We're Not in Kansas Anymore--Or Maybe We Are

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We're Not in Kansas Anymore--Or Maybe We Are

Family Research Council, Washington Update, October 24, 2005

The Kansas Supreme Court has acceded to the pleading of the ACLU and has unanimously struck down the state's "Romeo and Juliet" law. That law provided lesser penalties for minors who engage in heterosexual relations. The ACLU argued in State v. Limon on Equal Protection grounds that the law unfairly stigmatized homosexuality. The 1999 Kansas law imposed lesser penalties for sexual relations between minors 14 to 19 years old where those minors are less than four years apart in age. But it sharply distinguished between homosexual conduct and heterosexual conduct.

Kansas' Attorney General Phill Kline defended the law--as he was obliged to do. But Kline said when he was a state legislator: "I did not support the public policy of providing a lengthier sentence for same-sex exploitation as contrasted with opposite-sex exploitation." We agree. But what remains troubling about the Kansas Supreme Court's action is that it goes beyond even the U.S. Supreme Court's erroneous ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

In that 2003 case, the nation's high court struck down Texas' sodomy law using a privacy rationale. Now, Kansas's top judges have used Equal Protection to undo the legislature's work. This raises concerns about Kansas voters' decision last spring to defend marriage. That measure was approved by a whopping 70 percent of Kansans, carrying 104 of 105 counties. This ruling also raises the stakes for filling vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court. Activism on the high court doesn't just trickle down; it thunders down like Niagara.

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