"May I Fuck Your Brains Out Now?" American Law Institute Votes Against Turning Much Of Adult Sex Into A Crime
"The American Law Institute is the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and otherwise improve the law."

Bradford Richardson reports in The Washington Times:

In a rebuke to a feminist idea that has migrated from college campuses to mainstream culture, an influential legal group overwhelmingly rejected Tuesday a provision that would have endorsed an "affirmative consent" standard for the purpose of defining sexual assault.

In a voice vote at the American Law Institute's 93rd annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C., the vast majority of an estimated 500-member crowd declined to amend the Model Penal Code to define sexual consent on an affirmative basis.

The MPC is a leading guide for state legislatures to follow when standardizing their penal codes. One of the items up for debate at the annual meeting was how to define "consent" in the context of sexual assault.

Standards of affirmative consent, which generally require parties to affirmatively and continually vocalize their willingness to participate in a sexual encounter, have mostly germinated on college campuses, as well as in a few states in some contexts, including California and New York.

The ALI's consideration of such a standard has been met with much internal and external criticism.

A group of 120 members wrote a public letter denouncing the proposal, arguing affirmative consent improperly shifts the burden of proof onto the accused when charges of sexual assault are levied. By forcing the accused to prove the near-impossible -- that a sexual encounter was vocally agreed upon at each stage -- affirmative consent standards deny the accused due process rights, the letter said.

It also would ruin sex for consenting adults and/or turn it into a weapon to be used to take away people's freedom -- not necessarily because they sexually assaulted anyone but because they were accused of it and couldn't prove they'd asked for permission at every turn.

I don't know about you, but I used to joke about that, that if a guy says, "May I kiss you now?" the answer is no.

My boyfriend, a few hours after meeting me, walked me to my car and grabbed me and kissed me. It was very sexy and very romantic -- and would be illegal under the proposed change in the laws.