A proposed bill in Illinois would make it illegal to have sex while intoxicated, classifying such an act as a person being “unable to give knowing consent.”
The ill-conceived bill was introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives at the end of January by state Rep. Mark Walker, a Democrat, and has since gained nine co-sponsors, including Republican Rep. Chris Bos. The text of the bill would amend the Criminal Code of 2012 to update the Sex Offenses Article of the Code to include a new definition for “unable to give knowing consent” that “includes when the victim is intoxicated, but the accused did not provide or administer the intoxicating substance.”
This means that someone who willingly drinks alcohol but then has sex with someone, possibly due to lowered inhibitions, can automatically claim to be a rape victim.
Defense attorney Scott Greenfield lamented the bill on Twitter, calling it “a nightmare.”
“Intoxication, rather than incapacitation, would make sex a crime for lack of consent, even if both are drunk. Whoever goes to the police first wins,” Greenfield tweeted. “This will be a nightmare.”
The likelihood of this language to be abused is high, particularly in a culture where politicians and media outlets insist that women must be believed and men must be assumed guilty. We’ve seen how this plays out on college campuses and universities, where policies that say someone must be “incapacitated” have, in practice, allowed for someone to be merely intoxicated.
Sexism is rampant in such policies, with men automatically being perceived as perpetrators and the only party responsible for obtaining consent, even if evidence shows the woman initiated. Campus administrators have admitted this bias.
More than a decade ago, Costal Carolina University in South Carolina placed a flyer around campus that stated: “Jake was drunk. Josie was drunk. Jake and Josie hooked up. Josie could NOT consent. The next day Jake was charged with rape.” The poster also included a line saying that a “woman who is intoxicated cannot give her legal consent for sex, so proceeding under these circumstances is a crime.”
The clear implication is that only women can’t consent when drunk, but men absolutely can.
Years ago, Duke University’s dean Sue Wasiolek testified that, “assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex,” if both parties were drunk “to the point of incapacity.”
These rules only apply when sex is involved. If a woman drinks and gets behind the wheel of a car, she doesn’t get away with it because she was drunk – and neither would a man. The same should go for drunk sex, but we all know only men will be made to adhere to this law.
Should this law pass, only women will be made aware of it, as they are constantly told these days that sexual encounters are actually rape if there is even the slightest bit of regret. The only way to protect oneself if such a bill becomes law is for anyone involved in a drunk hookup to immediately book it to the police station and accuse the other party of sexual assault.
The other problem with this bill is that anyone who has ever had something to drink before having sex would become a rapist and a victim overnight – an absurd notion all but the “believe women” crowd would find objectionable.