Many proponents of affirmative-consent laws would dispute the way Klein characterizes them, and favor them with the expectation that they won't result in injustice.

That is an unobjectionable stance, whether right or wrong.

To understand California's law as Klein does and to favor it anyway is appalling, if admirably forthright. It is akin to asserting that, to fight sexual assault, we must operate on the dark side. It is a declaration that liberal values aren't adequate after all, using logic Klein rejects when it is applied to other policy areas.

It is also inconsistent with Klein's self-conception as a post-ideological wonk who just follows the evidence where it leads. On what basis does he conclude that California's new law, the costs of which he discusses at great length, will lead to a salutary change in sexual culture, let alone a decrease in campus sexual assaults? The argument he presents for that conclusion isn't just thin, it is virtually absent. There is no citation of similar policies that have succeeded elsewhere, just an implicit assumption that the cultural effect of this "sweeping," unprecedented legislation can be predicted as it filters through the minds of 18-to-22 year olds at institutions as diverse as the University of California at Berkeley and Pepperdine. On the strength of a gut feeling that this could work, Klein is prepared to endorse not a careful pilot program, but a rapid, statewide transformation. The problem is bad. Something drastic must be done. This is something drastic.

Long experience shows that drastic measures are best shunned when they violate liberal values, an insight that does not imply an insufficient commitment to reducing sexual assault on campus any more than opposition to Stop and Frisk means one doesn't care about gun violence in New York City, or opposition to adopting a "preponderance of the evidence" standard for terrorists would imply an underestimation of the problem terrorism poses or the devastation of its victims.

Though I am wary of California's new law, particularly its mandate that sexual-assault accusations be resolved according to a "preponderance of the evidence" standard rather than "reasonable doubt," my guess is Klein overstates its illiberalism. His article is worth dwelling on because it is alarming to see an influential editor eschew liberal values so totally and explicitly, and because his logic reflects and underscores a broader, illiberal trend among some policy advocates and activists. "When will women’s lives and safety matter more than abstractions?" Katie McDonough writes at Salon, lambasting critics of affirmative-consent laws with the rhetoric and logic of a talk-radio host excoriating the ACLU for caring more about due process for terrorists than the lives of Americans.

If illiberal attitudes prevail–still setting aside the question of whether affirmative-consent laws themselves are, in fact, illiberal–the consequences will be dire for all victimized innocents, and for particular classes especially. Consider Freddie deBoer's plausible fear: "If we universalize affirmative consent," he argues, "we unleash a lower standard onto police and prosecutors ... incapable of avoiding racial or class prejudice." The inequality endemic to our judicial system, he continues, will fall "on people of color and working class students in our universities."