The court is entirely right in this ruling. Of course those with an agenda will say the court was activist, must be impeached, the ACLU is to blame, special rights, homosexual agenda, blah, blah.
Equal protection under law either means something or it means nothing. Now, where are the hypocrites here who scream about "hate crime" statutes and yet would support this law targeting homosexuals?
You are the first intelligent shining light on this thread that I have read. I am adamantly opposed to the gay lifestyle, however, this situation is gay/straight neutral, or should be legally. If 18/14 straight sex is 15 mo., 18/14 homo sex should be 15 mo.
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?
Both the court and you are activist and playing the homophobia card doesn't change it one bit.
Equal protection under law either means something or it means nothing. Now, where are the hypocrites here who scream about "hate crime" statutes and yet would support this law targeting homosexuals?
Equal protection means equal protection. It doesn't mean the court is the finder of fact in deciding which crimes deserve harsher sentencing than others. The Kansas Legislature has decided that homosexual statutory rape causes more harm to the victim than heterosexual statutory rape does. Similarly many states have decided that 18 year olds raping 13 year olds is worthy of a penalty less severe than 18 year olds raping 6 year olds. Under your reading of the EPC, rape is rape and a legislature can t punish one more severely than the other. Your reading is wrong.
Activists make laws from the bench. The court just made a new law. That is the definition of judicial activism no matter how you 'feel' about the law enacted by the legislature.
Which is, btw, OK. You can advocate for judicial activism inAmerica, you just can't do it by pretending to be a conservative and then accusing those who differ from you of being homophobic.
So murderers should have their sentences reduced to buggery then? Based on this courts view of equal protection all crimes are equally protected.
I have not read the law that targets homosexuals -I am under the assumption that the law targets those who sodomize. The romeo and juliet law targets hetrosexuals. Comparing the two laws and contriving conspiracy against homosexuals seems far fetched; however, you seem to do this?
Statute 21-3505. Criminal sodomy.(a) Criminal sodomy is:
(1) Sodomy between persons who are 16 or more years of age and members of the same sex or between a person and an animal;
(2) sodomy with a child who is 14 or more years of age but less than 16 years of age; or
(3) causing a child 14 or more years of age but less than 16 years of age to engage in sodomy with any person or animal.
(b) It shall be a defense to a prosecution of criminal sodomy as provided in subsection (a)(2) that the child was married to the accused at the time of the offense.
(c) Criminal sodomy as provided in subsection (a)(1) is a class B nonperson misdemeanor. Criminal sodomy as provided in subsections (a)(2) and (a)(3) is a severity level 3, person felony.
History: L. 1969, ch. 180, § 21-3505; L. 1983, ch. 109, § 5; L. 1992, ch. 298, § 23; L. 1993, ch. 253, § 6; July 1.
Statute 21-3522. Unlawful voluntary sexual relations.
(a) Unlawful voluntary sexual relations is engaging in voluntary: (1) Sexual intercourse; (2) sodomy; or (3) lewd fondling or touching with a child who is 14 years of age but less than 16 years of age and the offender is less than 19 years of age and less than four years of age older than the child and the child and the offender are the only parties involved and are members of the opposite sex.
(b) (1) Unlawful voluntary sexual relations as provided in subsection (a)(1) is a severity level 8, person felony.
(2) Unlawful voluntary sexual relations as provided in subsection (a)(2) is a severity level 9, person felony.
(3) Unlawful voluntary sexual relations as provided in subsection (a)(3) is a severity level 10, person felony.
History: L. 1999, ch. 164, § 38; July 1.
Note that as it pertains to 21-3505 that ONLY (a)(2) and (a)(3) are felonies -very interesting -- IF it was homosexual consensual sodomy rather than statutory homosexual rape it would have been a misdemeanor... It looks like you have been hoodwinked or you are attempting to hoodwink with the unfair sentence targeting homosexuals spin? The law was challenged by the ACLU for one reason and one reason only -furtherance of the homosexual agenda to legitimate the illegitimate -in this case by judicial fiat...
The court must be impeached.
The ACLU is to blame.
