Private: On the ACLU's challenge to Kansas' "Romeo and Juliet" Law

The Supreme Court of Kansas has heard a challenge by the ACLU on behalf of a gay teenager sentenced to 16 years in prison for statutory rape. The 18 year-old, who engaged in consentual oral sex with a 15 year-old boy, was held to be unprotected by Kansas' "Romeo and Juliet" law, which substantially reduces the penalty for sex with a minor when both parties are in their teens. The Romeo and Juliet law only applies to heterosexual sex. The state bases the destinction on the claim that young people who engage in same-sex intimacy are so impressionable that they may be swayed into becoming gay. The 153,000-member National Association of Social Workers "debunks" that claim in an amicus brief filed in the case, with the president of NASW's Kansas chapter, Dorthy Stucky Halley, stating that the more severe punishment was based on "reasons that we as social workers know aren't valid."

Last year, the United States Supreme Court sent an earlier ruling in the case back to the state system to be reconsidered in light of its ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, a move that the ACLU described as further affirming "that states can no longer penalize the sexual conduct of gay people differently." The teen has already been in prison four and a half years, more than three times as long as a straight teen would have for the same offense. Dick Kurtenbach, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, said "we're not saying the state shouldn't punish those who break the law. We are only asking that the state do the right thing and treat gay teenagers the same as it does straight teenagers."

Equality and Liberty