From Salon:
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.
I wonder if the folks who oppose same-sex marriage would say that this “Romeo and Juliet” law isn’t discrimination? After all, gays and straight teens alike are given the much, much harsher punishment if they have sex with their underage same-sex lover. According to the same logic same-sex marriage opponents are so fond of – the logic that says that gays and lesbians have an equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex – this law must not be discriminatory.
Words cannot express my anger at this sort of thing going on while smug Republican *&^%’s tell me that there’s no need for civil rights protections for gay people because we ahve the same civil rights as heterosexuals.
17 years for having consensual oral sex with another boy
in America? I thought those laws were actually never used?
I cannot believe this.
Teenage murderers get 17 years here…
I’ve never been to the US and I’m having a very hard time reconciling this sort of things with the image I grew up with. The gay rights movement started there, for gosh’s sake. How can this be possible?
How do we know the underage boy in the duo was homosexual?
Or either?
Is consent the same for young heterosexuals as for young homosexuals?
Can underage boys be seduced?, molested,? raped?
Are the psychological dynamics equivalent, different, similar?
Just a few questions to ponder.
why couldn’t (or didn’t) his lawyer fight the sentence and the Romeo & Juliet statute? If ever there was an example of lack of equal protection under the law, this is it.
Fitz says,
Yes, of course — why do you ask? I think you know. They can be seduced or molested by women and men. Men who rape men may not be gay (one source says the vast majority of men who sexually assault other men are self-named heterosexuals).
For young women and young men? The literature on this says they are different (as you’d expect given differing gender expectations).
But what we need to “ponder” here is the sentence, not that it took me much “pondering” to decide that in a case like this a sentence of even a year would be barbaric, in fact any custodial sentence would be, if this passage from the Salon piece is accurate:
Oh, I can just imagine the lines along which the anti-SSM response would run:
1. “Homosexual boys have the same right to commit sodomy with girls that heterosexual boys do!”
2. “It’s Romeo and Juliet, not Romeo and Steve!”
Gah.
Fitz wrote:
I’m not sure that I agree with Amp’s headline for this post – either or both of the kids could be gay, or bi, or just experimenting – but the point remains the same – this guy was punished extra for gay sex. Now, the idea of an 18 year-old of any gender having sex with a 14 year-old of any gender makes me uneasy; but the point here is that both het and homo statutory rape are, well, statutory rape, and should be punished in the same way.
Yes.
Certainly, but, according to the Salon article, they both have insisted it was consentual the whole time. Also, a person – particularly a young person, I think – can be seduced in to consentual sex – but that is part of what statutory rape laws are for, to keep sexual-but-not-quite-fully-responsible kids from being manipulated in to sex by older people.
betcha lesbians wouldn’t have been punished that harshly.
…?
I’m curious what you’re thinking about that, Kim.
I think that the (highly pedantic) point here is that technically, this is not discrimination based on sexual orientation but discrimination based on sex. The mariage lawsdo not discriminate against homosexuals based on sexual orientation – people of either orientation have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. It discriminates on the basis of sex- a man does not have the same right to marry a man that a woman has.
My guess is that anti-SSM folks would, as you say, not call this discrimination. They might oppose this law for OTHER reasons, e.g. “the punishment is disproportionate to the crime,” but they wouldn’t oppose it on discrimination grounds.
does anyone else get the suspicion that the people responsible for this sort of gross misbalance are the sorts who would say “well, yeah, it’s 17 years in prison, but come on, he’s gay. he’ll like prison, what with being around guys and all the sodomy.”
I seem to recall a DA using that arguement in a murder trial a few years back: that the defendant is gay, so he wouldn’t mind being raped by other men, so the jury has to sentence him to death.
utterly repugnant. I’m about 40 grand away and a bottle of tequila away from building a small artifical island and declaring it a sovereign nation.
I dream of a civil organization formed to fight this kind of unambiguously (I know it’s a rough word but in this case I’m for it – the fact that non-one has actually came here to defend the sentence already tells alot) clear unfairness. The kid is wasting his life in prison, while the bigots that locked him up are eating sirloin steak probably without slightest guilt.
Fitz: How do we know the underage boy in the duo was homosexual?
Or either?
Is consent the same for young heterosexuals as for young homosexuals?
Can underage boys be seduced?, molested,? raped?
Are the psychological dynamics equivalent, different, similar?
Just a few questions to ponder.>>
I hesitate to discuss anything with a troll, but the reason everyone on this thread is so outraged is that this law _doesn’t_ think that these questions are worth “pondering.” There is no distinction made between a young man who rapes or coerces another young man into sex and a young man who has consensual sex with his younger boyfriend. And I have the sneaking suspicion that you don’t draw any such distinctions, either, Fitz. That’s why you’re on this thread trying to rationalize turning an eighteen-year-old gay boy who had consensual sex with his younger boyfriend into a predatory rapist. Of course underage boys can be seduced, molested, and raped, just like underage girls. They can also screw around with teenage boys, just like underage girls. The psychological dynamics between girl/boyfriend and boy/boyfriend are similar enough to receive equal treatment under the law.
Monica writes: I’ve never been to the US and I’m having a very hard time reconciling this sort of things with the image I grew up with. The gay rights movement started there, for gosh’s sake. How can this be possible?
The lesbian and gay rights movement started precisely because such laws exist and were being enforced. Cops were specifically busting bars where it was rumored that gays or lesbians were congregating.
I think Fitz has a point, in a way. This is more about the sanctity of the male body than it is about homophobia. Compare this story to the story here about the “developmentally” challenged girl in Ohio.
As to what would happen if this were two girls– there would be no crime charged, but I would bet one of them would wind up in a mental ward.
I think Kim’s right. No way lesbians would be punished this harshly. Jasper, I think it’s because (and Kim may have other ideas) a lot of people think lesbians can’t have “real” sex and that “real” sex must involve a penis going into some kind of orifice.
I think you’re both wrong about lesbians.
… I know that seems to contradict what I wrote about sexism vs. homophobia. I guess I don’t like the idea that folks might feel that lesbians haven’t or don’t get punished harshly for their sexuality.
There’s my contradictory $.02!
Q Grrl, I think it’s a perception that deserves study. if it’s true, it’d be nice to have some real facts to debunk it.
In part I think evidence exists that when women/girls engage in “prohibited” sex of any form, the punishment is much more severe for females than males. That’s part of being female in a patriarchal and heterosexist society. Young lesbians are punished through rape, institutionalization, forced marriages, murder and incarceration. I think all of these are brutal and harsh.
My guess would be that lesbian sex is assumed to be available for male titillation, so female homoeroticism gets a pass as long as it doesn’t seem too real or threatening (think Tatu, Britney Spears’s thing with Jenna Jameson, etc), and this contributes to the perception that lesbianism is less stigmatized. Meanwhile, real life lesbianism is distinctly not for men, so lesbians are still punished – not for having unauthorized sex, necessarily, but for making themselves sexually unavailable to men and/or refusing to submit to male control.
Not that I have anything with which to back that up, or even a clear idea about how one might differentiate “punishment for prohibited sex” from “punishment for refusing to be sexually available to men”…