If you know anything about Klein’s news site “VOX” you might not trust his opinion on anything.

Robby Soave reports at Reason.

Ezra Klein ‘Completely Supports’ ‘Terrible’ Yes Means Yes Law

Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein waded into the debate over “Yes Means Yes” affirmative consent laws Monday, signalling his complete support for California’s SB 967 even though it is “a terrible law,” in Klein’s opinion.

That may seem like contradictory thinking to all of us non-wonks, but he does explain it:

It tries to change, through brute legislative force, the most private and intimate of adult acts. It is sweeping in its redefinition of acceptable consent; two college seniors who’ve been in a loving relationship since they met during the first week of their freshman years, and who, with the ease of the committed, slip naturally from cuddling to sex, could fail its test.

The Yes Means Yes law is a necessarily extreme solution to an extreme problem. Its overreach is precisely its value.

What’s the extreme problem? The supposed epidemic of campus rape, which Klein claims—repeatedly throughout his article—impacts 1 in 5 college women. Whatever the problems with SB 967, they should be set aside in service of the goal of minimizing campus rape, he writes:

The Yes Means Yes laws creates an equilibrium where too much counts as sexual assault. Bad as it is, that’s a necessary change. A culture where one-in-five women is assaulted isn’t going to be dislodged with a gentle nudge.

Let me get this straight: Any piece of legislation is worthwhile, no matter how terrible it is, as long as it has the goal of decreasing rape? I thought Vox was supposed to be the home of smart, number-crunching journalism, where experts evaluate the actual effects of policies instead of merely rubber-stamping their goals?