Vincent Gallo; Age of consent

First, the story which promted this post:

Vincent Gallo Laughs Off Underage Love

By WENN; Wednesday, October 25, 2006

HOLLYWOOD - Actor/director Vincent Gallo has laughed off reports he's dating an underage girl insisting it's his "humanitarian duty" to befriend the sexy teen. The Brown Bunny star, 45, has been romantically linked to Los Angeles socialite Cory Kennedy, with the 16-year-old boasting of their close relationship on her Internet blog. In it she hails Gallo as a “keeper" and posts photos of the pair together.

However, the actor insists their relationship isn't sexual and jokes he's merely following new mum Madonna's example by looking after the teen.

He tells PageSix.com, "With the psychotic, middle-aged Madonna out there on the loose buying up all the stolen Negro babies in Africa, I felt it my social and humanitarian duty to take in any young, beautiful and sexy orphaned Jew teens running wild in Beverly Hills.

"Cory's a great kid, and I'm proud to be her daddy."

Vincent Gallo--my favorite weirdo. I figure he's probably being truthful, though, based on stuff on Cory Kennedy's weblog. She's now calling herself "Cory Kennedy Gallo" on her myspace page. Teasing the gossip mongers, perhaps?

In any case, all they'd have to do is go over the state line to Nevada, and they could get it on all they wanted (again, assuming they actually want to get it on) with perfect legality, because the age of consent in Nevada is 16. They would have difficulty with "transporting minors over state lines" laws, though.

This brings to mind an interesting topic: The age of consent in most of the world actually ranges from 14 to 16--it's only in parts of America, and a few other countries where you find higher ages. I found an interesting map of this on Wikipedia: Age of Consent World Map. Notice the prevalance of medium blue (14) and green (16). Notice as well the comparative dearth of yellow (18), and other higher-age colors outside of the United States. The high-age-of-consent countries (17 and up) are so few in number, that it is actually possible to look at this larger map and create a list of them all: Mexico, Egypt, Uganda, Turkey, Vietnam, Iraq (currently under US control), Madagascar, Tunisia, Eritrea, UAE, Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti, Dominican Republic, one state in Australia, and portions of the United States. It's conceivable that this list could be memorized without too much trouble, even.

Other interesting things that I noticed include the fact that the higher-age areas in the U.S. are concentrated towards the west. I wonder why that is. I was also surprised to see that all the other major English-speaking countries are lower than the U.S.--Canada is 14, the U.K. is 16, and most of Australia is 16.

My view is that a sensible age of consent is in the 14-16 range. 18 is on the high side. Young people should be free to experiment, and that includes having the freedom to choose their partners without government interference. As for concerns about coercion, we have ordinary rape laws that could easily cover situations like that. This is not to say that all 14-16 year olds are ready for sex (I sure as hell was not), but, to be truthful, there are those who definitely are. Is it fair to them to force them to wait until their less precocious peers catch up?

[Note: I attempted to verify data from the Wikipedia map with data on the Age of Consent website, but that server doesn't seem to be responding today. Wikipedia lists it as a source, though, so I think I'm probably safe.]

Carey drops out; Miyagi campaign appears to be over

Well, here's some bummer news:

Marey Carey drops out of California governor's race to be with injured mom

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Porn star Mary Carey said on Monday she was dropping out of the California governor's race to be with her injured mother, who has been hospitalized in Florida since jumping off a four-story building last month.

Carey, who shot to worldwide fame with her quixotic gubernatorial campaign against
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, said her mother was in critical condition at a Ft. Lauderdale hospital and facing surgery.

"She's schizophrenic and didn't take her medication and jumped off a building," Carey said. "She broke both of her legs, shattered her feet and shattered four vertebrae in back. It's remarkable she survived."

The star of such adult film titles as "Boobsville Sorority Girls" and "Cheerleader School" was running as a write-in candidate in 2006 because she could not collect enough signatures to be on the November ballot.

Last week, Carey followed the lead of Schwarzenegger's Democratic challenger, state treasurer Phil Angelides, in demanding that NBC television host Jay Leno give her equal time on "The Tonight Show" following the governor's recent guest appearance on the program.

Leno did not extend an invitation to either Carey or Angelides.

Carey said she expected her mother, who did not suffer any head trauma or internal injuries in the fall, to recover from her injuries.

The porn star said she had not abandoned her political ambitions and was considering a move to Florida, to be near her mother and possibly run against Gov.
Jeb Bush.

"As much as I want to help the state of California be a better place, I think it is more important to be with my mom and help her," Carey said in an earlier written statement.

"I am only 26 and have many more years to be involved in politics, but right now I must be in Florida with my mom," Carey said. "For now I would just like to ask everyone to pray for a healthy recovery."

I don't pray, but I do wish her mother a good and speedy recovery. That's really unfortunate, what happened.

I'd love to see her run against Jeb Bush, though. However, I thought I heard that Bush was term limited, so maybe he can't run again. Not sure.

In light of this news, I suppose I should remove my Mary Carey endorsement link from the sidebar, but I really don't want to--I like her site too much. So, as long as the site remains as it is now, I'll leave the link up. Maybe I'll just move it down from endorsements to interesting links.

Meanwhile, there has been some news from the Mimi Miyagi campaign--her website doesn't mention much about a governor's race anymore, and it also mentions joining the Libertarian party in late August. So I guess that campaign is now kaput, too. She appears to still be politically active, though, so I guess I'll move that link down too.

The Foley Affair

Finally, somebody talks some sense on this whole Foley scandal. This comes from fellow blogger Chris Hall:

Mark Foley: Predator or Sleaze?

In particular, this statement echoes the one point about this whole thing that has bothered me the most:

I now see my fellow progressives gleefully exploiting the same puritan fears that the Republicans have grown fat and happy on.

Frankly, progressives should know better.

Hall also points out something that had escaped my attention, namely that, in Washington D.C., the age of consent is 16, so if Foley had actually had sex with his page, rather than just sending him lewd e-mails, there wouldn't be any problem. Oh, the irony.

My own view is that Foley would have been guilty of some pretty flagrant sexual harassment...except that most of the stuff people are complaining about happened after the pages were done, uh, paging. Furthermore, it's my opinion that the determination of sexual harassment should only be made by the person being harassed (or not), and the one page who seems to have had the most involvement in this doesn't seem to have minded it at all. Which means it really wasn't sexual harassment at all.

So what does that leave us with? An unforgiveable level of hypocrisy, for sure, but is that a crime? I must admit, though, that I am as amused as anyone that Foley is getting nailed by his own ridiculous law, that he himself worked to enact. And I am not complaining that the GOP is suffering because they tried to cover this up--we need those bastards out of office. But can we please not inflate this into an "Oh my god WE MUST SAVE THE POOR CHILDRIN FROM THE EVIL PEDOPHILES!!!" issue, since that's not what it really is? Red herrings are supposed to be the province of neo-conservatives, not progressives.