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Kansas Court Upholds Law Criminalizing Sodomy between Adults and Minors

Second Time ACLU and Homosexual Agenda Lose Big in One Week

TOPEKA, KS, February 4, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For the second time in a week, the homosexual movement was dealt a serious setback as a Kansas Appellate Court, in Kansas v. Limon, upheld the conviction and sentence of a man who sodomized a minor. Liberty Counsel, a nationwide public interest law firm, filed a brief on the case on behalf of 25 Kansas legislators, opposing the ACLU's attempt to overturn a law that protects minors from sexual exploitation by adults.

Matthew Limon ("Defendant") was convicted for sodomizing a 14-year-old developmentally disabled boy. The Defendant, who had twice been convicted of sodomizing minors, was a Registered Sex Offender. In Kansas, there are two laws addressing sex between adults and minors. The law under which the Defendant was convicted criminalizes sex between an adult and a child. A separate law criminalizes voluntary sexual relations between any person less than 19 years of age with another person between the ages of 14 and 16, if the persons are of the opposite sex, and if the child and the offender are the only parties involved. This second law carries a lesser penalty in the event that the two parties choose to marry. The second law is sometimes referred to as the "Romeo and Juliet" law. The Defendant was charged with the statute that banned sodomy between adults and minors of the same sex, because that is the law which specifically applied to his crime.

The ACLU argued the law was unconstitutional in light of last year's Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a law that criminalized adult same-sex sodomy.

In rejecting the ACLU's argument, the court stated, "[T]raditional sexual mores concerning marriage and procreation have been important to the very survival of the human race…. Throughout history, governments have extolled the virtues of procreation as a way to furnish new workers, soldiers, and other useful members of society. The survival of society requires a continuous replenishment of its members."

The court noted that "the legislature could well have considered that same-sex sexual acts between males might increase their risk of contracting certain infectious diseases. Medical literature is replete with articles suggesting that certain health risks are more generally associated with homosexual activity than with heterosexual activity."

Mathew D. Staver, President and General Counsel of Liberty Counsel, argued that the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which was limited to conduct between consenting adults, is not designed to abolish laws dealing with pedophilia or any other laws regulating sex between adults and minors.

Staver commented, "Kansas should be applauded for refusing to cater to the extreme left-wing organizations trying to expand the Supreme Court's homosexual sodomy decision in Lawrence v. Texas to condone the actions of an adult sodomizing a minor." Staver added, "Laws are inherently based upon moral judgments of society, and it is therefore imperative for the courts to give deference to the legislature when passing such laws. Otherwise, our republican form of government could become profoundly imbalanced."

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