The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Evanescent Youth, Predatory Persistence

Posted on | June 29, 2013 | 152 Comments

“Now there is what appears to be a concerted effort to lower, or even obliterate, the age of consent; but I suspect the culprits engaged therein are less interested in long-term relationships — children eventually grow up, after all — than in simply getting their hands into some poor kid’s Garanimals.”
— Charles G. Hill, Dustbury.com

Our friend Mr. Hill has zeroed in on exactly the problem with this particular perversity. Pedophilia is the fetishization of youth, wherein a person is persistently obsessed with sexual objects of a certain age. This dehumanizes the object of the obsession, and is the opposite of the “one life, one wife” permanent pair-bonding that is the social ideal.

Because youth does not last, neither can the “relationship” between the pedophile and his prey. One may point to the unusual exception: After her release from prison in 2005, Mary Kay LeTourneau married Vili Fualaau, with whom she began her involvement when he was a 13-year-old middle schooler and she was his 34-year-old teacher.

Mary Kay LeTourneau in court, 1998.

But this merely highlights how such relationships transgress the lifelong pair-bonding norm: First, LeTourneau abandoned her husband and four children to pursue this relationship and, second, she is now 51 and her second husband (the father of her two youngest children) is 30. How much longer may we expect this fellow in the prime of life to remain a devoted husband to his elderly wife?

If the LeTourneau case is exceptional in many ways, nevertheless it is typical in others. The adult who pursues illegal sex with minors is always — invariably — a troubled personality, either (a) the maladapted misfit unable to find a satisfactory and enduring adult relationship, or else (b) a sort of sexual opportunist seeking a new thrill to relieve the boredom or soothe the disappointments of adult life.

Some who have been more sympathetic to LeTourneau have pointed to problems in her marriage to Steve LeTourneau, seeing her as the victim of domestic abuse. And while this background may to some extent explain LeTourneau’s problems, it cannot excuse her illegal actions because if we were to accept such an excuse even once, no student would be safe from the predatory sexual interest of any teacher discontented with the quality of their adult relationships.

“Your honor, my client ‘s wife is a nagging bitch, so you
can’t blame him for boning that 15-year-old.
And, hey, it was consensual.”

This commonly heard rationalization, that illegal sex with minors is not really a crime when it is “consensual,” is invalid because (a) it ignores every advantage that the older offender may employ to obtaining such illegal consent, and (b) it ignores the fact that young people are not competent judges of their own best interests.

Point (b) is something that every responsible parent understands. If I were to let my children do whatever pleases them, they would never do anything except watch TV and play video games. Some children are more mature and responsible than others, but their superior qualities cannot be used as evidence against them, as it were, to argue that they should be treated as sexual “fair game.”

“Your honor, the alleged victim is fully developed —
just look at the rack on her, will ya? — and she’s so
emotionally mature that it was only natural she
wanted to get naked with her sophomore gym teacher.
Like I said, it was consensual.”

All age-of-consent laws are to some extent arbitrary: One day a young person is jailbait — off-limits, taboo, the Forbidden Fruit — and then they hit the Magic Birthday where they can legally do anything they want (consensually) with any of their fellow adults. Police, prosecutors, judges and juries may in every case use their discretion in regard to the enforcement of these laws, considering all circumstances in determining how severely any specific infraction should be punished.

One summer day in 1974, I arrived at high school band camp to find all my hoodlum buddies in the trombone section abuzz with the excitement provoked by a certain freshman majorette. Tanned and brunette, with high cheekbones and the brilliant white smile of a carnivore, Sally on that hot Georgia day wore pink short-shorts tightly encasing a pelvis that was a casus belli — hips to kill or die for — and she had legs of perfection beyond the power of mere words to describe. Completing her ensemble of adolescent irresistibility, Sally wore a tight white midriff top, exposing her lean abdomen and emphasizing the pert firmness of her breasts.

Nearly four decades later, that splendid vision remains embedded in my neural cortex, and I doubt any other alumnus of the 1974 Douglas County High School Marching Tiger Band can say he’s ever forgotten what Sally looked like that August day. Her smile so bright, her body so temptingly lithe — oh, every male within eyesight of Sally the Freshman Majorette must have struggled to restrain his inner pirate: “Arggh, what a comely young wench you are! You will be mine!”

