Posted on 10/21/2005 11:04:48 PM PDT by NapkinUser
Matthew R. Limon had just turned 18 when he had consensual oral sex with a boy just shy of 15 at a Kansas school in 2000. He was convicted of criminal sodomy and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Had the sex been heterosexual, the maximum penalty would have been 15 months.
Yesterday, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the starkly different penalties violated the federal Constitution's equal protection clause. It said the state's "Romeo and Juliet" statute, which limits the punishment that can be imposed on older teenagers who have sex with younger ones, but only if they are of the opposite sex, must also apply to teenagers who engage in homosexual sex.
Mr. Limon will soon be released, his lawyer, James D. Esseks, said. "He's spent an extra four years and five months in jail only because he's gay," said Mr. Esseks, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
> that sounds harsh
Not really. Gay sex is pretty far down the road towards no morals whatsoever, morals being to society what oil is to an engine.
You're treating this like an unfortunate oopsie that can't be helped, rather than a tragedy for both that was the result of many poor decisions by both.
Such people could rationalize any wrong, which is why the law was written in the first place.
I have asked this before, and I'll ask it again. If what is "good" builds society up, and what is "bad" destroys society, what is "good" about gay sex?
1) promotes promiscuity = marriage devalued as institution (1/3 of all kids have a venereal disease of some kind)
2) results in no children = workforce not replaced
3) disease transmission = health care costs spiral
4) contempt for Christ = contempt for all the virtues of the Bible, all of which build society up (faith, love, forgiveness, hard work, study, charity, ...)
A person can't rise above sin without Christ. HIS strength helps you do it. Trying to be a Christian in your own strength is a frustrating excercise in futility.
The crimes of adultery and sodomy are not the same. If they were the same, there would not be separate words for the two acts.
Different words for different things that are not the same.
Sodomy is much farther down the road of lack of self-control than in adultery. The reason the punishment is harsher, is the common sense notion of "where there is smoke, there is fire."
The next time, whose to say it won't be a 10 year old? It's kind of cute now, since both are under 20 (18 and 14). But what about when the adult molester is 40? 50?
Not so cute then.
Consistent thinking check: Did you think "pedophile priests" should have been locked up for good? Yes? Then why not this character who hunted down and molested a 14 year old?
An 18 year old man having consensual oral sex with a 14 year old boy *is* different from an 18 year old man having consensual oral sex with a 14 year old girl.
Peer interactions are going to be changed by the first and not by the second. The latter is more likely to be socially acceptable than the former. And the future actions of adolescent males are more likely to be influenced in their later choices by sexual experiences at this age than girls are.
Heterosexual experiences are less likely to be associated with other risk factors than same sex experiences.
1: Am J Public Health. 2001 Jun;91(6):903-6.
Same-sex romantic attraction and experiences of violence in adolescence. Russell ST, Franz BT, Driscoll AK.
Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, 1 Shields Ave, Davis, CA 95616-8523, USA.
OBJECTIVES: Recent national attention to hate crimes committed against lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths has highlighted the need to understand this group's experiences of violence. Using nationally representative data, we examine the associations between romantic attraction and experiences of violence, as well as the risk of witnessing violence and perpetrating violence against others.
METHODS: Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were examined. Youths reporting same-sex and both-sex romantic attractions were compared with those reporting other-sex attractions. Survey logistic regression
was used to control for sample design effects.
RESULTS: Youths who report same-sex or both-sex romantic attraction are more likely to experience extreme forms of violence than youths who report other-sex attraction. Youths reporting same-sex and both-sex romantic attractions are also more likely to witness violence. The higher incidence of violence perpetrated by youths attracted to the same sex is explained by their experiences of violence.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide strong evidence that youths reporting same-sex or both-sex romantic attraction are at greater risk for experiencing, witnessing, and
perpetrating violence.
PMID: 11392932 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
3: Am J Public Health. 1998 Feb;88(2):262-6.
Correlates of same-sex sexual behavior in a random sample of Massachusetts high school students. Faulkner AH, Cranston K.
