Minutes before the wedding in the movie The Philadelphia Story, the groom, George Kittredge (John Howard), accuses the bride, Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn), of having an “affair.” Angered by Kittredge’s accusation, Macaulay Conner (Jimmy Stewart), the other half of the assumed tryst, speaks up, “Kittredge, it may interest you to know that the so-called ‘affair’ consisted of exactly two kisses and a rather late swim…. After which I deposited Tracy on her bed in her room….”

Tracy, who had been roaring drunk and remembers nothing, responds to Conner with anger: “Why? Was I so unattractive, so distant, so forbidding, or something?”

“You were extremely attractive,” Conner assures her, “and as for distant and forbidding, on the contrary. But you also were a little the worse — or the better — for wine, and there are rules about that.”

Rules? What rules? Federal? State? Local? No, no, and no. There are rules dictated by virtue that every gentlemen knows without having to be told. It’s virtue — things like prudence, temperance and chastity — that would not let Conner take advantage of Tracy when she was “a little the worse — or better — for wine.” A gentleman does not take advantage of a woman and a lady does not take advantage of a man.

I’ve thought of that scene from The Philadelphia Story every time I’ve read about the sexual abuse “epidemic” on college campuses. On campuses today gentlemen and ladies are apparently in very short supply, virtue is sneered at and therefore almost nonexistent, and, as a result, sexual freedom has become the breeding ground for tyranny.

“Yes means yes,” sounds like a reasonable standard when it comes to sex. California and New York find it so reasonable that they now have laws mandating “yes means yes” on all college and university campuses.

On the one hand, you can’t blame them. Stories of drunken women (and occasionally men) being taken advantage of calls for some kind of action.

On the other hand, what this rule means in practice (the place where “reasonable” is no longer the best adjective) is, as Ashe Schow writes in the Washington Examiner, “before every escalation of a sexual encounter, clear and convincing consent must be given.”

Pointing out the obvious, he goes on, “No one actually has sex this way, requesting permission and having it granted perhaps a dozen times in a single encounter.” Beyond that, he notes, “By this definition, millions of Americans — perhaps almost all sexually active people — become offenders.”

To mitigate this, “Consent Contract Cards” are now available from Affirmative Consent for those occasions “When Relative Strangers Become Intimate Partners.” “YES! We agree to have SEX!” the cards announce in red letters, instructing at least half of the happy couple, “Take a picture of you and your partner together holding this contract.”

Well, maybe. But what if one partner would rather the event not be memorialized? And who’s to say one party isn’t too drunk to know what was going on? What if the initial “Yes” that went with smiling for the camera later becomes mere acquiescence (not a “Yes” even if it’s not a “No)? In nearly all cases, there are no witnesses to any agreements. Accusations of abuse will nearly always be he-said/she-said with, in the current atmosphere, the accused party assumed guilty unless proven innocent. And good luck proving innocence.

He-said/she-said situations are bound to crop up due to the heavy drinking that often accompanies campus sex, to anger and revenge if someone is scorned, or to simple forgetfulness in the heat of passion.

Even worse, as columnist Heather Wilhelm notes, “Yes means yes” policies carry three false and dangerous assumptions. They “imply that it is normal, healthy, and a good idea to have sex with complete strangers,” “that it is normal and healthy to have sex with people you don’t trust,” and “through its list of rules, prescriptions, and penalties, that sex is a clinical experience; that it is perfunctory, mechanical, and best overseen by bureaucrats.”

Sad to say, without virtue, bureaucrats are probably the last best hope.

Perhaps there’s a better way.

One obvious better way is to refrain from sex until marriage. Crazy as it sounds, keeping sex inside the covenant of marriage has some surprising advantages. It’s not sex with a complete stranger. Before getting married spouses should already know and trust each other a great deal. As a result, sex won’t require “Consent Contract Cards,” bureaucrats, state legislatures, or other manifestations of Big Brother invading our bedrooms.

But even marriage won’t fix the damage without virtue. Without virtue all we’re left with are rules and regulations that turn sexual liberation into government regulated tyranny.

The alternative is virtuous ladies and gentlemen, people like Macaulay Conner who know instinctively that “there are rules” and who obey them.