The same court that would hand down such anti-civilization trash as a legal ruling will, in other matters, be delighted to provide special rights for those whose, ummmmm, distinction is the more than curious view that Mr. Happy should be found in the nether regions of the digestive system of othersat its outlet (same sex or otherwise) or inside those of the same sex.
The court has enshrined the homosexual agenda in Kansas Law. Dorothy better get Toto to Nebraska or back to Oz or he's next!
As to Equal Protection of the laws, don't be so simplistic. We are not required to sentence shoplifters and mass murderers to identical terms just because both are criminals. The crimes are entirely different and so should be the punishments. There may be and are rational classifications separating different classes of criminal perps.
The adult male who engages in sex, oral or genital, with a 15-year-old female comes in several categories, as well. Generally, states deem such sexual behavior as statutory rape, punishable as such. If you imagine that judges will not take other circumstances into consideration in sentencing, you are naive. A forcible rape of a fifteen-year-old girl by a fifty-year-old man will be more harshly treated than a "consensual" and, indeed, enthusiastic fifteen year-old victim of a seventeen-year-old boyfriend type. Many states have laws saying that there must be a minimum difference in age between perp and victim (typically two years) which is another perfectly reasonable classification. What do you do as to the 15 year-old male perp/but also victim and the 13 year-old female victim/perp? In worshipping the false god of a specious consistency, will sentence each as though they were 50 year-old perps?
Certainly punishment ought be visited upon one who heterosexually victimizes children of any sort but far more drastic punishment is due to the homosexual perp as one who adds perversion to statutory rape. The absence of violence or the threat of same or of other forms of duress will certainly count in favor of more lenient treatment of a perv/perp than might be meted out where violence or duress were factors but that does not mean that there should not be extra severity for perv/rape compared to hetero/rape. Let it be noted that ANY rape is a perverted act but that homoperversion adds special extras that deserve substantial extra punishment.
Which brings us to the fudgepacker vs. normal hetero dichotomy. If my language offends, too bad. Mere language is not remotely as offensive as the perversions of the lavenderly inclined and "active." Homosexuality is ALWAYS inherently disordered behavior. Arsenic is not food but poison. Homosexuality is not sexuality but a particularly vile perversion designed to dehumanize and pervert/recruit the victim and objectify the victim for the absolutely perverted pleasures (sexual and dominance) of the probably sadistic perp.
We might want to honor tradition by not imposing 17-year sentences on the despicable perps of homosexual rape of the young but forcing them to drink hemlock as did Socrates. If hemlock is hard to find, then Old Sparky can provide a final illuminating and most electrifying experience for the perv/perps.
"Hate crimes statutes" of the sort you suggest are a life support system for the curious notion that the abuse of the human digestive system for pseudosexual pretenses is somehow analogous to being a victim of racist crimes as a result of an actual condition of conception. If you operate under the delusion that homohoopla is a condition of birth, then prepare to offer "equal protection" to drunks who drive who "really cannot help it because they are genetically predisposed to be drunks" (more likely than a genetic predisposition to making anal whoopee). No hypocrisy at all. In fact, we can do without "hate crimes statutes" altogether and focus on crime rather than unpopular thought and special "victims." It is a gross and entirely unwarranted insult to racial minority group members to analogize them to perverts.
Homosexual behavior always has been deemed a crime without reference to age of the perps/victims. Our enlightened left bank social snob courts, observing the apparent popularity of homohoopla among the enlightened cafe and poery sets, are deconstructing that bulwark of western civilization that has traditionally hammered the perverts in our courts of law. Homosexual perversion ought to forever be the object of harsh criminal legislation. If the pervs don't like it, let them move to France or "Old Europe" or other centers of Moslem culture in which culture the anal raping of ten-year old boys has always been a pastime for the cream of that particular kind of society.
I support laws targeting homosexuality and laws targeting murder and laws targeting bank robbery and laws targeting muggers and laws targeting the pseudosexual exploitation of youth or the actually sexual exploitation of youth oir other forms of rape as well. No hypocrisy whatsoever when you understand that homosexual activity is as inherently criminal as other (malum in se) crimes and more so by far than most. BTW, hypocrisy is the favorite charge of liberals directed at people of normal values and sensibilities consistent with Western Civilization (generally known as "conservatives").
You may be a libertoonian but you are no conservative.