Kansas sex laws

I hope whatever it is that makes some public officials in Kansas go batty isn't contagious. I'd sure hate to come down with it!

Following the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the Kansas Court's decision to deny an appeal for Matthew Limon who was convicted of having sex with an underaged partner and then given a sentence over 13-and-a-half times as long as the older partner of a heterosexual couple of the same ages would have gotten solely because his partner was the same gender that Limon is. See, Kansas has this really weird law called the "Romeo and Juliet" law which allows for a considerably shorter sentence (1 year, 3 months) for a person having consensual sex with a minor if the age difference between them is 4 years or less - but only if the partners are of different genders. If they're the same gender, the sentence is much greater - in Limon's case, 17 years.

Because of this summer's Lawrence v. Texas decision, however, the Kansas courts have to review Limon's case again. The state's arguments, though, leave much to be desired.

But Maag said the state Legislature had broad authority to approve of such disparities in sentencing in order to promote "traditional sexual roles."

The state argued the reasons for different punishments of similar sex acts was to promote marriage, encourage procreation and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Ok, so the state wants to promote "traditional sexual roles?" I fail to comprehend in any way how punishing the older member of a gay couple more harshly than the older member of a straight couple is going to promote "traditional sexual roles." If that's they're goal, I'd think they'd find it more effective to bar women from earning more than their husbands, make it illegal for a man to do household chores, change diapers or cook, prevent women from working at all or other such draconian measures. (And if anyone from the Kansas legislature is reading this, please be aware that the above was meant to be sarcastic and not to be taken as a serious suggestion. I worry about you guys, you know?)

As for the promotion of marriage, how does jailing the older partner of any couple promote marriage in any way? If your boyfriend or girlfriend gets sent away for over a year, especially if you're in your late teens or so, odds are you're not likely to end up marrying them no or anytime in the future. In fact, I'll bet that there's a much greater chance of you finding a new boyfriend or girlfriend before the old one gets out of jail than there is of a marriage arising from this situation. This doesn't mean that I don't think that statutory rapes should be prosecuted, just that I don't think it's the best way to promote marriage.

As for their last "justification" - preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, were you aware that only gays can get or pass on STDs? Neither was I! It seems that the Kansas district attorney's office is onto some kind of hot new science here. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic again. Sexually-transmitted diseases don't affect only gays - they can affect anyone having any kind of sex with any kind of partner under pretty much any kind of conditions. Using condoms is a pretty good way to avoid most of them, but they're not foolproof. It's better to know your partners well enough to know if they actually have an STD before having sex with them, but, if you're not going to go that route, a condom is one of your better options.

If the legislature is truly interested in preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, though, they'd do better to focus on educating people about the dangers of STDs, how one gets them, what you can do to prevent them, and what can happen to you if you get one. If they really want a law-enforcement solution, then I suppose they could try arresting people who know (or reasonably should know) that they have an STD and are engaging in unsafe sexual practices. Investigating and proving that kind of a case would likely be very difficult, especially if you intend to do so without violating someone's civil rights, but to claim that jailing older homosexuals who are having consensual sex with a younger - though by no more than 4 years - homosexual is somehow going to prevent the spread of STD's is just silly.

Luckily, there is at least one non-brain-damaged judge in Kansas, and he was one of the justices hearing the case today.

"I'm just trying to come up with a reason, other than you don't like homosexuals," Kansas Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Pierron told Deputy Atty. Gen. Jared Maag, who was representing the state.

[...] But Pierron, the head of the three-judge panel, told Maag two of those reasons [ed note: referring to the reasons discussed above] were "utterly ridiculous" because the law deals with sexual acts committed by minors, which are illegal regardless of the context.

Hopefully reason will prevail and Limon will soon find himself out of jail and able to get back to his normal life. The fact that he's gay shouldn't cost him an extra 15 years and 9 months.

[Update 12/5/03 11:46pm - slightly rephrased a sentence in the opening paragraph to get rid of some really horrendously bad grammar. No change in context or meaning, however - except now maybe it makes sense. *g*]

Posted by thorswitch at December 4, 2003 05:21 AM | TrackBack