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On October 21, 2005, the Kansas Supreme Court declared discriminatory punishment for underage gay sex unconstitutional. The ruling gave Matthew Limon a measure of freedom after five years and four months of incarceration.

In February 2000, a week after he had turned 18, Limon was caught having mutually voluntary oral sex with a boy just under 15. (See The Guide, March 2004.) Both resided at Lakemary Center, a facility for the developmentally disabled in Paola, Kansas, southwest of Kansas City.

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If Limon's sex partner had been a 14-year-old girl, he would have spent 15 months or less behind bars. Because his partner was another boy, he was charged with criminal sodomy. Found guilty at a bench trial, he was sentenced to a prison term of 17 years and two months, to be followed by sex-offender registration and a five-year period of supervision, or by one-day-to-lifetime civil commitment.

Kansas's "Romeo and Juliet" statute mandates a degree of leniency in statutory rape cases involving minors between the ages of 14 and 19 with less than a four-year age difference. However, the law originally stated that the parties involved had to be "members of the opposite sex"-- shutting out gay teenagers entirely.

Rejecting Limon's initial bid to have his conviction reversed in 2002, the three-judge Kansas Court of Appeals cited Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case in which the US Supreme Court upheld the sodomy statute of the state of Georgia, as justification for the teenager's prosecution, conviction, and sentence. The following year, however, the US Supreme Court overturned Bowers in its landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision eviscerating state sodomy laws. Brought before the federal high court by the American Civil Liberties Union, Limon's case was tossed back to the Kansas Court of Appeals for post-Lawrence rethinking.

But on January 30, 2004, the appeal was turned down a second time. Writing for a 2-1 majority, Judge Henry Green held Lawrence to be "factually and legally distinguishable from this case."

Limon's lawyers brought the case back before the Kansas Supreme Court the following August. ACLU attorney James Esseks asked the seven-judge panel to void Limon's conviction on a range of constitutional grounds, beginning with the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under law. The equal protection issue had been raised as early as Limon's original criminal trial. After Lawrence v. Texas, however, US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring opinion had strengthened that argument's power.

Saving kiddies' souls

Esseks's opponent before the state high court was Deputy Attorney General Jared Maag, who reiterated arguments that the Kansas legislature had "rational reasons" for penalizing gay sex more harshly-- disease prevention, child protection, promotion of traditional marriage. Maag's presentation was supported by an amicus brief from Liberty Counsel, a religious-conservative legal resource based in Orlando, Florida, and on the campus of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Unanimously siding with the ACLU, the Kansas Supreme Court found that "the State does not have a rational basis for the statutory classification" designated in the Romeo and Juliet law. The court did not strike down the statute, but ordered the phrase "members of the opposite sex" deleted from its wording.

Limon, now 23, was released from prison on November 5 and placed under house arrest at his aunt and uncle's farm. On November 18, Miami County prosecutor David Miller hauled him back into court to be indicted under the revised, equal-opportunity Romeo and Juliet law. Admitting that Matthew Limon has already served the maximum 15-month jail term four times over, MIller says he is merely trying to insure that Limon receives up to 60 months of closely supervised probation. A likely side effect will be a permanent place on the Kansas sex-offender registry.

As The Guide goes to press, Limon is scheduled to return to court in January 2006 to enter a plea on the new charge of "unlawful voluntary sexual relations." Meanwhile, complaining that "activists" on the Kansas Supreme Court have been rewriting state law to excuse perversion, conservative Kansans are demanding tighter legislative control of the state judiciary system.