Sally was eventually wooed and won by our band’s drum major, a former trumpet section leader who was a senior that year, and the last I heard they were still married. I invoke the vision of Sally her first day at band camp — when all the guys were asking each other, “Who the hell is that chick in the pink hot pants?” — to say that there are entirely understandable urges which the law nonetheless requires us to resist.

Dude, the Pope would have hit that.

Like a diesel locomotive at full throttle on a downhill grade.

Why Do You Think They Call It ‘Jailbait’?

It may therefore seem unnatural for the law to place such a precocious specimen of nubile perfection entirely off-limits to the universe of men who could not help but desire Sally in her short-shorts. And if you think I’m exaggerating, you obviously weren’t there in August 1974.

What the law prohibits, however, it prohibits for a reason and, while certain of these prohibitions may seem unfair or illogical, our imaginations are not always far-reaching enough to perceive the potential consequences of changing or abolishing these laws.

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”
— Dave Wooderson, Dazed and Confused (1993)

Not much imagination is necessary to the common-sense understanding that if there are no laws against having sex with 14-year-olds, the Dave Woodersons of the world will run amok. Therefore any appeal for leniency in the enforcement of these laws must be balanced against the consideration of what might result if such leniency became customary, and young adults banging jailbait could be confident that, even if they got caught, they most likely would be let off with a trifling punishment.

Indeed, the culture of the 1970s portrayed in Dazed and Confused — where Dave Wooderson’s hoodlum life involved a seemingly infinite parade of hot-to-trot high-school girls — was a very real phenomenon. Hoodlums in that era had more fear of the cops catching them with a bag of weed than with a 15-year-old girlfriend. If the prosecution of such crimes has become more severe in recent decades, this is not merely a “backlash” of the legal pendulum swinging away from permissiveness, but rather a sober and realistic recognition of the dangers that can result from failing to be vigilant in the protection of youth.

And it is this actual knowledge, I believe, that caused such an alarm when the “Free Kate” movement sprang forth with its arguments for non-enforcement of Florida law on the basis of “rights,” a nationwide crusade portraying Kaitlyn Hunt as a victim of homophobic discrimination.

“Wait just a minute here,” said every adult with enough sense to tie their own shoes. “Are you trying to tell me that prosecution under this law — which makes it a felony for anyone 18 or older to have sex with anyone 15 or younger — is invalid because some perpetrators might be gay?”

Liberals Now Arguing for a Lesbian’s Right
to Have Sex With a 14-Year-Old Girl

That was my first headline on May 22 about the Kaitlyn Hunt saga and, no matter how many evasions and justifications the “Free Kate” mob has offered during the past five weeks, they cannot escape the basic reality that they are trying to make homosexuality a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” for sex offenders, as Matthew Philbin said. Nor can the “Free Kate” mob deny that, should they succeed in thwarting the prosecution on such a basis, it would have the effect of voiding the age-of-consent law in Florida for everyone — male or female, gay or straight.

Some of them are even honest enough to admit this:

“Get rid of numerical age of consent laws. … Get rid of arbitrary numbers. No one should have to do math to love another person.”

Dave Wooderson never had it so good, man.

Caution Lights on the Road to Sexual Anarchy

We have been told by the apologists for Kaitlyn Hunt that consensual sex between an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old can never be wrong and, even if the 14-year-old’s parents disapprove, the law that makes these acts felonious is inherently unjust because it was all just an innocent “high school romance” and anyone who disapproves is a bigoted hateful hater.

OK, suppose we stipulate this. If we cannot draw the legal line at 14, what’s to prevent the goalposts from being shoved back to 13 and let Joshua Measroch argue that he is likewise being unfairly persecuted by hateful haters? And then once you say 13-year-olds are fair game, who will say that a 12-year-old should be off-limits to Omar Abdelbadie?

She was “dressed provocatively,” you hateful haters.

Perhaps you can describe a logical stopping point on the road to absolute Sexual Anarchy, but if these perverts don’t respect the laws we have now — and authorities say they have evidence that Kaitlyn Hunt knew it was wrong for her to have sex with a 14-year-old — why do you think they’ll respect your “reformed” age of consent?

Those who in all seriousness compare accused sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt to Rosa Parks, thus portraying her as a heroic activist, would have us believe that fingering a 14-year-old in a school restroom toilet stall is an act of civil disobedience against unjust laws. And the manifestation of this Jailbait Rights Movement has been actively applauded by the political Left. Kate Hunt’s affair with a 14-year-old was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union as “behavior that is both fairly innocuous and extremely common.” The gay-rights group Equality Florida demanded that prosecutors “drop felony charges” against Kaitlyn Hunt, describing her case as “an outrageous misapplication of the law.”

