Morality is a personal matter. Priests (and Priestesses) have their beliefs about it, and others turn to them for guidance. That’s the nature of religion, whether organized or informal. Sure, some moral lines are so clear and universally accepted that we can all agree, or at least we used to all be able to agree, that they cannot be crossed. Others are squishy, and people can fairly disagree about where the line should be drawn.

David French, as a conservative Christian, makes no bones about where he would draw lines. I don’t begrudge him doing so, as he’s never denied the roll religion plays in his life and thinking, but I also don’t really care about where his lines are drawn. He’s not my priest and I don’t look to him for guidance on morality. But when he conflates his version of morality with the law, even if he denies that’s what he’s doing, it’s a problem. And that’s what he’s done in castigating the morality of manhood when he lays blame on the young men of the Chi Phi fraternity for failing to put a stop to the “sexual depravity.“

What happened during that time? Multiple men came into the room and — according to a lawsuit filed by Jane Doe last month and various documents disclosed in the case — at least some of the men snorted drugs off her body and had oral and vaginal sex with her, all when she was unquestionably very drunk and very high.

While the accusations of the civil suit are recognized, her mental state is characterized as “unquestionably very drunk and very high.” Was she? I wasn’t there. Neither was David. And what constitutes “very drunk and very high”? Wiggly, if even close to accurate, the solution to this problem isn’t found in Jane Doe but in the failure of any Chi Phi white knight saving the damsel from depravity.

As dreadful as all that is, I’m also interested in what didn’t happen. No one, apparently, acted to end the encounter. Instead — as the group message indicates — men celebrated. “I fucking love chi phi,” one brother wrote. “Like you can walk in and whip it out,” he said later. “Shop still open?” asked another.

Much as I agree with David that this “locker room talk” is repugnant, its childish posturing. But since it does give notice to the rest of the brothers, David questions why none of them stood up to save Jane Doe. What David doesn’t ask is whether Jane Doe wanted or needed saving? Jane Doe went to Chi Phi voluntarily in search of group sex. In David’s paradigm, the sex itself is depraved, but that doesn’t impose his moral judgment on Jane Doe. She’s allowed to want group sex, even if it grosses David out. She’s allowed to want to get drunk and high, even very drunk and high, and want group sex.

I want to be careful here and not draw a straight line from our porn-saturated culture to this dreadful incident. Sexual depravity existed long before pornography was ubiquitous, but this encounter was almost a textbook example of what porn teaches men about sex. It’s not about intimacy. It’s not a manifestation of love, much less care. Instead, sex is an entirely self-regarding and inherently exploitative act.

Granted, her civil complaint now asserts that it went too far, beyond what she wanted. But when she said “no,” it stopped, and then it restarted when she wanted more. Contrary to the deeply-held belief of some moral arbiters, some woman want and enjoy sex. They are allowed to, even though it isn’t about love, marriage or procreation. Remember the Zipless Fuck of Ma Jong? Also remember that Andrea Dworkin called all acts of “penis in vagina” rape? There are plenty of strong opinions about the morality of sex.

This is used as the launching pad to contrast the legal versus moral standard, except it doesn’t really accomplish its goal.

Hovering over the entire case is a New York legal standard that draws a sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary intoxication. Put simply, if you’re voluntarily intoxicated but not “physically helpless” (passed out, for example), proving incapacitation becomes extremely difficult. But if you’re involuntarily intoxicated, you are considered incapacitated — even when your level of intoxication is the same as that of the voluntarily intoxicated person.

Think of it like this: If the Cornell men forced Jane Doe to drink shots or snort ketamine, then, in the state’s eyes, she’d be incapacitated. But if she voluntarily drank and consumed ketamine to the same level of intoxication, she would not be considered incapacitated.

This makes little sense. Calling intoxication voluntary doesn’t render intoxicated people more aware or capable of making informed decisions. They’re just as vulnerable to predation as they would be if, say, they were unknowingly served spiked fruit punch.

This makes little sense from David’s moral perspective, but is critically necessary from a legal perspective. One point of criminal law is to draw bright lines between conduct that’s lawful and conduct that’s criminal. The law enables a person to know that it’s a crime to force another person to ingest alcohol and drugs against their will. This is an eminently reasonable law, and more importantly, a bright line that distinguishes legal and illegal conduct. It has nothing to do with the degree of intoxication leading to incapacitation, whether real or claimed.

But the law similarly recognizes that people (which includes women, despite some people’s view that they are too frail and helpless to be allowed to make their own choices) are entitled to do what they want to do, even when it comes to sex. Some people, women included, prefer things consider kinky. Others do not. To each his or her own.

It’s neither David’s, mine or the boy’s of Chi Phi’s place to tell a woman where the line is drawn beyond which she can’t get drunk, high or have sex with as many people as she wants. This doesn’t mean she wasn’t sexually assaulted, even raped, that night. I wasn’t there and I have no clue what really happened. I know what people are saying, but post hoc talk is cheap and rarely reliable.

But condemning the male students for falling short of David’s version of morality for not being Jane Doe’s savior is no more valid than condemning Jane Doe for being a slut. While the law seeks to draw bright lines, morality is squishy enough to lay blame on whichever side you prefer. This might be good enough for church, twitter or the New York Times, but not for me.