The Kansas Supreme Court has struck down a portion of the 'Romeo and Juliet' law that discriminated against same-sex sex. In a unanimous decision issued Oct. 21, it said the law violated equal rights protections in both the U.S. Constitution and the Kansas Bill of Rights.
Many states have enacted 'Romeo and Juliet' laws that distinguish between consensual sex with a minor when the adult is close in age to the minor, and deal with that less harshly than if the adult is substantially older.
The Kansas bill was changed to add 'opposite sex' to the language at one point during the legislative process. It thus established lesser penalties for those who engage in opposite sex but not same sex activities.
Matthew Limon was one week past his 18th birthday when in February 2000 he gave a blow job to a youth who was just short of his 15th birthday. Both males had developmental disabilities and were staying at the same residential facility.
The state threw the book at him, sentencing Limon to 206 months in prison. Had he been heterosexual and covered by the 'Romeo and Juliet' law, he could have received a maximum of 15 months in prison.
The American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) took up what had by now become a celebrated case, but it lost on appeal within the state courts. So it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And then that Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that struck down the remaining state sodomy laws. A day later, the Court sent the Limon case back to the Kansas Court of Appeals for rehearing in light of Lawrence.
That appeals court divided three ways, and it was left to the Kansas Supreme Court to resolve the matter. Its Oct. 21 ruling was a long, thorough, dry, and heavily annotated decision that left no doubt that the provision was without merit and unconstitutional.
It struck down the provision and set Limon free.
'As of today, Matthew Limon has already served four years and five months longer than a heterosexual teenager would have received for the same act. He has long since paid his debt to society, and we're thrilled that he will be going home to his family soon,' said Lisa Brunner of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri's LGBT Task Force. 'Justice has been a long time coming in this case.'
'The decision relied on the Lawrence opinion to say that states must have a real reason for discriminating—other than moral disapproval,' said Jon Davidson with Lambda Legal.
Lambda had filed a brief in the case that disputed the state's attempts to justify the provision as necessary for restricting the spread of HIV. The court disagreed, writing, 'There is a near-zero chance of acquiring HIV infection through the conduct which gave rise to this case, oral sex between males.'
'The Kansas Supreme Court leveled the playing field today,' said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign. 'We teach our children not to treat people differently but our law does just that. We applaud the American Civil Liberties Union for this important victory.'
Gay pundit Andrew Sullivan, writing on his blog, called it 'a huge victory for sanity and equality in Kansas. We are slowly seeing the impact of Lawrence v. Texas, i.e. that gay people are citizens, not deviants, worthy of equal protection under the law.'