So if your 14-year-old daughter runs away from home to spend the night playing Spin the Dildo with an 18-year-old lesbian . . .

But is Kaitlyn Hunt a lesbian or an opportunistic sexual outlaw?

Her own mother says that, until Saint Kate of the Blessed Finger became involved with this 14-year-old girl, Kaitlyn had “always dated boys.” Indeed, one of her classmates at Sebastian River High School asserted that Kaitlyn Hunt was so enthusiastically heterosexual as to be “known as a whore throughout the school.” Isn’t there something weird about this? As I wrote on May 27:

So . . . precious Kate was a happy, popular heterosexual until her senior year in high school, when she met this irresistibly hot freshman girl and — boom! —  Instant Lesbian.

At that point, I had no idea what the younger girl looked like, but I’ve since seen photos and she’s a nerdy-looking kid with glasses.

While it is unwise to judge a book by its cover, it’s extremely difficult to imagine anyone looking at that awkward geek-girl and thinking, “Wow, that’s some smokin’ hot lesbian action there.”

Sally the Freshman Majorette, she was not.

Exactly why this 14-year-old became the sapphic inamorata of Kaitlyn Hunt, who according to her mother had hitherto been entirely straight, is something the “Free Kate” crowd has never bothered to explain. This mystery — Sudden Onset Jailbait Lesbian Syndrome — has provoked speculation by sex-abuse survivor S.J. Reidhead. And one wonders what therapeutic experts might say about the impulsive personality that swerves so inexplicably from heterosexual promiscuity to a helpless craving for underage geek girls.

Allegedly, I hasten to add, even though the arrest affidavit says Kaitlyn admitted her crimes and her defense does not argue she didn’t do the deed, only that her crimes aren’t really criminal.

‘Send an Innocent Young Girl to Prison’

Kaitlyn Hunt’s defenders say it is wrong to describe her as a “predator” or a “pedophile.” Certainly no one can presume to know, absent further evidence, whether she has any persistently perverse tendency that would make her likely to re-offend in the future. Such judgments are best left to those most familiar with the case, rather than debated among strangers who only know of this situation what they read on the Internet. Yet we have been confronted with a crusading movement on Kaitly Hunt’s behalf and it is this movement — which aims to prevent the enforcement of Florida law — that commands our critical scrutiny.

In seeking public support, the “Free Kate” movement condemned in no uncertain terms the parents of the 14-year-old girl who called this case to the attention of authorities in Indian River County, Florida. Nine times in her May 17 Facebook post, Kaitlyn Hunt’s mother Kelley Hunt Smith named those parents, accusing them of  “vengeance,” saying they “were out to destroy my daughter” because they “are bigoted, religious zealots.” The younger girl’s parents “fought dirty,” Kaitlyn’s mother said, and “are trying to ruin my daughter’s life . . . trying to send an innocent young girl to prison because they are full of hate and bigotry.”

On and on it went for 1,500 words. Nothing that Kaitlyn Hunt did was wrong, her mother said: “They are teenagers in high school experimenting with their sexuality, all teens do it in one form or another. They are teens, it’s healthy and normal.” It was a “mutual consenting sexual experience,” Kelley Hunt Smith said. The real problem, she said, was the attitude of the younger girl’s parents:

“Her parents can play the ‘victims’ and ruin my daughters life. … These people’s delusional stand, their hate and bigotry is tearing our daughter apart.”

And just to make sure that everyone reading her Facebook post knew who to blame, Kaitlyn’s mother named these parents nine times.

The Kaitlyn Hunt sex crime case was featured on NBC’s ‘Today’ show, May 23

Most people would be content to have had Kaitlyn Hunt’s case remain strictly a local law-enforcement matter, but on the basis of her mother’s Facebook rant, instead it became a national movement, part of what Charles Hill calls “a concerted effort to lower, or even obliterate, the age of consent,” and some of her supporters are only interested in “getting their hands into some poor kid’s Garanimals.”

We may recognize a difference between the two phenomena, but the rationalizations that true pedophiles offer for their criminal acts are not really all that different. Lifelong perverts engage in the same patterns: Minimizing their crimes as essentially harmless, claiming that they are misunderstood and unjustly persecuted, and asserting that their victims weren’t really victims at all, but willing participants who actually enjoyed having sex with the pervert.

