The court upheld a lower court's decision that the motion for dismissal could not be heard while Polanski was a fugitive. The decision criticized the director for fleeing the country in the first place, saying, "flight was not Polanski's only option. It was not even his best option." However, the court also found evidence of misconduct in Polanski's original 1977 trial under Judge Laurence J. Rittenband. They were especially concerned about allegations that prosecutor David Wells, who was not actually assigned to the case, had engaged in "backroom conversations" with Rittenband in which he encouraged a tougher sentence. Wells admitted to these conversations in the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which the court viewed as part of its deliberations, but later claimed he had lied in the film. In its decision, the court said,

If Wells's account is true, Judge Rittenband was ushered along a path of iniquity by an officer of the court with a personal axe to grind and no hesitation to engage in unethical ex parte communications and devise illegal, nonappealable sentences to circumvent the defendant's due process and sentencing rights.

Though the court rejected the dismissal motion, it offered other options for the resolution of the case that may be appealing to the Polanski camp. The decision stated, "Polanski is not without any remedy. He is only without the remedy that he prefers: complete release not only from any threat of future punishment, but also from the very charges themselves." The court has offered Polanski two choices to resolve his case: write a letter asking to be tried in absentia, or submit to extradition to the US for trial in person. The court has hinted that the latter would not result in an additional jail sentence.

These choices may not please Polanski's critics. Apparently addressing them, the court's decision said, "We exhort all participants in this extended drama to place the integrity of the criminal justice system above the desire to punish any one individual, whether for his offense or for his flight." One of the most unfortunate things about Polanski's case is that a heinous act will likely never get its proper punishment, in part because of possible misconduct by Wells and Rittenband, and in part because of the sheer passage of time that was the result of Polanski's flight. The court called for a swift resolution, saying, "The passage of more time before this case's final resolution will further hamper the search for truth and the delivery of any appropriate relief, and it will also prolong the agony that the lack of finality in this matter continues to cause Samantha Geimer." But the search for truth has already been hampered, and many have forgotten the real enormity of what Polanski did amid all the confounding factors that piled on afterwards. Polanski's case may be resolved in the next few months, but it's safe to say that justice will never really be done.

Court Deals Polanski A Setback [Wall Street Journal]
Polanski Dismissal Rejected; Misconduct Alleged [AP]
Polanski Exit Strategy Suggested By Court [LA Times]
Roman Polanski's Plea Rejected In Court [AP, via Independent]

In a routine Google of the Polanski case, prompted by Joe Mozingo's excellent recap in the L.A. Times, I came across a href="http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=299722">this website, which seems to esteem Polanski for his good work exposing black magic in the "docu-drama" Rosemary's Baby.

If it were not for Roman Polanski, the anti-satanic-cult movement would never have been started. Satanic Ritual Abuse would have gone unnoticed, and sources of satanism like Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons would be corrupting Christian children with impunity. Satanic Cults have tried to silence Roman Polanski before - the Charles Manson Family even tried to assasinate him, but only succeeded in murdering his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child....The Manson Family and his allies in the International Satanist Movement have struck again, framing Roman Polanski for the "statutory rape" of a 13-year old girl. This is a lie. ROMAN POLANSKI IS INNOCENT.

The incident began when Roman Polanski met Samantha Gailey. When he heard her name, pronounced "Samantha, Gay-ly" he would have concluded that she was a lesbian recruit, who needed to be recruited back to heterosexuality. Samantha Gaily, 13. In the 70's only lesbians wore jeans. Of course, to recruit her into hetrosexuality, he would have to lay with her. Yes, this is technically against secular law, however, THERE IS NO AGE OF CONSENT IN BIBLICAL LAW.

Get it? But that pesky secular law does tend to get in the way of this kind of selfless heroism. And as the LAT piece makes clear, it's even less ambiguous than we've been led to believe.

