Is it acceptable to have drunken sex?

There are many terrifying things about this advice. The first is its subtle shifting of the burden of proof so that it falls to the defendant to prove that the claimant said “yes” rather than to the claimant to prove she said “no” and was ignored. As Sarah Vine of the Daily Mail says, this could lead to a situation where “men in rape cases [will] automatically be presumed guilty until they can prove they obtained consent.”

In essence, this would mean sex becomes by default a crime until you, the drunken dude who slept with the drunken girl, can prove that your sex wasn’t malevolent. Imagine raising such an idea in the year in which we celebrate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, midwife of the presumption of innocence, which for centuries has guarded citizens from the whims and prejudices of the mighty state and powerful prosecutors like Ms. Saunders.

But even worse is her thought-free mashup of drunken sex and rape, as if they’re the same. When Saunders talks about sex that happens while one or both parties is hammered, she’s sticking her snout—the state’s snout—into what for many people is a perfectly normal part of life: college parties, house parties, youthful get-togethers, at which the truly shocking thing would be to see sober people getting it on.