“Your honor, this so-called ‘victim’ is very mature for a fifth-grader.
He has admitted he wanted to help my client find his lost puppy.
Why else would he get in the van? Obviously, it was consensual.”

As ridiculous as such an argument sounds, how much further down the slippery slope do we have to slide if now parents can be denounced as “full of hate and bigotry” simply because they expect the law to protect their daughter against the Hunt family’s weird ideas about what is “healthy and normal” for 14-year-olds to do?

[The 14-year-old] ran away from home to spend the night [of Jan. 4] in Kaitlyn’s bedroom where, to quote the affidavit by Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy Shepherd, the two girls “put their fingers inside of each other’s vaginas, put their mouths on each other’s vaginas, and both of them used a vibrator on each other to insert it in each other’s vaginas.”

Happy 14th Birthday! (Batteries not included.)

Having been a sophomore trombonist that day when Sally the Freshman Majorette arrived at band camp, I certainly cannot be accused of lacking empathy with hormone-crazed teenagers. But parents have an obligation to protect their kids from corrupting influences, and shouldn’t the law side with parental protection rather than with those who make excuses for corrupting influences?

Can any rational person accept the claims that this behavior is so “innocuous” and “common” that it is “outrageous” to enforce the law?

It doesn’t matter whether we approve or disapprove or, in my case, are utterly mystified by Kaitlyn Hunt’s peculiar interests. Maybe there is a lesbian geek-girl fad in Indian River County that is as unfathomable to me as the fashions of 1974 would be to any teenager today.

Similarly, I cannot explain why Mary Kay LeTourneau, at age 34, suddenly developed an insatiable appetite for 13-year-old boyflesh. Or why Elizabeth Miklosovic wanted a seventh-grade pagan child-bride.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Nevertheless, without being unfashionably judgmental of these, uh, “fairly innocuous” preferences, the law does not punish desire or affection. Despite the claim by Kaitlyn Hunt’s father that his daughter faces prison for a mere “high school romance,” even in Florida the law does not criminalize poetry or long walks in the moonlight.

It was not her sentiments but her actions for which Kaitlyn was arrested. Shall we quote the famous words of a film director?

“Judges want to f–k young girls. Juries want to f–k young girls. Everyone wants to f–k young girls!”
— Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski is considered a “creative genius” in France, but the last time I checked, Indian River County is not in France, and Kaitlyn Hunt should have taken the plea bargain.

 

Category: Crime, Culture, Kaitlyn Hunt, Sex

Comments

152 Responses to “Evanescent Youth, Predatory Persistence”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 4:11 pm

    And the problem is???…

  2. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 4:14 pm

    They should be in most cases. For what is the Law but a Society’s expression of what they believe is Good and what they believe is Evil. Look to the laws of a country and you will see what they value as Virtue [Sharia demonstrates that Muslims are alien to Western Civilization and, therfore, can never reconcile with it].

  3. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 4:15 pm

    Yup.

  4. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 4:19 pm

    Well, since I’m fifty-one, I guess that makes me [and Stacy who is several years older] elderly. Can I retire now and enjoy the few years I have left [er, Right]???

  5. Adjoran
    June 30th, 2013 @ 4:47 pm

    When parents supervised their children’s activities more closely, and even teens had some sense of moral values that were there and unchanging, and school nurses didn’t hand out condoms, and young men needed to get married to be sure of sex with some regularity without risking diseases that could make their equipment turn green and fall off, well, things were different.

    Some might even say, better.

    But we certainly didn’t have so many colorful parades.

  6. Quartermaster
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:15 pm

    Yeppers! That’s the next step since SCOTUS has legitimized itself and rule of law is no more.

  7. Quartermaster
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:16 pm

    Anyone who says you can’t legislate morality knows nothing of the law or how it originates.

  8. Proof
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:17 pm

    Make him apologize! And if he doesn’t, give him such a paper cut with your AARP card!

  9. Quartermaster
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:18 pm

    That’s a pretty mild take on what Jerry has had to say.

  10. Quartermaster
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:23 pm

    You know I’ve warned you about the effects of alcohol deprivation before. Go to your room and remedy the malady forthwith!

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:30 pm

    Remember the Mummers!

  12. NeoWayland
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:32 pm

    No, they should not.

    Societies work best when the moral and legal authorities are separate. And competing.

    Besides the examples I gave, here’s a couple that are happening right now.

