This is what comes of ignoring social mores and traditions. Tradition is the experience of many generations in practice. Casual sex is not remotely as liberating as everyone likes to pretend it is. The Big Law of "restrict sex to trusted, committed partners, with whom you have a relationship such that the term 'intimacy' can refer to more than the juxtaposition of your genitalia" was poo-poo'ed as an archaic, limited, pointless rule, once we had the technical ability to prevent most pregnancies, and the legal audacity to murder any unwanted children who slip through the cracks. They broke that big law, and courtesy of the sexual revolution and hook-up culture, we are now entangled in a myriad of Small Laws. We threw off a chain, that, like an anchor chain, kept us from smashing into the rocks, and accepted a thousand tiny fetters, applied randomly and in such a contradictory fashion as to tie us down like Gulliver in Lilliput. Those fetters are "consent" "statutory rape" "victim blaming" "slut shaming" "date rape" "child custody" "alimony" "child support" "sexual harassment" "corporate dating policies""rape culture" and all sorts of disgusting practices or expensive encumbrances like sexual harassment seminars, college rape tribunals, employer-subsidized contraception, the proliferation of sexually exploitative institutions like strip clubs, and Girls Gone Wild, and the vast expense of expanding the perimeter of privacy and security to accommodate looser sexual morals.

When sex was kept in the bedroom, between committed partners, it was easy to protect your privacy and modesty. But given the sort of semi-public bacchanals that are accepted practice these days, even greater efforts must be made to maintain a metaphorical bedroom door. Pictures on the internet, that sort of thing. Under the Big Law, it would be unthinkable that anyone would even be in the position of having one's "sexts" or topless camera-phone pictures existing, let alone promulgated among people several degrees of acquaintance removed from the subject.

Now, because it is perfectly acceptable to walk up to a stranger in whatever sort of place is in fashion for that kind of thing, and proposition him or her for immediate and noncommittal sex, we have to expand the perimeter around such unions as if those involved are behaving just as reasonably as those behind the traditional, literal bedroom door.

The victim of a home invasion is viewed much differently from the victim of a mugging in a bad neighborhood in which he had no legitimate business. Both might be victims and technically blameless, but it is understood that the latter waived a certain degree of security when he chose to go where he did, and that according him the same degree of protection from society that the former enjoys, is simply not possible without oppressive and onerous security that infringes greatly on the natural rights of many more victims.

As misapplied as the kind of prosecution described in the article is, it will really only fall on people engaged in behavior that is, at best, highly imprudent and dangerous, and at worst, immoral and degenerate. As a pundit remarked shortly after the Duke lacrosse team scandal broke a few years ago, "If you don't want to get falsely accused of rape, don't go to parties where women are taking off their clothes for money." In that particular case, it turned out that some of the falsely accused had not even been at the party in question (and proving the concern of author of the article about approaching a place where the burden of proof is placed on the accused, something of a joke - we are well past that point, as the response to that incident demonstrated), but it is good advice. Get to know a person very well, ensure you are on the same page, develop trust and then move the relationship to a level of sexual intimacy, and then stick with that person and only that person for the duration of the relationship, and you don't have to worry about being in the situations posited by this article.

Chesterton might have written the comment I paraphrased in my subject line a century ago, but like the Big Laws of which it speaks, it's relevance does not go out of style.