Samantha's testimony that day was unequivocal: She had kept trying to get away from him, putting her clothes back on, saying no repeatedly. She had made up a lie about having asthma to get out of a Jacuzzi. He persisted. She was scared. She did not physically fight him off. He began to have sex with her, then, concerned she might get pregnant, switched to anal sex. When he drove her home, he told her not to tell her mom, adding, "You know, when I first met you, I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you...Along the way, various people would scrub the core allegations into something more benign — a probation officer would deem the crime a "spontaneous" act of "poor judgment," a prison psychiatrist would call it "playful mutual eroticism."

Why didn't Polanski's camp just use the air-tight "devil-lesbian-conversion" defense? As Hollywood would surely agree, we have to get our priorities down. The man's doing God's work, people.

How A Girl's Stark Words Got Lost In The Polanski Spectacle [LA Times]

Although Emin does not see herself as a celebrity, she has become somewhat of a famous figure, even outside the art world. She has laid her life bare, exposed her history of abuse and depression within her art, which, coupled with her drunken appearance on live television, has made her into an attractive subject for scandalized discussion. But Emin still finds herself surprised when she is recognized on the street. She says,

"When people recognise me, they say strange things like, ‘I knew it couldn't be you'...

"But it is me. Anyway I'm not a celebrity I'm an artist. I do something. A lot of young people think fame is a shortcut to success. They forget that the footballer has been training since he was 11 or 12, and has given up so much to be in that position."

Although Emin has divulged much of her past willingly, her ex-boyfriend has decided to reveal a whole lot more, without Emin's consent. He is auctioning off some explicit letters she wrote to him as a young teen. "That's iffy, isn't it? Selling a 14-year-old girl's love letters?" she asks. "People say, 'Oh you put his name in the tent,' but it didn't say whether I'd slept with him and now that tent's burnt anyway." (The tent Emin is referring to was titled Everyone I've Ever Slept With, and embroidered with the names of everyone she had shared a bed with between 1963-1995, including her grandmother). As Emin points out, revealing the name of a 22-year-old man she slept with (in either sense of the phrase) at 14 is rather different from auctioning off the explicit thoughts of a troubled 14-year-old girl. "I was 14! What was he thinking? I was up for it but even so. Someone who is 19 got done the other day for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old," she added. Whether or not Emin was "up for it" at the time (or whether any 14-year-old can be "up for it"), the fact that the same man who took advantage of her at a very young age continues to exploit Emin over 30 years after the fact is disgusting. It also raises the question, once you open the door with confessional art or writing, is it possible to retain a sense of privacy?

Emin's interview touches on another issue that has been on her mind a lot lately: Children. Emin is 46, and she says she has finally come to terms with the fact that she will not have kids. "It has been really difficult," she says. "For the last few years, I've been secretly hopeful." She says part of the difficulty comes from societal pressures:

"As an older woman without children, society sees you as pretty redundant. Especially because you lose your looks.

"But you have to force yourself to think, ‘Maybe the mirror's not so important.' Rather than thinking, ‘I've got to get my breasts raised or get some Botox,' why not think, ‘I'm going to learn French'?

"I learned to drive last year. It was the best thing I've ever done in my life. And now I'm going to learn how to speak French."

To this, Mirror writer Miranda Sawyer writes, rather patronizingly, "I think Tracey needs to do less, not more." But Emin has no interest in slowing down. She has just released a new book, One Thousand Drawings, and will open a major show in New York in November, and contribute to two others in London. Whether she likes it or not, Emin is only growing more famous as her career rolls on. Hopefully no other assholes come out of the woodwork to exploit this fact.

Tracey Emin: Art's Wild Woman Opens Her Art About On Tough Life Experiences For Her Work [Mirror]

