Person A and Person B are on a date and walking down the street. Person A, feeling romantically and sexually attracted, timidly reaches out to hold B’s hand and feels a thrill as their hands touch. Person B does nothing, but six months later files a criminal complaint. Person A is guilty of ‘Criminal Sexual Contact’ under proposed Section 213.6(3)(a).

Far-fetched? Not as the draft is written. The hypothetical crime cobbles together two of the draft’s key concepts. The first is affirmative consent. The second is an enlarged definition of criminal sexual contact that would include the touching of any body part, clothed or unclothed, with sexual gratification in mind. As the authors of the model law explain: “Any kind of contact may qualify. There are no limits on either the body part touched or the manner in which it is touched.” So if Person B neither invites nor rebukes a sexual advance, then anything that happens afterward is illegal. “With passivity expressly disallowed as consent,” the memo says, “the initiator quickly runs up a string of offenses with increasingly more severe penalties to be listed touch by touch and kiss by kiss in the criminal complaint.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-regulating-sex.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28219664)

it's not even remotely ENOUGH that people are criticising it. it should not even be something that anyone is asked to CONSIDER DISCUSSING. i should not be reading about this in the NYT. stop the FUCKING INSANITY.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28219916)

i like it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28222746)

BEST

LAST

DEFENSE

against bullshit cases.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28221837)

Now Obama-era libs are puritanical tyrants and worse than the Christian right. They literally want to regulate sex.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28221898)

just do cognizant

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28223105)

But in my mind (and correct me if I'm wrong, not a criminal attorney), this is designed to resolve questions of *fact* in favor of the D. We don't know exactly what went on and we can't, so if the testimony and evidence are close, err on the side of protecting the innocent.

The point I was raising is the over- or under-inclusion of the law. Granted, you have to have a state interest to criminalize conduct and we don't want to criminalize anything we don't have to. But I think most people's concept of sexual assault would cover, for example, someone touching someone's stomach through their clothes for sexual gratification without consent. Basically, assume we have perfect knowledge of the events (including mental state/intent), and assume that what occurred is undoubtedly what "we" (society) consider to be a sexual assault. At that point, we would certainly not want to release the defendant solely because the language of the statute did not actually criminalize the conduct.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28224816)

So, I think we could probably update this one a little

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2922053&forum_id=2#28229620)