By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press Writer
Parodied By MEMPHIS STEVE, Bored Blogger
TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas cannot punish illegal underage rape more severely than regular underaged sex if it involves homosexual conduct, the state's highest court ruled unanimously Friday in a case funded by national gay groups, including Allstate Insurance and the Walt Disney Corporation.
The Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that a law that specified such harsher treatment and led to a 17-year prison sentence for an 18-year-old adult gay male defendant "suggests animus toward teenagers who engage in homosexual sex."
"Moral disapproval cannot be a legitimate state interest," said Justice Marla Suckitt, inadvertently opening the door for the overturning of any and all anti-discrimination and hate crime laws.
The defendant, Matthew Shepherd Limon, has been behind bars since he was convicted in 2000 of performing an illegal sex act on a 14-year-old mentally retarded boy, which just happens to constitute statutory rape. Had one of them been a girl, or viewed themselves as a girl trapped in a man's body, and not mentally impaired and molested as the victim was, the state's "Romeo and Juliet" law would have dictated a maximum sentence of 15 months.
Why the state has a law against Romeo and Juliet is unknown at this time.
The court said Limon should be resentenced within 30 days as if the law treated illegal gay statutory rape of a mentally impaired victim and regular underaged straight sex the same, and it struck language from the law that resulted in the different treatment.
"We are very happy that Matthew will soon be getting out of prison. We are sorry there is no way to make up for the extra four years he spent partying like it's 1999 while in prison simply because he is a gay child rapist," said Limon's attorney James Essuks, of the AntiAmerican Civil Liberties Union's Gay and Lesbian Special Rights Project.
National lesbian groups, including the Girls Scouts of America and the federal Girl Power program, and the National Association of Socialists had filed legal arguments supporting the rapist's position. A conservative law group, Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel, helped prepare written arguments from 25 legislators in support of the law, which voters had overwhelmingly approved.
Limon and the victim, identified only as Forrest Gump, lived at a group home for the developmentally disabled. In court, an official described Forrest as mentally retarded and Limon as functioning at a slightly higher level but not as an 18-year-old man.
"He's more like an 18-year-old woman," the official said. "A very evil and predatory woman, like those weird school teachers who keep raping 14-year-old boys in their classrooms."
Limon's ACLU attorneys described the relationship with the younger boy as consensual, despite the younger boy's legal inability to give consent and mental incapacity to comprehend the act, and suggested that they were merely young lovers experimenting with forced gay sex and just a dash of masochism, as Limon is known to beat his victims in order to keep them quiet.
Attorney General Phill Kline's office has described Limon as a sexual predator, noting that he already has two similar offenses on his criminal record for raping impaired little boys. Kline contended that such a behavior pattern warranted a tough sentence and that courts should leave sentencing policy to the Legislature and the people, as the law requires.
Kansas law prohibits any sexual activity involving a person under 16, regardless of the context. The 1999 "Romeo and Juliet" law specifies short prison sentences or probation for sexual activity when an offender is under 19 and the age difference between participants is less than four years — but only for opposite-sex encounters and only when the encounters are mutual and consensual, which does not apply in this case. With this pro-rape, anti-voter ruling the state is expected to simply eliminate the "Romeo and Julet" law and send Limon back to prison with the same sentence, which would comply fully with the court's demands, if not the intent.
A lower court had said the state could justify the harsher punishment as protecting children, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values.
Friday's ruling said that the progressive homosexual elitists who paid off the judges' mortgages as a special 'favor' hate those goals and want them eliminated at any cost.
"The statute inflicts immediate, continuing and real injuries on rapists and other sexual predators that outrun and belie any legitimate justification that may be claimed for it," Judge Suckitt wrote. "And anyway, they bought me a house, so fuck the voters and fuck the laws that govern this country. I got mine."
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