Former Miss California Carrie Prejean is doing damage control this week after news of a sex tape scuttled her lawsuit against her former pageant bosses. TMZ.com reported that a source was asking $10,000 for a video of Prejean masturbating, but the seamy website turned the video down. What could be too risqué for TMZ? Turns out Carrie wasn't 18 yet when she gave herself a helping hand on film. Oh. Oops.

Carrie took to Sean Hannity's show on Fox Monday to talk about the sex tape ruckus. (Holiday shopping alert: Hannity wrote the forward to Carrie's new autobiography, so if anyone on your list wants to read about the fascinating life of a 22-year-old homophobe with a side helping of pasty shrieking, get thee to Amazon right now.) "All by myself, I was sending a boyfriend at the time, who I loved and cared about, a video of me," Carrie told Hannity. That sentence is brought to you by San Diego Christian College. Apparently they don't believe in evolution or the proper use of the word "whom."

She continued, "Never did I think it would ever come out. But it was bad judgment. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating to be talking about this on national TV, if you can imagine." Yes, it's humiliating. And we have a little bit of sympathy for Carrie Prejean here, because even though her homophobic views are repellent, she's not a politician and she's not making policy to deny gay people equal rights. As a California voter, she was on the winning side of Prop 8 last year, but all thing considered, her platform and influence are pretty limited. And no one, public figure or private, deserves to have a tape of him or herself rubbing one out distributed for public consumption.

Carrie was suing Miss California USA officials for terminating her contract after she failed to make contractually-mandated appearances, did not reveal that she'd posed for semi-nude photos before entering the pageant, and violated the terms of the agreement in other ways, including endorsing a national organization opposed to same-sex marriage. The pageant organization countersued for the value of the breast implants they'd paid for, and later showed Carrie (and her mother) the sex tape. We can only assume that the ex-boyfriend she'd made it for, who if this is true is a complete piece of garbage, leaked it to them or was the one trying to sell it. Carrie and Miss California USA settled their lawsuits after the tape came to light. Learn (and Earn) From Gay Marriage

Even with all she's been through this year that she didn't directly bring on herself, it's still hard to feel all that sorry for Carrie when she starts wailing about how Perez Hilton was infringing on the First Amendment rights her grandfather fought for in World War II (what?) and how she's being specifically targeted by evil, gross left-wingers for her conservative beliefs. Never mind that sex tapes featuring famous women have been distributed against their consent regardless of their religious or political identification (just off the top of our heads, Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Foxy Brown, and Dita Von Teese have never struck us as particularly religious or conservative. But, you know, Colin Farrell's Catholic, so maybe his ex-girlfriend leaking their sex tape was religious persecution. But even he is pro–gay marriage). Are Sex Tapes Good For Relationships?

So, yeah, we are of two minds on this. Carrie Prejean's continuing fame (or infamy, if you like) is completely based on the fact that she's a pretty homophobe who doesn't know when it's in her best interest to shut up and keep a low profile. But even she doesn't deserve having a private video of a sex act distributed for the prurient interest of anyone who cares to download it. We still hope that her book doesn't sell a single copy and she goes back to hanging out with the disapprovingly paternalistic San Diego Padres mascot.

Via Celebitchy and Gawker. Photo courtesy of Fox News.