Massachusetts Department of Education AIDS/HIV Program, Malden, USA.
OBJECTIVES: This study documented risk behaviors among homosexually and bisexually experienced adolescents.
METHODS: Data were obtained from a random sample of high school students in Massachusetts. Violence, substance use, and suicide behaviors were compared between students with same-sex experience and those reporting only heterosexual contact. Differences in prevalence and standard errors of the differences were calculated.
RESULTS: Students reporting same-sex contact were more likely to report fighting and victimization, frequent
use of alcohol, other drug use, and recent suicidal behaviors.
CONCLUSIONS: Students with same-sex experience may be at elevated risk of injury, disease, and death resulting from violence, substance abuse, and suicidal behaviors.
PMID: 9491018 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
The hypocracy on this in astonishing. I had sex when I was 14 with a 16 year old girl (the age of consent in the UK) and looking back over the years I have no regrets whatsoever! Yet *legally* I was a victim of child molestation, and *legally* she was peadophile. With the benefit of years of adulthood, I neither consider myself a victim nor her a peadophile. We were teenagers being teenagers to the horror of our parents. It was ever thus. Indeed to apply such terms in that case diminishes the full horror of the real child molestation and peaodphilia that exists in the world.
Does the gay angle make it worse? Probably, but Seventeen years? Dear lord. I'm not kidding that is the kind of sentance you normally associate with China or Nigeria or the taliban.
> Such people could rationalize any wrong, which is why
> the law was written in the first place.
> A person can't rise above sin without Christ. HIS >strength helps you do it. Trying to be a Christian in
> your own strength is a frustrating excercise in futility.
I accept there is a strong argument to live our life in a moral way. But ultmatley the judge of how we adhere to our morals should be the Lord himself and not some judge in Kansas. SEVENTEEN YEARS IN JAIL FOR AN ERROR OF JUDGEMENT BY TWO KIDS. Good grief. It is medievil. Nobody died, nobody suffered irreprable physical injury, nobody suffered great financial loss. If people wish to live in countries where the state is judged the voice and instrument of Gods Will then there are plenty of places in the world where the population is subserviant to that view. Iran being an obvious example. But surely the United States of America, in its role as beacon in a world of darkness, should not get dragged into theocracy driven shadows.
Seventeen years. *shakes head*
Actually, the "equal protection" issue doesn't apply, give that heterosexual acts bear no equality to homosexual acts, both morally and so far, socially and often legally.
The issue here is that homosexual acts are being made out to be "mere sexual acts" on the acceptable (and evaluative) basis of heterosexual acts. And that the defenders of this particular issue/case in Kansas rely on the "equal protection" measure to force their insistence (very important issue to homosexual activism) that "homosexuality" is on equal footing, of parallel status, with heterosexuality.
That is the actual issue of this case, not this one guy's time in prison, but the evaluation process of just what is "equal" and what is not.
Ask a victim of rape is seventeen years for the rapist is extreme.
Well, I'm a bit at a loss for words. As a sociologist; I find the use of those studies idiotic in this context.
You'll probably want an explanation why I think that the methodology of the survey prevents you from using this as a general pointer.
"RESULTS: Youths who report same-sex or both-sex romantic attraction are more likely to experience extreme forms of violence than youths who report other-sex attraction. ..."
To experience extreme forms of violence; a more extreme form of bullying perpetrated by some mindless jocks who think that if someone is gay that that makes him less of a human, or a worse person.
The second study shows the same.
The fact that they are at a greater risk for violence is because of people who think they're better than the others, and some people here actively support that.
I especially hate the way some people use god in order to excuse their own prejudice and discrimination.
Instead of using these surveys as a "proof" that being gay is bad, you should use these surveys to fight the discrimination that is ignorance. It's not these youths that have same sex attraction that look for violence, violence comes to them because some people have been brain washed with the idea that god somehow wants them to "punish the wicked" - christians, muslims, jews (notice that there's no buddhism, or wicca,... involved here).
