Underage Gay Sex Worse than Underage Straight Sex in Kansas - Until Now

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The fact that the 14 year old in question is mentally challenged seems to have been lost along the way, but to me, that was a major factor in the sentence. That brings the validity of consent into question, and thus more serious charges and stiffer penalties...

 

I do agree that consent can be questioned in the case of someone who is mentally challenged. However, it seems that the perpetrator wasn't intellectually much better. This could be viewed as a mitigating circumstance - maybe he didn't understand fully what he was doing was wrong.

I also have to go back to my maturity statement, as several people have asked me to clarify it. What I meant by that is that the vast majoirty of people are capable of reproducing at age 14. They are mature in terms of sexual development. That is not to imply that they are mentally fully mature. In fact, one can claim that the exact opposite is true, as people in their mid-teens are some of the most irresponsible people you'll ever find. However, while they might not make responsible choices, or act responsibly in a great many ways, most 14-year olds understand what sex is, how to have sex, and that having unprotected sex can result in acquiring an STD or conceiving a child. I don't think that concept is any more difficult than say, algebra, and we teach that to 14-year olds all the time.

So, despite the fact that 14-year olds may not understand the life-long reprecussions of what having a child means, I think that they can quite easily grasp the immediate potential consequences of having sex. There has to be some basis for a legal standard for an age of consent, and having the ability to reproduce seems like a pretty logical time to draw the line.

As far as whether a stiffer sentence should apply to to homosexual under-age acts, and whether or not a person can be harmed more by a homosexual encounter as opposed to a heterosexual encounter, again, I can only say that it is impossible to quantify.

In my earlier example I used someone who was traumatized after being involved in an accident with someone who had a suspended drivers license. I was not trying to imply that the level of guilt of a person driving with a suspended license was equal to that of a sex offender. What I was trying to imply was that the level of trauma experienced by someone, in terms of life-long psychological effects may very well be the same, or at least similar.

So I have no way of knowing if this specific act would have had less of an effect on the 14-year old if the 18-year old had been female. If the 14-year old was heterosexual, maybe he would have found the act with a female less traumatic - maybe even enjoyable. However, if he is homosexual, if the offender was female, he may have found that more traumatic than the current circumstance.

I guess what I keep going back to is whether or not it should even be a crime for a 14-year old to have any type of sexual contact with an 18-year old, regardless of the sex of the poeple involved. In a typical child molestation case, I would think that the victim would have to be younger, the perpetrator older, or in most cases, both. That having been said, it seem irrational to punish someone more severely just because the act was homosexual. Especially in such a case as this, where the sentence is more than 10 times longer than what a typical sentence is.

 

Good point dmc. It gets even more ridiulous in some states. Take Maryland for example, where the age of consent is either 14 or 16, and it depends on who you're having sex with! If you're 16, you can consent to having sex with anyone, but if you are 14 or 15, you can only consent to have sex with someone who is also a minor, i.e., under 18. If you're under 14, you can't consent at all, and it's always considered statutory rape.

So take this for a ridiculous situation. A 14-year old girl can legally consent to sex with her 17-year old boyfriend, but it becomes illegal the following year when he turns 18 and she turns 15.

 

So take this for a ridiculous situation. A 14-year old girl can legally consent to sex with her 17-year old boyfriend, but it becomes illegal the following year when he turns 18 and she turns 15.

Certainly the most ridiculous law ever! how could the ever overlook this flaw I wonder... I think 18-year old offenders of this law will be prosecuted, it would really be insane

 

That's what people get when they don't want to wait until marriage.

 

Weren't they both ... erm, challenged?

 

Can you imagine the drool puddle after that event? Yicht!...

 

Fel, since the court convicted the 18 year old, they must have considered him criminally responsible, and believed that he should have known better. The belief, therefore, would be that the degree of disability was not significant enough to let him off the hook. Besides, I still think that an 18 year old and a 14 year old of opposing genders should get more than 20 months...

 

You mean the minor should be punished for having sex with the adult, too?

 

Of course, they were taking advantage of adults

In response to the original post, the sentence was too harsh due to the mental capacity of the 2 males, and the fact that underage gay sex is no worse than underage straight sex (in my opinion of course).

 

That's fine, but I still think that the terms should be the same regardless of the sex of the participants. I'm of the opinion that it probably isn't wrong for an 18-year old to be romantically involved with a 14-year old.

 

This is just my opinion Aldeth, but if you take a 14 year-old and an 18 year-old, you will notice a huge difference in maturity, however there will not be much of a difference between a 24 year-old and a 28 year-old, yet both are only a 4 year difference.

When I was 18, I would never have even though about dating a 14 year-old girl.

On a more sinister thought - what about a 10 year-old female and a 14 year-old male? Its very easy for an older person to take advantage of the younger.

 

Cuchulainn, Since the 18 year old was convicted, therefore he had to know that what he was doing was against the law. Further, the sentence took into account the fact that the younger male was in worse shape than the older male.

AFI, So where does the court get off telling the original judge how to do his job. The higher court, IMO, ignored key factors in the original sentence. 20 months for an 18 year old man having sex with a 14 year old girl is a sick joke...

Cuchulainn (again), The 10 year old is a stiffer charge (no pun intended). Unfortunately, juvenile crime laws would likely let the little punk off with a lighter penalty than he deserves.

 

Certainly you're not suggesting the courts are unfallible?

The real issue, though, is the severity of the punishment compared to that of a heterosexual counterpart. I find it hard to believe the extra years came from the "being challenged"-issue, since they were both just that, even if one more than the other.

As for a gay "encounter" being more damaging than a straight one...just phrase it a little differently, in a different order, and you'll see how absurd it is:

For messing with an underaged boy you get 17 years.
For messing with an underaged girl you get 15 months.

