But there’s a more fundamental problem with the concept of “consent,” and it speaks to why our youth are so confused and desperate as to need parentified state intervention in the first place. A good sex ed program should teach not affirmative but informed consent. What matters isn’t how often someone says “Yes,” but whether they knew what they were saying “Yes” to.

When we sign up for Internet service, we don’t want a bunch of hidden fees thrown in. When prescribed a new medication, we expect to be informed of all the possible risks and side effects first. When we start a new job, we don’t like being assigned tasks that weren’t in the job description. When we buy a used car, we want to know if the engine is dying. Failure in any of these areas is at best dishonest, at worst merits a major lawsuit.

Somehow, we haven’t figured out how to apply this concept to sex ed. Instead we release our youth into the wild, armed with just a birth-control prescription and a “Yes means yes” lecture. Given our culture’s principled fear of teaching anything substantive about sex, our kids (and most of our adults) can’t possibly be informed of the full range of consequences that might await them.