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Announcing its 2-1 ruling on January 30, the Kansas Court of Appeals has upheld the criminal sodomy conviction of Matthew Limon for the second time.

Limon is a musically talented young man whose IQ has been measured at somewhere between 50 and 84. Soon after his 18th birthday, Limon and a boy four weeks short of 15 were caught having consensual oral sex. Both were enrolled at the Lakemary Center, a 64-resident, private group home for the developmentally disabled in rural Paola, Kansas.

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Although there was no question that the younger boy had been a willing participant, the state cast the incident in the perpetrator-victim mold required by statutory rape law. Limon had been involved in two previous sexual incidents as a juvenile; the records of those cases are sealed. Because of his sexual history, and above all because he is gay, Limon was sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison. The sentence was imposed by Judge Richard Smith following a bench trial at Miami County Court on August 10, 2000. In a parallel situation, a heterosexual youth would have been given a sentence of 15 months.

At his sentencing, Limon, whose parents are devout Baptists, quoted Scripture, said "I know I deserve the worst punishment," and begged for treatment. Sent to a correctional facility at Ellsworth, where he remains, he has received minimal counseling of any kind.

Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), calls the case "heartbreaking and appalling."

In 2002, the judges who turned down Limon's original appeal cited the US Supreme Court's repudiation of a challenge to Georgia's sodomy law in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). Bowers gave judicial approval to the idea that there was no constitutional right to consensual homosexual contact in private. When the American Civil Liberties Union took Limon's appeal to the Supreme Court, it was on grounds that his sentence, administered under a Kansas "Romeo and Juliet" law that favors heterosexuals, violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In the aftermath of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case that overturned Bowers and gutted sodomy laws nationwide, the high court remanded the Limon case to the Kansas Court of Appeals for reconsideration. "Usually, when that happens," says Chris Hampton of the ACLU's Gay and Lesbian Rights Projects, "the Supreme Court is offering a lower court an opportunity to correct mistakes."

But the appeal failed again, because two members of the three-judge appeals court panel refused to accept the equal-protection argument central to the Lawrence decision itself. They instead fell in line with Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline's contention that judicial guarantees of fairness to gay people would usurp the power of the Legislature to set moral guidelines through law.

Arguing the case before the court, Kline also made the point that a role model's breach of trust is more damaging if it occurs in a context of homosexual relations. Straining to justify discrimination, Judge Henry W. Green echoed Kline's arguments. In his majority opinion, Green observed that gay sex could entail special health risks, and that heterosexual relations were more acceptable because of their reproductive potential. He pointed out approvingly that heterosexual statutory rape could lead to marriage, an institution the state has a vested interest in encouraging, while gay statutory rape cannot result in that purportedly happy ending.

"What we're seeing here is a rebellion against Lawrence," says Hampton.

"The Right has been fomenting an extraordinary backlash against the Lawrence decision," adds NGLTF's Matt Foreman. Judge Green's attitudes are widely endorsed by religious conservatives-- especially those engaged in campaigns against gay marriage.

The Legal Counsel, a Florida-based Christian legal resource headed by Mat Staver, a minister and lawyer with ties to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, filed an amicus brief on the side of Limon's prosecutors. In a published diatribe, attorney Jan LaRue of Concerned Women for America cites Limon's "sexual abuse of a child," and quotes a screed by right-wing propagandist John R. Diggs, who insists gay sex means "`extreme risks of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), physical injuries, mental disorders and even a shortened life span.'" During a recent appearance on the Fox Network's "O'Reilly Factor," Attorney General Kline called efforts to reverse Limon's conviction "an absolutely remarkable assault on the authority of the family."

Family-values rhetoric helped inspire the Kansas "Romeo and Juliet" law, passed in 1999, that resulted in Limon's draconian sentence. According to the statute, "Unlawful voluntary sexual relations is engaging in voluntary: (1) sexual intercourse; (2) sodomy; or (3) lewd fondling or touching, with a child who is 14 years of age but less than 16 years of age and the offender is less than 19 years of age and less than four years older than the child and child and the offender are the only parties involved and are members of the opposite sex."

In other words, when the "child and the offender are the only parties involved" and members of the same sex, differing standards come into play. All states have statutory rape laws; many states have Romeo-and-Juliet provisions making consensual sex among teenagers a lesser offense. In this case, Matthew Limon was given the same treatment he might have received if he had been a 40-year-old man who sexually coerced a child. Cultural biases guarantee inequities in the application of such statutes.

Romeo and Juliet laws may not apply, for example, if the older partner is black. The Limon case parallels that of Marcus Dixon of Rome, Georgia, an African-American high school football star convicted at 18 of having raped his white girlfriend, a classmate who was three months under 16. Dixon, a model student with a 3.96 grade-point average, was given a 10-year sentence, the allowable minimum for aggravated child molestation under stringent sentencing laws passed by the Georgia legislature in 1995. His lawyers, who are appealing the March 2003 conviction, maintain that the sex was consensual and that Dixon should only have been charged with statutory rape, which carries a maximum prison term of one year.

Matthew Limon, meanwhile, has the option of taking his case to the Kansas Supreme Court. If a ruling is made in his favor, the state can mount a challenge. Ultimately, the inequities of Kansas law may have to be brought back to the US Supreme Court.

In prison now for nearly four years, Limon, who turned 22 on February 9, may remain incarcerated until he is 36-- or, if one-day-to-lifetime civil commitment is sought, considerably longer. Upon release, he will be required to enter his name in the Kansas Sex Offender Registry and submit to five years' post-release supervision.

"We're not asking for a lower age of consent or even that Matthew not be punished," says the ACLU's Chris Hampton. "We're asking that the law be applied equally to everyone, which is what our Constitution says should be happening." ­Jim D'Entremont