Related: Former "Enfant Terrible" Tracey Emin Opens New Show, Reveals Even More

• Church historian Mary Rubin argues in her new book that over the years, the image of the Virgin Mary has drastically changed. Although Mary was initially depicted as a "figure of immense solemnity," in the 11th and 12th century there was "an attempt to make Mary into the mother next door, not just the mother of Jesus in heaven, who cooks and does everything that mothers do." • After surviving an accident that killed her father, a brave 7-year-old drove the family's damaged car several miles to get help. Police say that alcohol was likely a factor in the crash. • Canadian prosecutors have dropped charges of attempted murder against a U.S. man believed to be involved in the slaying of several abortion doctors. James Kopp is currently serving a life sentence, plus 10 years, for the 1998 fatal shooting of a doctor who ran an abortion clinic. • Divorce lawyers and private detectives agree: GPS is a great tool for catching cheating spouses. • A new documentary, Pressure Cooker follows several high school students as they take high-stress cooking classes to prepare for the Culinary Institute of America scholarship competition. Top Chef meets The Paper? • Former tennis prodigy Andrea Jaeger has joined the ranks of the Anglican Dominican nuns. As a child, Jaeger was scarred by both the instability of her life and her distant, abusive father, and she hopes that today's child stars will be better nurtured and protected. •  City officials in Karachi, Pakistan cite the rising influence of the Taliban as the primary reason women are experiencing an increase in violence and harassment. • An Italian bride made it through her ceremony only to run off at the reception with the driver. She claimed that she had to change clothes, but once she left, she had her new lover call her husband. Her husband is now seeking to file charges. • Horrible person Drew Peterson called into a radio show this morning to try out a few of his brand new prison jokes. We're not laughing. •  A "feral" child has been found in Russia living with her parents and grandparents in the Siberian city of Chita. The 5-year-old girl was never allowed out, and never learned to speak. She lived for years in a room with several dogs and cats, and thus reportedly communicates by barking. • New research illustrates the significance of coloring in gender identification. If the skin around the eyes and mouth are reddish in hue, than the face is more likely to be identified as male. If it is greener, the face is seen as female. • A 27-year-old incarcerated man has plead not guilty in the murder of Chandra Levy. •  A 32-year-old religious school teacher from Miami has been charged with sexual battery on a child after she admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old student. When police arrived at her house to question her, she was unavailable, due to the fact that she had gone on vacation in Disneyland with the student. • 

Wyman is quick to his point:

The film, which has inexplicably gotten all sorts of praise, whitewashes what Polanski did in blatant and subtle fashion — and recent coverage of the case, in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and elsewhere, has in turn accepted the film's contentions at face value.

Well, what Polanski pled guilty to was statutory rape, in a plea agreement that might not have allowed him to avoid jail time:

As the film shows, Polanski accepted a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to the formal felony charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor; he and his lawyer knew he could face prison time. Polanski also stood in front of the judge and admitted what he did and that he'd known what he was doing.

His bid to withdraw his guilty plea, in fact, is similar to what former Idaho Senator Larry Craig — better known as the toe-tapping ass-bandit of the Minneapolis Airport — was attempting to do before he was ousted from the Senate.

But Wyman goes on to point out the way filmmaker Marina Zenovich creates sympathy for Polanski:

The tone is set early on, when a friend of Polanski's tells of being woken up and informed that the director had been arrested. The moment is actually played for laughs, with interspersed shots of a worried Mia Farrow using the phone in a scene from "Rosemary's Baby."

A filmmaker attuned to the psychological undercurrents of the characters in her drama might have been conscious of the state of a 13-year-old girl, who had just been drugged and raped and had spent the next period of time at a police station reliving the incident; and shaken by the story of "Rosemary's Baby" — that, too, about a horrifically abused woman.

But the scene isn't used to illustrate the victim's story — it's about poor Roman.

He goes on to point out the following:

Here's an example: The word "sodomy" is briefly referenced in Zenovich's documentary, but it's a somewhat ambiguous term, and it's never explained. Zenovich has fun flashing bits of the victim's grand jury testimony on the screen, but she never gets around to using this exchange from that testimony, which was made public in 2003 and published by the Smoking Gun:

"Then he lifted up my legs and went in through my anus."

"What do you mean by that?

"He put his penis in my butt."

In the girl's grand jury testimony, which is slightly sickening to read, she also said that she had repeatedly told Polanski no, but that she was too afraid of him to resist.

It's a drag to include a scene of anal rape of a 13-year-old in your moody documentary about such a Byronic figure, but it's also fairly relevant.

