So it looks like it's finally over, except for the release.
The Supreme Court of Kansas struck down a state law Friday that penalized same-sex statutory rapes by 18-year-olds much more harshly than heterosexual cases, ruling that the law unconstitutionally discriminated against homosexuals. In a 6-0 opinion, the court said its decision was required by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas, a landmark victory for gay rights that abolished all state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults.
Friday's ruling was the first time after several attempts that gay rights advocates had managed to translate the Lawrence victory into a favorable ruling on another issue in the lower courts. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court established same-sex marriage, based on the state's Constitution, not Lawrence.
James Esseks, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union's Gay and Lesbian Rights Project, argued the case on behalf of Matthew Limon, who will be released after serving five years of a 17-year-sentence under the Kansas law. His sentence would have been at most 15 months if he had been convicted of a heterosexual act.
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline said the state would probably not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, noting that, as a Republican state legislator, he had voted against the disputed provision.... [emphasis added]
... Well if he voted against the provision, then why the hell did he fight so hard to defend the law? He really didn't have to; if he felt the law was wrong, he could have declined to defend, and the appellants would have won in a walkover. For that matter, he could have defended the law, with the proviso that he thought that particular clause was unconstitutional. The net effect would have been the same -- eventually, Kansas' courts would have been backhanded by the US Supreme Court into declaring the law unconstitutional (Kansas' courts showing absolutely no inclination to do so on their own) -- but at least he would have been on the record as defending a more humane position.
Of course ... for a person with state political ambitions in Kansas, defending the more humane position would have been, to put it mildly, problematic, wouldn't it?
In any event, Limon will be released from prison. I would think that it's doubtful that the state will seek to retry him and have him resentenced; there doesn't seem to be a lot of point in having someone tried so that he can be sentenced to time served for this.
Sad thing is, the archconservatives of this country are seeing this sort of simple justice as some sort of rallying call against judicial legislation, conveniently forgetting that this sort of decision-making about laws is what state and federal constitutional courts were specifially created to do.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Gay activists applauded a Kansas Supreme Court decision throwing out a measure that allowed vastly harsher punishment for older teenagers who have consensual sex with underage teens of the same gender. But conservatives cast the ruling as a victory for supporters of a creeping gay-rights agenda. "This is legislating from the bench that does not reflect the rule of the citizenry," Jerry Johnston, pastor of the First Family Church in Overland Park, Kansas, told Reuters on Saturday.
The state's top court ruled 6-0 on Friday that different penalties for underage homosexual and heterosexual sex violate the U.S. Constitution's clause barring states from denying people equal protection of the laws....
Apparently, there's something in the water in Overland Park, which is also the location of Westboro Baptist Church, home congregation to Fred Phelphs, hatemonger extraordinare -- he feels the need to complain about the existence of gays by holding protests at the funerals of soldiers who die in Iraq.
You wouldn't think that one town of 150,000 people could hold quite so much hate, would you?
Posted by iain at October 24, 2005 01:49 PM
