Kansas Supreme Court: Underage gay sex cannot have harsher punishment

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According to an article published by the Washington Blade, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that the punishment for gay underage sex cannot be more harsh than the punishment for straight underage sex. The case involves Matthew R. Limon, a sex offender who, at 18 years old, performed a sexual act on a 14 year old boy. His original sentence was set at 17 years and two months in prison. If he had performed the same sexual act on someone of the opposite sex he would have only served 15 months in prison. According to the article:

Kansas cannot punish illegal underage sex more harshly if it involves homosexual conduct, the state's highest court ruled Friday in a case watched by national groups on both sides of the gay rights debate. The Supreme Court sided in a unanimous decision with convicted sex offender Matthew R. Limon. In 2000, he was sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison because, at 18, he performed a sex act on a 14-year-old boy. Had one of them been a girl, Limon could have faced only 15 months behind bars. The high court ordered Limon to be resentenced as if the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same, and it struck language from the law that resulted in the different treatment. A lower court had said the state could justify the harsher punishment as protecting children's traditional development, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values. Writing for the high court, Justice Marla Luckert said the Kansas law specifying harsher treatment for illegal gay sex is too broad to meet those goals. "The statute inflicts immediate, continuing and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justification that may be claimed for it," Luckert wrote. "Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest."

===== FINALLY... the law is being applied equally and fairly. Don't get me wrong, Limon is a sex offender and deserves to be punished, but should he be punished mre harshly just because he is a gay sex offender? I don't think so. Many will say that gay activists are only trying to justify child abuse. They will... they will twist this case around to say that gay activists were supporting a sex offender. WRONG! Gay activists were only pointing out the legal difference in the treatment of gays and straights... and right has won out!