Raped by statute (Homophobia enshrined in law)

Raped by statute

Eighteen-year-old Matthew Limon is serving 17 years for having consensual oral sex with another boy. His case reveals our society's bigotry -- and our inability to think straight about teenage sexuality.

By Ayelet Waldman

April 25, 2005 | On Feb. 16, 2000, Matthew Limon gave his boyfriend a blow job and got himself a 17-year prison sentence. The boys were residents at the Lakemary Center, a school for developmentally delayed youngsters in Paola, Kan. It's generous, perhaps, to call them boyfriends. What they did was more akin to sexual experimentation, two boys in a dormitory at night, messing around. Matthew had just turned 18 the week before, and his partner was just shy of his 15th birthday. The younger boy, identified only as M.A.R., consented to the sex, but changed his mind. As soon as he asked Matthew to stop, Matthew did, and M.A.R. has always been steadfast in his statement that what happened was consensual. How the police were brought in, why they were called, isn't clear. Someone from the center complained and the trial was based on stipulated facts -- one paragraph stating that on that night in February, the boys engaged in consensual oral sex. That single paragraph was the basis for the 17-year sentence.

Kansas' statutory rape law prohibits "criminal sodomy" (including oral sex) with teenagers younger than 16. If the object of Matthew's affection had been female, however, Kansas would have afforded him the benefit of its romantically named "Romeo and Juliet" statute, designed precisely for kids like him, kids who have consensual sex with other kids. In Kansas, and in many other states, when two teenagers have heterosexual sex, even the dreaded sodomy, the penalties are relatively mild. If Matthew had had consensual sex with a girl, and the state had prosecuted him at all, the longest sentence they could have given him was 15 months. Instead, because Matthew had sex with another boy, and only because he had sex with another boy, he has spent the past five years in Ellsworth Correctional Facility in central Kansas.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/waldman/2005/04/25/limon/

Guess it's just more culture of life stuff.

"If Matthew had had consensual sex with a girl, and the state had prosecuted him at all, the longest sentence they could have given him was 15 months."

This isn't fair. It is unbelievable! The Dominionist Agenda is definitely coming to pass and it is turning America into a mess.

If his prosecution differed because he was homosexual, he has excellent grounds for appeal. I hope he has a very good lawyer. This sort of thing should not be allowed to stand.

he's already served a good portion of the sentence - but that's Kansas for you.

because it seems like this may be precisely the sort of thing the Supreme Court ruled against when it struck down the TX sodomy law.

Maybe a lawyer there will have an idea about what can be done.

my first question. Apart from the presumed "can't give consent if under age 16", was he really able to give consent, and is he able to actually resist pressure in order to recount the events accurately?

Harsh sentence, though. Probably not from a "Dominionist" law, which implies a fairly recent origin, but an older one.