    The anthropomorphic climate change movement claims that humans are screwing up the climate, but the computer models they use don’t predict the future. None the less, they’re trying to force their particular morality on everyone through law. And by the way, You Aren’t Allowed to Question the Science.

    Our Imperious Leader decided that everyone in this country should have health care run and directly supervised by the Federal government. Never mind that for most people, costs would go way up and it would be much harder to find a doctor.

    Of course we all know how well legislating morality worked during Prohibition.

  13. Eric Popoff
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:34 pm

    outstanding!

  14. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:36 pm

    Well said Adjoran.

    Of course we have a perverse mix of micromanaging helicopter parents micro-managing their children and then clueless monitoring of teenagers.

  15. Day Of The Leftists | The Camp Of The Saints
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:38 pm

    […] the Comments section of a brilliant essay by Stacy McCain, entitled Evanescent Youth, Predatory Persistence,[which I hope to comment upon in a future post, interferences from RealWorld™ permitting], reader […]

  16. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 5:40 pm

    I will the Evening of 04 July as I sing songs from 1776.

  17. Matthew W
    June 30th, 2013 @ 6:22 pm

    No problem at all.
    But he should finish the letter.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 6:24 pm

    Good point.

  19. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 6:26 pm

    ‘AARP’?!? – why, I’m surprised at you, Proof! AMAC!

    http://amac.us/

  20. Proof
    June 30th, 2013 @ 6:36 pm

    I know! I wuz just yanking your chain!

  21. Richard McEnroe
    June 30th, 2013 @ 6:44 pm

    Sit down, Bob!
    Sit down, Bob!
    For God’s sake, Bob, sit down!

  22. Becca Lower
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:02 pm

    He’s more of a Richard Henry Lee than a John Adams, IMHO. 😉

  23. Pathfinder's wife
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:09 pm

    Anymore, the “adults” act worse than toddlers with their desire to have every wish fulfilled — as this sordid affair illustrates (we could allow children more freedoms in the days when the majority of adults could be trusted to behave properly around them, or at least had a modicum of that assurance; now, children are overly sheltered in large part because adults cannot be trusted). In light of that, there really isn’t much to respect any more, is there?

  24. Pathfinder's wife
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:15 pm

    Personally I think what might have started out as a victimized young girl who became very troubled as the result (and this may have been from something so seemingly “innocent” as her idiot parents providing no moral/ethical filter to her life, no direction but misdirection — children who have been given the wrong sort of “leniency”/neglect can often be the ones most filled with rage as adults, and thus the most dangerous to themselves and others), has now morphed into a monster. It would be nice to believe that she can be redeemed, but, well, better safe than sorry in regards to turning her loose (even with the puppy!).

  25. Pathfinder's wife
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:25 pm

    So I guess I should have clarified: I believe that her thoughts are most definitely malicious. I don’t believe, from what I can gather, that she started out this way in life; it is very sad that whatever factor(s) turned her happened. But no, at this point she is incredibly malignant — and it is very much a pity.

  26. Pathfinder's wife
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:34 pm

    Well unfortunately due to an overall disregard for anything but their own wish fulfillment and a staggering lack of any common sense/critical faculty, we adults have allowed such affairs to come to pass.

    Some of those Amish raw milk guys are on the up and up, but some of them…ah, let’s just say I would be careful where I bought my raw milk from (very, very careful) [I live next door to an Amish community — it’s a well known fact that you need to be in the know prior to buying from them; unless of course you like playing Russian roulette with E. coli and other nasty nasties]. As a person who grew up milking a cow and goats I honestly can’t understand this fad for raw milk (even with the best sanitation precautions, well, stuff can sometimes get in there that you wouldn’t necessarily want to drink — we always pasteurized ours).
    Thanks to some problems the good ones end up being shut down with the bad ones — and in a sense is all part of the same with child molesting teachers when you think about it. —

  27. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:36 pm

    I identify with the John Adams character, as I’m obnoxious and disliked – that cannot be denied.

  28. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:39 pm

    Name one country where the Law and Morality have been separate – perhaps in the mind of an Ideologue.

  29. Bob Belvedere
    June 30th, 2013 @ 7:41 pm

    Ahhhh…so we should call you ‘Poof’ instead of ‘Proof’?

  30. NeoWayland
    June 30th, 2013 @ 8:16 pm

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

  31. NeoWayland
    June 30th, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    That’s just the most famous American example.

