Same Laws for Same Sex
Dozens huddle outside the Statehouse demanding a change in Kansas
statutes they consider discriminatory.
Topeka Capital-Journal,
February 16, 2003
616 SE Jefferson Street, Topeka, KS 66607
Fax: 785-295-1230
Email: letters@cjnetworks.com
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021603/leg_sodomy1.shtml
By Erin Adamson, The Capital-Journal
About 130 people braced against the cold Saturday during a rally calling
for decriminalization of sex between those of the same gender in Kansas.
The Womyn’s Empowerment Action Coalition, a student organization at The
University of Kansas, protested two Kansas laws that make some sex acts
illegal between same-sex partners but not between heterosexual partners.
Lea Burgess Carland, a coalition member who helped organize the rally,
which was held at the top of the south steps of the Capitol, said the laws
must be repealed to provide justice for all people.
"We have to help change the law that is so blatantly discriminatory to
LBGT (Lesbian Bisexual Gay and Transgendered) folks," she said as she
kicked off the rally shortly after 1 p.m.
One woman standing at the edge of the gathering held a sign that read,
"Making Love Isn’t a Crime."
Christine Robinson, a doctoral candidate who teaches at KU, said
legislators needed to take the lead "to abandon judicial bigotry once and
for all."
She said Kansas teenager Matt R. Limon was one victim of the state’s
"Romeo and Juliet" law, which separates consensual teenage sexual
relationships from cases in which older adults exploit young children—as
long as the young couple is a male and a female.
Limon was sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison for having sex
with an underage boy in February 2000, when Limon was 18. If either Limon or
his partner had been female, the maximum sentence would have been one year and
three months in prison.
Jason Chaika, of Topeka, stood on the Capitol steps asking audience members
to support the Equal Justice Coalition, an organization working to elect
"fair-minded" candidates to the Topeka City Council.
The coalition wants to elect council members who would support a proposed
amendment to city law to include sexual orientation as a protected status.
Chaika said passing such an amendment would be difficult as long as homosexual
sex was still illegal under state law.
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