~Ban siring bastards!~

But in political opinions likely to go anywhere -

"I don't see that we need to ban telling people to have sex with you if you're not someone whose word carries force of law. If you tell someone to have sex with you, and they say 'no, fuck you', then either they stop, and we have no problem, or they resort to rape, which we have already made illegal."

"Well, if they're a wizard they can ensorcel you."

"I don't think it should be illegal for powerful wizards to visit brothels. There's a difference between paying someone to have sex with you and ordering them to have sex with you, just like there's a difference between a powerful wizard saying 'I'll give you a silver for a copy of your committee notes' and the same wizard saying 'you have to give me the committee notes or else.'

"I think— if a powerful wizard goes up to a girl and says 'you have to have sex with me or else' she's not usually going to be thinking 'well, if I tell him no and he makes me do it anyway, that'll be rape, so I'll tell him no and he'll leave me alone.' She's going to be thinking 'I have to let him or he'll kill me.' Even if we make it illegal for him to order her she'll probably still be thinking that, but at least we'll be able to do something about him afterwards, and if we say it's not allowed then wizards might be less likely to try in the first place.

Probably some girls will still think 'I have to let him or he'll kill me' even if he doesn't order them at all, but I don't know a good way to stop that from happening."

"....this is all true, but we can't ban implied threats. As a practical matter, you can argue anything is an implied threat. We can ban ensorcelling people. Probably."

"I agree. If a man attempts to use threats of force to coerce a woman into sleeping with him, that should still be outlawed."

"I think— if a powerful wizard says 'have sex with me or else,' that's not really an implied threat, no one wouldn't think it was a threat. ...how hard is it for powerful wizards to fool truth magic? Delegate Ibarra said he could do it but I don't know if that was a him thing or an everyone thing."

"To fool Abadar's Truthtelling? Practically impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if he was bluffing."

“It’s not always violence or the force of law, though. There’s…” a pause to figure out how to say it, “Rich man hires a servant, buys an indenture with debt. Even if there’s no law saying she can’t refuse, it’s hard to stay an honest woman.”

”I don’t know if we can stop all that with a right. But I heard Lastwall has something about how you can’t have sex with anyone you’re in a position to give orders to, so maybe it can work?”

No one ask how he knows this random fact about Lastwall government, when he’s never as much as left his county before. A certain smuggling operation by the church of Shelyn is to blame for that detail being common knowledge. 

ABSOLUTELY NOT

Hmm, how to phrase this diplomatically...

"Well, if a girl says under Abadar's Truthtelling 'I thought he would kill me if I refused him,' and the powerful wizard can't say 'I didn't mean to threaten her,' then I think that regardless of what he did, it's not the sort of thing that should be allowed. But I don't think there are that many priests of Abadar so I don't think that would work for the whole country."

"What's the matter with marriage and, if you've really got to have it, a carveout for prostitutes in particular?"

" - wait, wait, wait, you can't have criminal penalties for making someone think you're going to kill them. I'm fine with the ban on explicit threats if the Archduke thinks it's workable."

"- You really can't," he says, agreeing with Korva. "A ban on explicit threats is practical. A matter of 'felt threatened' makes it impossible to draw a line between the legal and the illegal that a judge can rule on, even with knowledge of all the facts of the case."

"—just for clarity, if a powerful wizard that you know could definitely kill you says 'you have to have sex with me or else,' are you counting that as an explicit threat or an implicit threat?"

(The problem with limiting it to marriage is that he is sleeping with seven different adventurers, two of them female, whenever they happen to be in town and they both have time free. People who don't try to do interesting things aren't attractive, and people who do don't want to settle down.)

”I thought powerful wizards only have kids when they want to, so usually what they do doesn’t count as sex?”

"Sower, I think a ban on siring children outside marriage would cut to the heart of many of Cheliax's problems. But you'll never get it past that floor."

- wait, what the fuck, Enric? "- you can. Have sex that doesn't produce children. Though."

"That doesn't, sure, but that can't?"

"I think that if a powerful wizard forces himself on a girl, he's mistreating her even if he uses magic to make it so he can't get her pregnant!"

"Yes, that can't! Do we really have to define - "

"I agree that he is," Xavier agrees with Victoria. "Also, only female wizards don't conceive if they don't want to. Male wizards don't have the same advantage."

“It’s wrong to mistreat anyone, but we’re talking about a different thing if it’s not going to leave bastards or make it harder to get married after, or all those problems.”

The policy of ‘if a powerful wizard passing through  makes it happen, then it doesn’t count’ may also be tangled up in the fact that powerful wizards are a thing that just happens. Better for everyone if it’s agreed that you should just say there’s no consequence and it didn’t count. 

If it turns out that powerful wizards who are in the form of men do leave bastards, just like the fey sometimes do… okay that might explain some things about some people. 

"Okay, Ferrer is right. These are at least two different conversations. Porras, I have no idea what definition you're using and was certainly not imagining that when we voted to outlaw rape we were only outlawing forcing a woman to conceive. If those were the same thing I wouldn't have listed them separately. Also the wording literally includes men, so it's obviously not just about children."

"—also, if a woman hasn't started bleeding yet, it's still wrong to force yourself on her."

"Yes, yes it is."