    Moral authority is not the same as legal authority. When the two are separate, moral authority keeps legal authority in check.

    When the two are unified, tyranny inevitably follows.

  32. postaldog
    June 30th, 2013 @ 8:50 pm

    Not to agree with what Kaitlyn’s father said, but considering the condition of Florida’s school system, asking kids to be able to do math before falling in love probably is a bit unfair.

  33. Becca Lower
    June 30th, 2013 @ 9:09 pm

    Oh, Mr. Belvedere, you are driving me to homicide!

  34. Freddy At Night
    June 30th, 2013 @ 10:40 pm

    Some of the motivation for homosexuals to gravitate toward much younger partners may have a lot to do with the unequal mix of potentially compatible partners within the adult homosexual community…

    It’s not a 50/50 mix demographically out there, and hear tell most homosexuals are not “versatile” (willing and able to assume either the “active” or “passive role in a tryst) and that there is a relative dearth of suitable “submissives” on the market. So the incentive is there for homosexuals to seek in the naivety, pliability, the social subservience of youth what they cannot find among their peers…

    Additionally, the wide range of common

    For homosexual men, the allure of a disease-free buggery partner who isn’t a shagged out whore may be also be a motivating factor!

    Just sayin’…

  35. Adjoran
    July 1st, 2013 @ 12:56 am

    There is no possible benefit to consuming raw milk. It’s just nutty.

    But I’m fine with letting people take risks – as long as their idiocy doesn’t make my taxes or insurance rates go up. So I want to see their financials, to know they can cover their medical bills and have provided for the care of their dependents without public assistance should they die or become incapacitated.

    Because if I have to pay for it, it IS my business.

  36. sjreidhead
    July 1st, 2013 @ 9:00 am

    I know this isn’t politically correct, but I’ve noticed with some people who have that ‘crazy’ eye stare, usually are a little nuts, to be kind. It’s almost a character trait I like to remember when doing fiction. I suspect we’re eventually going to discover that she’s disturbed enough to need treatment. If not, I have a bad feeling she’s going to harm either herself or someone else.

    SJR

  37. Wombat_socho
    July 1st, 2013 @ 9:30 am

    Well, if I tell them EVERYTHING then they won’t go read his blog for themselves, and I wouldn’t deny them that pleasure.

  38. Wombat_socho
    July 1st, 2013 @ 9:31 am

    McCarty’s never sent me any Rule 5 links, so he’s obviously not on the ball. 😉

  39. robertstacymccain
    July 1st, 2013 @ 10:25 am

    I’m 53. And the point is the same: Suppose that some lovestruck (and arguably insane) 19-year-old threw herself at me. Even if she found the 53-year-old me irresistible (and remember, she’s crazy), what about when I’m 63 and she’s 29? The implausibility of this becoming an enduring relationship would argue against it, even if I weren’t happily married to a wonderful woman who would kill me and also kill any crazy 19-year-old she caught me with.

  40. robertstacymccain
    July 1st, 2013 @ 10:35 am

    What part of “jailbait” is so hard to understand, Keith? Statutory age-of-consent is not a closely guarded secret in Florida or anywhere else and, as the sheriff has said, Kaitlyn indicated in online communications with the younger girl that she knew she’d get in trouble if they were caught.

    Everybody knows this stuff happens anyway — guys 18 or 19 with girls 14 or 15 is not so rare that we are shocked by it — but the “not-getting-caught” part of such relationships doesn’t mean that, when they do get caught, the perps shouldn’t face serious consequences. Lots of car thieves and burglars get away with their crimes, too, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t imprison the car thieves and burglars we catch.

  41. robertstacymccain
    July 1st, 2013 @ 10:37 am

    Thanks for that perspective, Andrew. My wife is more than 4 years younger than me. But we didn’t meet until I was 28 and she was 23.

  42. robertstacymccain
    July 1st, 2013 @ 10:39 am

    I know a mother who lost custody of her kids because she was a topless dancer.

    A popular redneck bumper sticker shows a silhouette of a stripper on a dance pole with the motto: “I support single mothers.”

  43. robertstacymccain
    July 1st, 2013 @ 10:46 am

    Thanks for reminding me of an early influence in the development of my distinctive prose style.

    😉

  44. Thomas L. Knapp
    July 1st, 2013 @ 11:50 am

    While the distinction between “child” and “adult” is real, the legal codification of that distinction is arbitrary, capricious, and pretty much drawn out of a hat.

