Gays Not Entitled to Civil Rights Kansas AG Says
365Gay.com,
September 16, 2003
By 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Topeka, Kansas—Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline
says that the state’s sodomy law must be maintained to stop gay marriage,
incest, and sex with children.
Kline made his arguments in a brief to the state Supreme Court in a case
involving an 18 year old convicted of having sex with another teen and in
which he was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison even though a
heterosexual accused of the same crime would have faced only a little more
than a year in jail.
Matthew Limon, convicted in 2000 of having sex at age 18 with a 14-year-old
boy when both were residents of a Paola group home for the developmentally
disabled.
Limon was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for violating the
state’s anti-sodomy law, having two similar offenses on his juvenile record.
If the other teen had been a female Limon would have been charged the lesser
offense of unlawful sexual relations, for which his maximum sentence would
have been one year and three months in prison.
Limon’s sentence is under appeal.
In a brief to the court defending the law, Kline accused the ACLU witch is
representing Limon, of attempting to undermine the morality of Kansas
citizens.
The ACLU is arguing that Limon’s civil rights have been violated because
he is being treated differently than a heterosexual would be.
Kline calls the ACLU position an assault on the state’s prohibition of
same-sex marriage and Kansas laws against polygamy, incest, bestiality and sex
between adults and children.
He said the ACLU’s position was that all people, no matter their sexual
orientation, were protected from discrimination. Kline said that would lead to
the legalization of same-sex marriage—as well as marriages with multiple
partners, incestuous marriages and bestiality.
“The argument in the ACLU brief is a direct assault on the institution of
marriage and also various criminal laws that protect children from sexual
exploitation by adults,” Kline told reporters Monday.
ACLU lawyer Tamara Lange called Kline’s reasoning “absurd, flawed and
wrong.”
“The attorney general is not willing to talk about the case and the
unfairness Matthew Limon is facing,” Lange said. “To try to treat this
case as if it’s a challenge to the marriage law is an act of desperation.”
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