Gray Rape and when Cosmo writes the laws

Apparently Robert D. Laurino, chief assistant prosecutor for Essex

County in New Jersey, has decided that Cosmopolitan Magazine is some kind of legal authority.  Cosmo had an article called "A New Kind of Date Rape." 

Keep reading.  What I wonder is how Maxim can earn "legal authority" status.  More importantly, any lawyer with his or her salt must now be able to Bluebook cite a Cosmo article without looking it up.

From what I can tell it involves a bunch of people wondering whether, in their “sorority girl” days, they were raped or not. The Justice Department helps out by saying that 20% of all college girls will be raped. (Let’s think about this for a minute: if all these rapes were prosecuted, this would mean that 20% of men would be felons. Is this really what people are saying?)

The article in Cosmo (which is now legal authority) writes:

Many experts feel that gray rape is in fact often a consequence of today’s hookup culture: lots of partying and flirting, plenty of alcohol, and ironically, the idea that women can be just as bold and adventurous about sex as men are. How can something so potentially empowering become so damaging? Cosmo investigates.

So, Laurino spoke at a panel discussion about “Gray Rape” which is “sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what.” The panel discussion, as described by the NYT, became quite stupid, where people gave such wonderful opinions as “Rape is Rape” and a debate about whether or not women are “sexually empowered” to “hook up” and our “culture of masculinity.” (Some of these people trolling this trottle were lawyers.) 

Luckily, as Indefensible points out, ex-Manhattan ADA Linda Fairstein, gave the panel discussion a common sense injection by saying: 1) gray areas are nothing new for lawyers (so stop pretending that what journalists say matters, I guess); and 2) ““Certainly, in the criminal justice system there’s no such thing as gray rape.”

Comments

[JFC]

20% of men in Massachusetts are rapist-felons. The age of consent here is 16 with no exceptions and no excuses. Roughly 20% of people have sex before 16.

This is why I am excited by the possibilities of the new law abolishing the statute of limitations for statutory rape. I figure politicians are good at talking people into things so probably more than one in five of them had sex with an underage person. If we can put one third of the legislature in prison, that will be almost as good as term limits.

I went to high school in Connecticut where sex with a girl under 16 is legal as long as she's no more than two years younger. I read the law books in the school library to check.

[S. COTUS]

I think that 20% figure only applies to college boys. I am sure that, in terms of the uneducated masses, the amount is much, much higher.

(Or lower if you want to get the votes of the uneducated masses.)