TOPEKA, Kan. (ABP) — In a reverberation from a landmark Supreme Court case on gay rights, Kansas' highest court has overturned a law that differentiated between homosexual and heterosexual statutory rape.
The Kansas Supreme Court unanimously overturned a state law Oct. 21 that had imposed a much harsher sentence for adults engaged in homosexual activity with minors than on heterosexual statutory rape.
The court said, in its State of Kansas vs. Limon decision, that “moral disapproval of a group” was not, in itself, a sufficient reason to impose different penalties on its members than those imposed on others for the same crime.
In the case, Matthew Limon had been imprisoned since 2000, when he was convicted of performing a sex act on an unidentified boy who was 14 at the time. Limon had turned 18 a few days before the act. At the time, both were residents at a group home for the developmentally disabled. Court papers said both were mildly mentally retarded.
The trial judge had sentenced Limon to 17 years in prison. The law he cited reportedly would have sentenced the teen to no more than 15 months of incarceration if he had had sex with a similarly aged female.
The Kansas justices cited the federal Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which overturned all state laws banning “sodomy,” or sexual practices differing from normal heterosexual intercourse.
In that decision, the high court's majority said simple moral disapproval of homosexuality was not sufficient reason to ban private, consensual, non-commercial sex acts.
The Kansas court rejected arguments from state attorneys that the difference in the law was justified because the state had an interest in protecting minors from sexually transmitted diseases.