There's more, even:

The girl told police at the time she had repeatedly told Polanski no; on the screen Zenovich runs a line to that effect from the girl's grand jury testimony, but immediately follows it with a quote from Polanski's: "She was not unresponsive." This creates a subtle he-said-she-said dynamic that, in a case in which consent isn't a issue, represents another bit of moral prestidigitation.

I mean, that's a little off — consent is at issue, since the girl said she didn't consent — it's just not at issue with Polanski's guilty plea to the lesser statutory rape charge. With statutory rape, consent isn't at issue because the victim is declared too young to make the decision. But it's worse than that, even: according to Wyman, Zenovich completely ignores the slut-shaming Polanski and his lawyers engaged in (and did a little of it herself):

In the media circus of the time, some of the European press reported that the victim hadn't been a virgin. We then get to watch as Polanski's attorney, Douglas Dalton, stands in front of a gaggle of media, Polanski nodding by his side, to say, "The facts indicate that before the alleged acts in this case the girl had engaged in sexual activity. We want to know about it, we want to know who was involved, when, we want to know why these other people were not prosecuted. It's something we want to fully develop."

A more feminist-minded director might have used her interviews with Dalton to explore some of the Neanderthal ways he was prepared to wage the case, had the director gone to trial.

Because everyone knows a slutty 13 year old would have consented!

Wyman chooses to end his take-down of the documentary with a little object lesson that celebrities might want to pay attention to:

The movie tries to drum up sympathy for Polanski by playing up the media firestorm he was at the center of; but that's Polanski's fault, too. (Before they rape children, celebrities should consider how the media attention sure to result will have adverse consequences for their victims, as well as themselves.)

That's pretty similar to something I tend to say to a friend of mine: "It's really easy to stay out of jail. Don't commit illegal acts."

Whitewashing Roman Polanski [Salon]

While we can lay some of the blame at the door of increased awareness, a more salacious media, and a culture that encourages victims to come forward — and, it must be said, sue — this alone does not explain the dramatic upswings in female teacher-student "relationships". In one week last year, Tampa saw three such cases:

'I loved today,' 28-year-old math teacher Stephanie Ragusa had texted her alleged 14-year-old lover at Davidsen Middle School. 'The sex was amazing.' Those arrests stole the spotlight from married English teacher Jennifer Mally, 26, who that same week pleaded guilty in Arizona for her affair with a 16-year-old, often conducted in the back of her Nissan Xterra. Two months earlier, Rebecca Bogard, a 27-year-old science teacher in Mississippi, allegedly seduced a 15-year-old in her Jaguar with plates that read grrrrr, and later texted the boy, "I love you, yeah it was the best, which night was the best 4 you, I'm sensitive but not sore, you were good." Scandalous as those cases were, they were followed by more arrests — notably that of Julie Pritchett, 34, a teacher in Alabama accused of seducing eight members of the high school baseball team.

The new Rolling Stone profiles one such case, between an attractive young gym teacher who began a relationship (ie, statutory rape) with a 15-year-old football star named Jason Eickmeyer. The article is highly sympathetic to the young man, whose home life was in shambles and who opened his heart to the pretty teacher, Traci Tapp, reading her his poetry and confessing his insecurities. When the affair blew up — she left him for a football coach — the teen was devastated and fell into a self-destructive spiral of self-mutilation and rage; going public with his accusations only earned him outcast status at school. Now 21, he is deeply in debt, with no prospects, and still living in his hometown. His one pleasure, he says, is coaching 9-year-olds in football; his girlfriend is 34. Ms. Tapp, despite allegations of numerous relationships with students, pleaded to a single count of "offensive touching," was fined $225 dollars and works as a real estate agent.

Although the article is sympathetic to the young man, the comments on Rolling Stone's website are revealing: Boo hoo, you lived out every boy's fantasy with a hot teacher, they say. Get over it. This is fairly typical of the way in which we view such cases: the boys — save the very young — are not thought to be terribly affected by such a situation; at best, it's a coup. Indeed, if anyone condemns these women, it is more likely other women than men. Says Eickmeyer, "'You are a guy, and it's not supposed to bother you.' But it really did mess me up.'" The women, moreover, are regarded often as sexy Mrs. Robinsons — sick, sure, but not predators as such. And their penalties reflect this — a stark contrast to men who abuse girls of the same age.

