What happens at the University of Minnesota — in this case, an “affirmative consent” policy for sex — doesn’t always stay in Minnesota:

The proposed policy is currently under review for another 30 days before it becomes official. Its language is fairly standard, which leads me to believe that it will suffer from the same problems as other “Yes Means Yes” policies:

[…]

Equally troubling is the mandate that each and every sexual act be hammered out beforehand. May I touch your hand? What about your wrist? May I touch your shoulder? May I kiss this spot on your neck? May I kiss this other spot on your neck? May I kiss the first spot again while I touch your hand? Nobody is going to do this. Does that mean everyone is a rapist?

The article at Reason not so reassuringly concludes:

The new policy will only make things easier for adjudicators to the extent that everyone accused of sexual assault will very likely be technically guilty, since no one is going to sign a detailed consent contract before engaging in sex.

That day has not yet arrived. It’s coming soon.

Just over a decade ago, in the wake of Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, there was an uptick in conservatives bemoaning the hedonism of modern college campuses. The years since have seen the general level of debauchery increase without let or hindrance. Even the staunchest of so-cons have gone silent from a kind of cultural shell shock. It is simply understood that the modern college is a strange parallel universe where sexual liberalism and Stalinistic speech codes coexist on the taxpayer’s dime.

It’s been a conservative complaint for years that the traditional idea that colleges acted in loco parentis is dead. Look a bit more closely and you see that the idea is as firmly entrenched as ever on campuses across the country. What’s changed is that the traditional model of parenting has been replaced by its hippie alternative. Colleges are making sure that Jimmy is growing up right; their notion of “right,” however, is terribly at odds with the values held by the vast majority of real parents.

The power of sexual liberalism as a political instrument is that it weakens the family structure. The generations who have matured on a staple of casual sex will find, and have found, that monogamy and long-term relationships are a dreary chore. A culture of instant gratification will find it impossible to think in the span of years, much less in the decades it takes to build a successful family.

The undermining of the traditional nuclear family removes the basic conservative bulwark of American society. With it’s decline, the outcome of elections, the course of popular entertainment, or the fluctuations in the debt-to-GDP ratio will little matter. What are perceived as conservative values are simply those values that are required to maintain a traditional family structure. If there are no more traditional families, there will be little need to adhere to those traditional values.

Sexual liberalism, however, is a form of moral anarchy. It cannot persist for very long for the same reason that no form of anarchy can exist for very long. Life requires some kind of order to survive. The hook-up culture quickly becomes a crash course in little more than cynicism and narcissism. No one can live like this for more than a few years. It eats away at the souls of those who fail to reject it. Sooner or later, order is restored. As the anarchy winds down, the open question becomes what sort of order will be established in its place.

The rise of Affirmative Consent programs, complete with T-shirts, gives us a pretty good idea of what the new sexual order will look like. It should not be surprising that a political ideology that thought nothing of minutely regulating the American economy would, in time, apply the same legal pettifogging to sex. Soon enough there will not be a single aspect of human life that will not require a form signed in triplicate.

Revolutions destroy their own. Liberalism created the hedonistic campus culture. That culture will, in time, produce a new sexual conservatism. Put yourself in the place of a young man seeking sex on a modern college campus. You understand that even a slight slip-up in the sexual marketplace can destroy your career prospects and possibly lead to criminal charges. The quasi-legal system employed by colleges has essentially dispensed with due process. You are guilty until proven semi-innocent. In this context, even the most aggressive of males will become, as a matter of necessity, risk-averse in sexual matters.

Faced with such prospects that young man now has a powerful incentive to become monogamous. A long-term emotionally stable relationship is likely to be his safest bet. Beyond its narrow confines lie all manner of snares. For both young men and women, the default option will be to return to something like the traditional courtship patterns of their grandparents. Sexual liberalism will, having consumed itself, become a powerful force for re-establishing traditional sexual norms.