The sad case of Prejean and American consrvatism.

The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog has confirmed what this blog has said regarding Carrie Prejean being a self-admitted sex offender, guilty of violating child porn laws. They says "it appears that a high-profile public figure is now admitting that she has engaged in behavior that makes her technically guilty of a federal crime... which is punished through a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison term."

The law blog says, "I am confident that she could be technically subject to the five-year minimum... for distributing material involving the sexual exploitation of minors." That blog also makes a similar comment to what I've argued here: "I am not—repeat, I am not—urging that Carrie Prejean be subject to federal (or state) child porn prosecution or be facing any criminal charges at all. Rather I am just hoping to use this high-profile incident as a teaching moment to help make everyone aware of how broad federal child porn laws technically sweep."

Now, it does appear that Prejean is simply lying and that video(s) that she made were done when she was legally based the magic age of 18. By the way a taped interview with the ex "boyfriend" is actually quite revealing as to precisely how hypocritical Prejean is in regards to sex. As I've pointed out, she seems to hold the view that Biblical law regarding sexual morality is binding, but only on gay people. The man, to whom she sent her explicit sex tapes, was hardly a "boyfriend," not that that would justify her behavior biblically (which matters to her not to me).

He says that a friend of his knew Prejean and told her about him. She checked his picture out on Facebook and started emailing him. They talked some on the phone. Asked if he ever actually meet Prejean he said he meet her once, for four days, when flew to San Diego in Feb. 2007 to be with her. So apparently Prejean spent four days at a hotel with a man she only meet in person for the first time that day.

As to the videos the man says he is unsure which video the lawyers had at the settlement meeting with Prejean. He is unsure because she "sent me numerous tapes." To be more accurate he says "there were probably 15 to 20 videos that she sent." Asked if they were all "explicit videos" he said, "Yes, very much." There are porn studios that don't turn out 15 to 20 videos in a year. He says Prejean was 19 when he spent the four days with her and that she continued to send him porn tapes of herself for another two years, so this went on until rather recently.

The man was asked again if Prejean was over 18 when he met her in San Diego for their tryst. He said: "Oh year, I'm not crazy. I'm not going to do something stupid. I'm not going to hook-up with a girl that's underage." His use of the term "hook-up" implies that Prejean, in accordance with Christian morality (read sarcasm), was having sex with a man she meet only one time. The photos we posted showed her being very friendly with the man in question and allowing him to photograph her in a top and panties as well.

The man clarifies how he knows when the tapes were made. He said that Prejean used her cellphone to record her porn shots. She would call him and talk to him and then hang up and make the video and then send it to him. She would then call him again wanting him to tell her what he thought. As he put it: "She was basically wanting to get a reaction out of me. That's what she's all about, the ultimate reaction and attention. She wanted to hear about how great she looks."

He says that in the last few days he got a "call from Carrie basically screaming at me asking me what I had done this. At that point she asked me, 'Will you tell them I was 17." His response to her: "Hell no, I won't." Good for him, if he had lied on her behalf that could have opened himup to child porn charges as well.

Her ex "four night stand" says: "She's not the girl she portrays herself to be. I've actually never met someone that lied so much, to tell you the truth." Asked about Prejean's "stand on religion" he said: "She's using it to get to where she's at right now. ... She's just trying to sell to a different crowd right now. And I'm not buying it. A lot of people that know her don't buy it either."

Interesting and sad. If what this ex-fling of Prejean's says is accurate, and so far his story has checked out while Prejeans hasn't, then Carrie is really a rather pathetic and screwed-up individual. She craves attention and wants to engender reactions from others. If she's all about the reaction one has to ask if she hasn't staged everything from the start to get the maximum attention possible.

It would appear from the multiple videos of herself—that she made and distributed—that she was never into biblical morality at any point in time. She was using it.

This then calls into question the way the Religious Right and social conservatives have rallied to her. The Right immediately rallied behind Prejean as some virtuous, Christian merely because she expressed views against equality for gay people. Based on a few words that confirmed their own anti-gay attitudes they assumed she was worthy of embracing for their cause. Without any other information on her they made her a spokeswoman for their cause. She was put in commercials by the anti gay National Organization for Marriage (Inequality). Now their entire affiliation with her is turning into a humiliating experience for them.

Regnery published a book with Prejean's name on the cover, promoting her as a great advocate of traditional family values. Why? How was she a great advocate of family values? All she did was express an opinion against the equal rights for gay people—nothing more. But that was apparently enough for the Right. They claimed her as one of their own and as a great advocate of Christian morality. So we discover the great Christian moralists had a need to produce 15 to 20 porno tapes of herself and send them to a man she meet only once in her life. She hooked up with that man for four days in a hotel. Apparently no investigation was done as to whether Prejean was actually as "pro-family" and "moral" as she claimed. Her public attacks on gay people was all the Right needed to establish Prejean's credentials.

The Prejean story is not merely the story of a sad woman who has a need for being in the limelight, even if she has to destroy herself to do it. This is also a story about what is so seriously wrong with the contemporary conservative movement in America. Conservatives once again have egg on their face because they were so quick to claim Prejean as a great spokeswoman for their cause. Clearly Prejean is no intellectual. But the Right is no longer an intellectual movement. Prejean never showed herself to be a good advocate for any genuine conservative values of substance. She was not embraced because she espoused conservative values in any coherent way. Her credentials are based on one thing, and one thing only, that she went public attacking gays. That would seem to indicate that the contemporary Right has a very low threshold for membership. It apparently puts anti gay views ahead of everything else because those views, and those views alone, were sufficient for them to make Prejean a cause and give her a book contract.

Now that the whole sordid and sad truth about Prejean is coming out, it is the Right which has egg on its face. Regnery Publishing looks silly. They are still trying to recoup their investment by claiming that Prejean "Was Silenced By the Left For Her Beliefs." Silenced? If anyone wants to shut Prejean up today it has to be the Right. The more that Prejean appears in public the more the Left benefits. Regnery may call her "a strong, conservative woman" but considering how they publish anti-porn tirades, claiming porn is a Left-wing plot, how do they justify calling Prejean a conservative? If porn is left-wing, and Prejean made 15 to 20 porn videos, then how is Prejean conservative? Unfortunately the answer is clear. The modern Right is not inspired by the values of Goldwater or Reagan, but by the moral vision of backwater fundamentalists in some broken down revival tent. The Right is no longer interested in promoting a vision of a free society. What they are promoting is merely hatred for those they don't like.

The conservative movement today is motivated by what it hates, what it opposes and what it wants abolished. It stands for nothing, only against things. It is entirely negative in its viewpoint. And while there is no shortage of things to oppose, there is also no shortage of things to support. Yet there is hardly any mention of those things. Even when it claims to support things, such as family, it only does so as a new way of bashing others. While Prejean is a sad case, the state of contemporary conservatism is even sadder. They actually deserve each other.