Of course, it's not equivalent: the nature of the physical act is not the same, the consequences are different, and the truth is, a teen boy is often likely to regard such an experience as a lark. (Says one friend of the boy's, "We couldn't believe it...we were still virgins, and he was hitting it with teachers! It was pretty fucking sweet." A teen girl's reaction would probably be more complicated, to say the least.) The truth is, it's not as stark a power dynamic or so clear a case of exploitation. Besides, although more appalling, male teachers with young girls is somehow more expected: a part of us feels that the attraction to a Lolita is normal, expected — and as such, the inability to withstand this natural temptation is both more shameful and less strange. Women might jokingly drool over an underage star now, and it has none of the sleaziness of a guy doing the same thing, because it's understood we'd never do it. Except, of course, as Rolling Stone's article shows, women do:

Though the general belief about women who proposition students holds that there's something wrong with them — a mental disorder, a history of abuse — experts are beginning to question that assumption. 'Usually it's someone who is quite normal but has poor boundaries and has not had success with adult relationships,' says Stephen Braveman, a sex therapist noted for his work with male victims of sexual abuse. 'Throw in a little bit of immaturity, and we have the perfect storm for sexual abuse of this kind,' Braveman says. 'They're lonely. They're looking for love, and they're finding it in the wrong place.'

In other words, there but for the grace of God go the rest of us. Of course, age should not be the deciding factor: anyone in a pedagogical relationship should, legal barriers aside, not be sleeping with a student (something the Washington State courts don't agree with, apparently.) But looking at Jossip's "Gallery of Rape-y Teachers," (no trivializing there!) a pattern seems to develop: the women profiled are either pretty and young, or older, plainer. In both cases, it doesn't seem hard to speculate about the attraction of high school: either a chance to re-live glory days to which adult life never measured up; or, alternatively, going back to a scene of embarrassment and unhappiness and, this time, taking control and getting a chance with a popular boy. An oversimplification, sure, but worth thinking about; as a rule, these women seem less like general sexual predators with uncontrollable appetites than those who've developed "feelings" for specific boys. Better? No, but arguably less dangerous. And why now? Well, certainly youth culture has never been as glorified or exalted; hot 21-year-olds playing high-school students all over prime time has a lot of us lusting after "16-year-olds." We all know kids today are sexually active to a degree they've never been before, and Facebook and texting blur the boundaries of authority more and more. Has adult female attraction for young boys always been around, and is only now becoming public? Certainly the bulk of teen boys are not at the peak of their beauty, which may have something to do with it; has the prevalence of Retin-A, the importance of grooming and weight-lifting, distasteful as the question may be, had anything to do with the strange up-swing? When we feel that involuntary shudder of revulsion at reading one of these stories, how much of it is bafflement, and how much unwilling recognition of something we have felt, but stopped and banished? I have heard both from women — but only in private.

Sex, Lies And Phys Ed [Rolling Stone]

Related: Teacher Sent Sexually Explicit Texts To Schoolboy [Telegraph]
A Rogues' Gallery Of Rape-y Teachers [Jossip]
Should Student-Teacher Sex Always Be Illegal? [Salon]

The man allegedly sold his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat. Police learned of the deal after the man went to retrieve his daughter because he was not paid as promised. An 18-year-old man (who we can only assume was the "husband") has also been arrested on suspicion of statutory rape. The girl claims that she went willingly with her older neighbor, but since she is too young to consent under California law, her "husband" will still be charged. Sadly, cases of arranged marriage involving underage girls have become increasingly common in this small farming community. [MSNBC]

The results were predictable. Clinic staff at the two clinics in Indiana didn't — as required by law in Indiana — report Lila or her accomplice to the police as suspected abuse victims and told her that they didn't care how old her "boyfriend" was, despite Lila insisting he was 31 and afraid of getting in trouble. Indiana law states that anyone having sexual contact with a person under the age of 14 is committing a sexual assault, and requires doctors to break doctor-patient confidentiality laws — even if the sex was consensual — and tell the police.

