Demagogue

QUESTION 1: If you were a judge, what kind of punishment would you give a male who was 18 years old who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old female?

QUESTION 2: If you were a judge, what kind of punishment would you give a male who was 18 years old who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old male?

Now, compare your answers to the sentencing procedures that used to apply in Kansas courts until Friday when (happily) the state's Supreme Court struck down the law on which these criminal penalties were based.

According to the Associated Press:

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts, saying "moral disapproval" of such conduct is not enough to justify the different treatment.

... Gay rights groups praised the ruling, while conservatives bitterly complained that the court intruded on the Legislature's authority to make the laws.

The case involved an 18-year-old man, Matthew R. Limon, who was found guilty in 2000 of performing a sex act on a 14-year-old boy and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Had one of them been a girl, state law would have dictated a maximum sentence of 15 months.

The high court ordered that Limon be resentenced as if the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same. He has already served more than five years.

... Kansas law prohibits any sexual activity involving a person under 16. However, the state's 1999 "Romeo and Juliet" law specifies short prison sentences or probation for sexual activity when an offender is under 19 and the age difference between participants is less than four years — but only for opposite-sex encounters.