You wouldn't get 17 years for rape with violence or murder over here (you should but thats not the issue).
The criminals over here never actually have to serve the full amount of time. So when they say 17 years they mean 3 or 4.
Is "idiotic" a sociologic term for disagreement? Y'all use that word in real life?
You and I know that teens are harder on themselves than their peers could ever be.
Besides, the point of making a law against an act is because of the effect that act has on the victim.
Don't you suppose that there's a difference between the effects on a boy survivor and the effects on a girl survivor in this case?
OK, make the penalty for underage sex of any type, heterosexual or homosexual, 18 years and the case is closed. But the court was right on this one.
In other words he had sex with a 14 year old.
"Is "idiotic" a sociologic term for disagreement?"
I didn't disagree with the research, but I found use in such context idiotic; irrational; pointless, etc.
"Y'all use that word in real life?"
Quite often yes, but most commonly when referring to: 1) politics, 2) religion.
"Besides, the point of making a law against an act is because of the effect that act has on the victim."
In case of bullying of gay kids, who's the victim? Why aren't those stupid jocks locked up in prisons for that?
What was the point of that research to be used here? Only to delude people that gay people are somehow more violent?
"Don't you suppose that there's a difference between the effects on a boy survivor and the effects on a girl survivor in this case?"
Ask yourself; do you really want a discussion about Freud here? Because if you want an answer from me on the topic, then I find no difference, Freud might disagree though.
Some some other conservatives (from what I've seen on this board) might find it "cool" if a 14 yr old boy sleeps with his 20something year old teacher, but if the roles are reversed they go into their traditional morality state.
This issue is similar; why should someone go to jail for 10x longer, just because the person he's sleeping with is of the same gender? [and let's leave the fact that he shouldn't be sleeping with that person alone].
IMO you either jail all people involved in such cases for 17 years, or you jail them all for 4 months.
Given the tiny sentences some real dangerous sex offenders get, this sentence seems quite a bit excessive for an act between two people with barely three years of age difference, and one who was barely a legal adult. Five years would have been more appropriate. Of course he might like prison. All the gay sex you could wish for. I'm surprised more queers don't try to get a bed in the hotel de Kansas.
--- A lower court had ruled that the state could justify the harsher punishment as a way of protecting children's traditional development, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values. But the Supreme Court said the law was too broad to meet those goals. ---
So, is that what supreme courts are for? To determine whether a low is broad or narrow enough to meet an objective????
For some reason, I thought their job was strictly to determine if it was legal or illegal. From the first sentence above, it seems like they are saying it is legal, but too broad.
---- "The statute inflicts immediate, continuing and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justification that may be claimed for it," ----
Injuries?
What about a young man who is proceeding through the difficult portion of adolescence that we all do, and perhaps wondering why this gay guy is hitting on him? Is there something about him that draws the attention? Maybe he is gay??? That boy was steered into a life that is not going to be easy to change. If a girl had hit on him, he would have entered a life of heterosexual sex early. But having a homo hit on him drew him into the homosexual life which is a dead end and destructive. He suffered a potential lifetime of injuries from being statutorily homosexually raped.
---- Justice Marla Luckert wrote for the court. "Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest." ----
Not moral disapproval of a group... moral disapproval with an action!!! Statutory, homosexual rape. That is a reprehensible and permanently damaging action.
We'll discuss the necessity of such derogatory terms and then pretending they are professional, later, if you wish.
At the very least, the boy was "outed" before the age of consent.
I would never think of child sexual abuse in terms of politics. Religion wasn't my context this time.
Of course, you won't see a hetero sexual equivalent of NAMBLA or Butterfly Kisses, even among the straw men you built.
"---- Justice Marla Luckert wrote for the court. "Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest." ----
Not moral disapproval of a group... moral disapproval with an action!!! Statutory, homosexual rape. That is a reprehensible and permanently damaging action."
Is heterosexual rape any better?
Agreed. But as the state did not charge that, they must administer equal justice.
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