Planned Parenthood fired both the aide featured in the video Rose shot in Bloomington and the counselor featured in the video shot in Indianapolis, and retrained its staff on complying with Indiana's reporting requirements. Meanwhile, the prosecutor in Marion County (where Indianapolis is) has empaneled a grand jury to investigate whether any laws were broken.

Here's the problem with this case (as I've written about before): the doctor-patient confidentiality clause is there for a reason. That reason is that it is far more important to the physical (and, yes, emotional health) of any real 13-year-old that she have safe, confidential access to health care than that we put an actual creepy 31-year-old in jail for 6 months for having consensual sex with someone who society has (in most people's opinions, rightly) deemed too young for him. It sounds good for a doctor to be forced to report abuse, but statutory rape isn't the same as sexual assault or molestation — which is why there's a whole different category for it. When young women who have chosen to be sexually active see and hear about this video, are they likely to stop having sex until they turn 14? No. They are, however, far less likely to turn to a medical provider for information about birth control, STI testing or abortion services if they know they provider is going to pick up the phone and call the cops. That's the consequence of these forced-reporting laws when it comes to statutory rape (which is, by definition, consensual but for the age of the supposed victim).

Anyway, so, great. Fines will be paid, medical providers who were trying to do what they thought best for their patients will be slapped on the wrist and Lila Rose will be the anti-abortion movement's latest heroine. And somewhere, a 13-year-old will stick a wire hanger up her vagina, or swallow some pills hoping to force a miscarriage, or will leave a newborn in the restroom trash at a school dance rather than have her boyfriend sent to jail by getting health care. Woo. Team America.

Grand Jury To Investigate Planned Parenthood Video Case [USA Today]

Related: Mona Lisa Project [Live Action Films]

Earlier: If It's Illegal For Them To Have Sex, Should They Get Birth Control?
How Young Is Too Young?

For those unfamiliar with the case, here's a brief recap from the AP:

The case was a sensation when it broke. Polanski, the widower of Manson family murder victim Sharon Tate, was arrested for having sex with the girl, whom he had hired as a model for a photo shoot. He was accused of giving her Quaaludes and champagne, taking her into a hot tub nude, and having sex with her…The lawyers said the now-43-year-old victim, who never wanted Polanski to go to prison, should have the final say. They said the law requires the courts to consider a victim's wishes.

Polanski was initially indicted on six felony counts, but all were dropped except for one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, which would have likely netted Polanski a prison sentence of 16 months to three years, the Guardian notes.

The filing points to several instances of judicial misconduct, New York Times says. "Judge Rittenband, who is now dead, intentionally violated a plea agreement with Mr. Polanski after having engaged in what it called 'repeated unethical and unlawful ex parte communications' with a deputy district attorney who was not involved in the prosecution, but was independently advising the judge." In addition, the AP notes that the prosecuting attorney in the case, retired Deputy District Attorney Roger Gunson, was so appalled with the proceedings that he "said that if he had been in Polanski's position, he also would have fled the country."

Polanski has not returned to the U.S. since the late 70s, and from the statements of the Los Angeles D.A.'s office, it seems that filing or no filing, the prosecution wants Polanski back in the U.S.A before they make any decisions about the case. The D.A.'s office has not looked at the case yet, but "We're looking forward to seeing Mr. Polanski in Los Angeles to litigate it," Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for District Attorney Steve Cooley, tells the AP. Click here for the full PDF of the court filings from Polanksi's legal team.

Film Cited in Request to Dismiss Polanski Case [NY Times]
Polanski Asks Court to Dismiss Child-Sex Charge (PDF) [NY Times]
Roman Polanski Requests Dismissal Of Sex Charge [AP]
Polanski Seeks Dismissal Of 70s Sex Case [Guardian]

Earlier: Which Is Worse: Roman Polanski Banging A 13-Year-Old Or Hollywood Blindly Embracing Him Despite It All?

