized the supposed epidemic of
college rape and insist that sexual assault rates on campuses are
not nearly as high as activists claim. The unavoidable conclusion
is that claims of depravity seem almost universally overhyped.

Whatever the actual levels of binge drinking and sexual assault
are on campuses, if people want to lessen them, I maintain that
they should join libertarians in demanding a lower drinking age.
Unlike clumsy consent regulations and outdated sexual norms, a
lower drinking age could actually incentivize better behavior for
reasons
I detailed here. As libertarians long have recognized, the
creation of a better society usually requires merely that the
government get out of the way—and that’s precisely what it should
do here.