    A century ago, it was not at all unusual for a 14-year-old to be married. In fact, when I was a kid, a lot of the 65-or-so-year-old ladies at the church my family attended were joyously celebrating their 50th anniversaries (or remembering them, if their husbands had already passed on).

    If you want a little Judeo-Christian footing, well, the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah ceremonies marking a Jewish person’s transition from childhood to adulthood take place at 13.

    These days, our kids are hitting biological maturity earlier than ever … and we’re attempting to keep them in diapers until they are 18, or even 21.

    Instead of drawing a number out of a hat, the question of whether a participant in formally consensual sex is competent to consent — i.e. whether that participant is a “child” or an “adult” — should be left to juries to decide after the parties have made their cases.

  45. Thomas L. Knapp
    July 1st, 2013 @ 11:53 am

    Well, you shouldn’t have to pay for it, period.

    As far as all the crap that you want because you’re afraid you’ll have to pay for it? People in hell want icewater, too.

  46. Keith_Vlasak
    July 1st, 2013 @ 12:23 pm

    Thank you for considering my comments and responding to them! When I was in high school (’65-’69) the prettiest/hottest girls in every class dated seniors (and that absolutely included freshman girls) … and I do seem to recall that in every instance the couple broke up sometime in the first year the guy was gone off to college (which is why I think the law should always take into account whether the perps are students together in the same peer pressure situation).

    One of my few close friends in high school told me (years back) that his son was picked up for underage drinking, and I pointed out how he and I and our other close friends did that from the time we were 16 … and he said, “Yeah–but we didn’t get caught!” That’s your point, right?

    Anyhow, I would disagree that two teenagers having sex is a crime equal to stealing a car or burglary, while admitting I could agree without reservation that an adult out of school, and therefore with an adult agenda (read as “perverted”) is a crime more serious than auto theft or burglary.

  47. Alias Clio
    July 1st, 2013 @ 2:27 pm

    Actually, there’s an answer rooted in Western social, sexual and fashion history, and it has nothing to do with fashion designers, capitalism, etc. Here goes: until the Enlightenment, most European cultures kept girls secluded and chaperoned until they reached marriageable age, at which time they were married off or sent to convents.

    The Enlightenment and Romantic eras both sought to help the young postpone the burden of adult sexuality, not to assume it as soon as possible. So began the glorification of childhood innocence, and encouraging the young to look childish and sexless for as long as possible. As a result, from the dawn of the Romantic era until the early 1960s, young girls were dressed like their little sisters but yearned to be old enough to wear adult clothes because these held the glamour of the sexually initiated woman.

    At one time, an adult (married) woman could tell herself, “Yes, that’s a beautiful teenager, but I’ve had sex, and she hasn’t. I’m sophisticated, and she’s not.” Hence the appeal of sophisticated clothes, including black, the garb of widows. They said “I’m experienced.”

    But with the introduction of the Pill, teenage girls could have sex and they did, in ever-increasing numbers. Thus the glamour of the sexual initiate was no longer attached only to fully adult women, and the natural sex appeal of youth reasserted itself in the sexual marketplace. Teenagers suddenly acquired sexual glamour (as distinct from sexual attractiveness, which they always had).

    That change is what led to all women wanting to look like teenagers for as long as possible, and beginning to dress like them in clothes that were deliberately designed to look good only on the most youthful figures. In the later 1960s, grown women wore KNEE-SOCKS with their minis, if you can believe it. It has only grown worse since then.

  48. In which I go all Val Kilmer on Stacy McCain | The Fog of Law
    July 1st, 2013 @ 3:47 pm

    […] – McCain, so fast to tell us that the sexes are different, you see, but who tries to describe the problem of Kaitlyn Hunt through the lens of a teenage boy.  Here, he implores us to not make baseless conjectures based on Hunt’s previous […]

  49. NeoWayland
    July 1st, 2013 @ 4:12 pm

    But if she were an underwear model it would be ok?

    That is my point. Morality is very subjective. The law should not be.

    There’s also the bit about which things should be laws and which should not, but this thread is already too long.

    I agree that Hunt’s behavior was illegal and her behavior afterwards is despicable. I just don’t think that “perversion” is the proper rule to judge her. The word is too slippery and too prone to misuse.

  50. Quartermaster
    July 2nd, 2013 @ 9:08 am

    Granted. It was just an offhand remark, and not criticism. I think most people could benefit from reading Jerry’s blog.