A spokesman for Child Protective Services tells Reuters that separating mothers and children is "difficult thing.... But these children must be protected." Over one hundred of the FDLS children have already been placed in foster homes, according to the AP, and the rest will be taken to foster homes and group residences in the next few days. The Texas appeals court is still hearing arguments about whether mothers should be allowed to visit their children while abuse allegations are being investigated, and for now, CPS is trying to keep the FDLS children separate from the greater foster care population as the kids have little or no experience with modern society. Another Child Protective Services spokesperson, Shari Pulliam, tells the AP, "We recognize it's critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success. We just want to protect them from abuse and neglect. We're not trying to change them."

The extent of the abuse may become more clear once DNA tests of the children and mothers are completed. Scientists believe they will be able to confirm or deny accusations of incest and statutory rape that have been leveled at the sect.

More Teenage Mothers Emerge In Texas Polygamy Probe [Reuters]
Texas Officials Believe 25 Sect Moms Under 18 [AP via MSNBC]
How DNA Tests Reveal Polygamist Sex Practices [MSNBC]

Earlier: Polygamists Avoid Giving Answers On Today
Despite Doubters, Texas Will Keep Polygamist Children In State Custody
Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!

Now, I'll be the first to say, I was an early, uh, comer to the sex thing. I was 15 (in a state where the age of consent was 17) and dating an 18 year old when I rounded 3rd base (though, it wasn't at a party or in front of a camera). Fortunately for me — because, damn, was that boy stupid — his parents had already had to talk another girl's parents out of a statutory rape charge and they made him end things. But, had they not, I can be honest enough to say I would've probably fucked him, stupid or not — and it wouldn't have been because he exerted some kind of control over me. But, I eventually gave my v-card up to a really nice boy my own age who I really loved and with whom I lived happily ever after... or, you know, not. When I started college at 17 in a state where the age of consent was 18, I immediately started dating a senior and began breakin' the law again- and, once again, if one of us was in control emotionally/intellectually, it wasn't him. So, I get a little resentful when adults are all like "A teenage girl doesn't know what she wants and is too easily led into having sex," because I certainly did know what I wanted (sex) and no one had to con me into doing it.

I mean, obviously some things are rape, and some things are child molestation — those things should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and maybe then some — and some girls aren't emotionally mature enough to know what they're doing. I get that. However, statutory rape laws weren't written to protect emotionally immature girls from predatory high school seniors. They were written to give parents some leverage over a guy that swiped a girl's commodified virginity in a day and age when that was of paramount importance, and they do so by stating that women, despite having the physical maturity to want and to engage in sexual intercourse (and to get pregnant), are too "young" to know what they really might want. I think this is insulting, personally. Age and emotional maturity are not the same thing, obviously, and criminalizing the behavior of many, many people to keep girls from experimenting with/owning their sexuality at the age that they choose to start doing so can be, as Genarlow Wilson and his family found out, far more detrimental than helpful to children.

Georgia Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case [NY Times]

"Yep — it's true. There is a desirable shade of ass." [FabSugar]

Attention pregnant cat lovers: Your kitties' toxoplasmosis may be prepping you to bear a baby boy. [BoingBoing]

EMU masters-degree student Christina Wall is living life as it was before the 1950s. This, of course, means no fast food, no dishwashers, and no email or ATM machines. We're wondering, however, if this also means she has to wear maxipads with belts. [MinneapolisStarTribune]

Many black women don't exercise because there's not a lot of societal pressure on them to be thin. Unfortunately, it's also because they want to protect their hairstyles from sweat and heat. It always comes back to the hair, doesn't it? [Houston Chronicle]

Two obits of women in the NY Times today: etiquette-expert Marjabelle Y. Stewart (who may have slept with JFK) and singer Natalie Bodanya (who once lost her pants onstage at the Met). [NYTimes]

The Virginia Dept. of Health is issuing a comic book to combat statutory rape of young Hispanic girls. [CNN]