THE FOLKS AT FIRE KNOW HOW TO PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Self-Promoting App Producer Gets Facts Wrong in Attempt to Dismiss Due Process Concerns.

Another sleight of hand in Lissack’s letter, common in a lot of advocacy in support of affirmative consent laws and policies, is the disingenuous claim that affirmative consent policies are not about standards of adjudication, but really about cultural change. Make no mistake about it: Accusations against real people will be determined in campus tribunals. Their educations and careers will be on the line in those hearings. Whether they have to prove they obtained consent or whether that burden will remain with the institutions seeking their punishment matters profoundly to the fundamental fairness of the process. That reasoning (and not the fact that jail was on the line) is precisely why the Supreme Court of Washington found the use of affirmative consent to be unconstitutional both as a jury instruction and as a means of deciding rape cases.

In short, Lissack is seeing what he wants to see in affirmative consent: an opportunity to promote his product. And affirmative consent supporters may see what they want to see in Lissack’s letter: reassurance that fighting campus sexual assault doesn’t have to involve so much consideration of accused students’ rights. But Lissack’s response to FIRE ignores logic, facts, and principles of fairness. In fact, the very existence of his product demonstrates FIRE’s core problem with affirmative consent: It is rarely possible to prove.

Some regard that not as a bug, but as a feature.