Are the boys somehow more precious and valuable in the society's eyes? Look at it like this:

"My next door neighbor was caught abusing a child."
"The ourage! The sheer outrage!"
"But hey, the victim was a girl."
"Oh. Well, go easy on him."

"My next door neighbor was caught abusing a child."
"The ourage! The sheer outrage!"
"The victim was a boy."
"The OUTRAGE! HANG his a**!"

What's wrong with this picture?

On the age thing, I agree with Cúchulainn - the odds of a 14-year old being even nearly as mature as your average 18-year old are miniscule at best.

 

Oh wow - looks like I got some 'splainin to do here. First of all, I am in no way saying that an 18-year old is not more mature than a 14-year old, nor am I saying that I would want to date someone who was 14 when I was 18.

The point I was making is that we arbitrarily decide when it becomes OK for teenagers to have sex, and when it becomes not OK. As dmc rightly points out, it wasn't all that unusual as recently as the 1800s for people to get married in their mid-teens. Is society just more enlightened at this point that we can definitively say it's a bad practice?

Or look at it another way - you say it's not right for an 18-year old to have a sex with a 14-year old. Is it OK for a 15-year old to have sex with an 18-year old? Or what about a 14-year old and a 17-year old? Or what about 14 and 16? Or 16 and 18? Now obviously, if you think you shouldn't have sex until you're married, you would think all of those situations are wrong, but taking marriage breifly out of the equation, how old do you think you should be before you start having sex, and what age limits do you place on those people? Keep in mind that while you can't get married in too many places at age 14, there are still several states that allow you to get married at 16 with parental consent.

I'm not OK with a 14-year old having sex with a 10-year old, for several reasons. The most obvious example there is that 10-year olds are generally not sexually mature, and it seems unlikely that one could validly consent to to sex before reaching sexual maturity. Heck, as any 10-year old boy knows, girls are yucky and have cooties.

The point I'm making is that while I understand a line has to be drawn at some point, I think each situation should be considered carefully. Isn't it possible that a 14-year old could fall in love with an 18-year old (and vice versa of course) and that they validly consented to sex? Or why is it OK for a 14-year old to consent to sex with a 17-year old partner, but not OK if the partner is 18?

As far as where the new judge gets the right to tell the first judge how to do his job, it's quite simple. While I didn't read the brief to the case, I'm assuming that the 18-year old's lawyer filed the appeal on the basis that his client's Constitutional rights had been violated. Allow me to refer you to the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states:

(bold added by me for emphasis)

Now, if the usual punishment is 15 months for this crime, I would say that sentencing someone to 17 years - which is more than 13 times longer - certainly qualifies as an unusual punishment. Now you have every right to write to your Congressman is you feel that the laws against juvenile sex crimes are too lenient, but the fact remains that judges are expected to rule similar judgements in similar cases. Of course, there are always extenuating and mitigating circumstances to consider, and so a judge may reasonably impose a term of 10 months or 20 months instead of the typical 15 months for example. He probably could even get away with 2 or 3 years without too much of a fight. But when you raise the sentence all the way up to 17 years, that no longer represents justice.

 

@Aldeth: Yes, no instance of sex without marriage is right. There are situations without fault, but in no case is it right.

As for age, 14 for women and 16 for men is OK per canon law.

@Susipaisti:

There is a large disproportion and 17 years for consensual sex is a big joke, as he could get away with a suspended prison term for raping a grown woman. And while I believe homosexual sex is materially worse than heterosexual sex (i.e. as an act itself, not getting into people's minds to evaluate the attitude towards the act), there's no kind of consensual sex worse than rape.

They aren't, but they are approximately right in most cases, if not always perfectly accurate in all detail.

[ October 27, 2005, 17:03: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Well, you techinically didn't answer the question of what age becomes OK to start having sex, but you did give acceptable marrying age, and assuming that regardless of age, it's OK to have sex once you get married, it does sort of answer the question in a round about manner.

So, according to canon law then a 14-year old girl could in fact marry a 16-year old boy? Then assuming that those ages represent minimums, a 14-year old girl could also marry an 18-year old. And then they could have sex, and it would be OK?

You see, this is what I'm talking about. Even the Catholic Church (which is notoriously conservative) seems to think that it isn't an impossibility for a 14-year old to be involved in a loving relationship with someone who is considerably (4 years) older than her. And that's my point. In some cases it may not be acceptable, but in some other cases it should be OK for a 14-year old to be with an 18-year old.

So it does seem to imply that the sentence was so severe because it was a same sex issues.

 

Yes, sex is generally OK when you're married, although it surely isn't okay to require sex of your spouse if he or she is in no condition for it. It's also bad to be negligent of your own health, too.

Canon law has its own minimum age but there is a rule that civil law requirements per each country are to be followed, which means you won't really get a religious marriage if you're too young for a civil one.

It would be bad to read the age requirement as it's okay for any man 16-N to marry any woman 14-N. On the other hand, age is not everything. The legal rule in canon law doesn't provide the answer to such questions. It only names the age before which marriage won't be performed.

And yes, the sentence was only so severe because of the same sex issue, of course. It should have been less severe than it was but more severe than cross-gender, I think.

 

I probably should clarify the "Certainly you're not suggesting the courts are unfallible?"-comment. It just seemed to me that some people made additional assumptions of the case's circumstances based solely on the sentence given, thus trusting the judgement a bit blindly.

Aldeth: Yeah, I see what you're saying with the age thing. Even though the law probably is in place to protect the youngsters, the whole thing is not so simple as to draw the line at age x. Individuals are different, circumstances vary greatly.

As an aside, for someone like me who doesn't object to premarital sex, ages like 14 and 16 sound way too early for marriage. But that's irrelevant.