Court Asked to Overturn 17-Year Prison Sentence of Bi Teen
365Gay.com,
August 11, 2003
By 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Topeka, Kansas—Arguing that excluding gay teenagers
from the Kansas “Romeo and Juliet” law is unconstitutional after the
recent Supreme Court decision striking down sodomy laws, the American Civil
Liberties Union today asked a state appeals court to free a bisexual teenager
who is serving 17 years in prison for having oral sex with another teen.
Matthew Limon is appealing a 17-year prison sentence he received because
shortly after he turned 18 he performed consensual oral sex on another
teenager at a residential school for developmentally disabled youth where they
both lived in Miami County, Kansas. If he had instead performed oral sex on a
female of the same age, he would have received no more than 15 months in jail
under the Kansas law. But because the “Romeo and Juliet” law applies only
to heterosexuals, Limon was convicted under the much harsher state sodomy law.
“The Supreme Court clearly felt, as we do, that a great injustice has
been done to Matthew Limon,” said Dick Kurtenbach, Executive Director of the
ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri. “Laws that punish lesbian, gay, and
bisexual people far more harshly than heterosexuals for the same thing are
simply discriminatory and wrong, and we hope that the Court of Appeals will
agree.”
Limon is serving 17 years in prison, instead of the 13 to 15 months he
would have faced if he were heterosexual. The Kansas law makes sexual
relations with a minor a lesser crime if both people are teens, but it only
applies to opposite-sex relations. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated
Limon’s conviction and instructed the Kansas Court of Appeals to give it
further consideration in light of the historic ruling on sexual intimacy in
Lawrence v. Texas. The “Romeo and Juliet” law is similar to the Texas
sodomy law because it treats the sexual conduct of lesbian and gay people
differently.
“The Kansas court justified Matthew’s conviction on the basis that the
Supreme Court had upheld anti-gay sodomy laws in its 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick
ruling,” said Tamara Lange, Limon’s attorney from the ACLU’s Lesbian and
Gay Rights Project. “Now that Bowers has been overturned, the Kansas Court
of Appeals should recognize that this young man should not spend more time in
prison just because he’s bisexual.”
Under the Kansas law, consensual oral sex between two teens is a lesser
crime if the younger teenager is 14 to 16 years old, if the older teenager is
under 19, if the age difference is less than four years, if there are no third
parties involved, and if the two teenagers “are members of the opposite
sex.”
The court has not indicated when it might rule.
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