Author Archives: Tin Man

Limon v. Kansas II

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Last week a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld a 17-year jail sentence given to an 18-year-old guy who gave a blowjob to a 14-year-old guy. (Here are the majority, concurring and dissenting opinions.) This was his third “offense.” Seventeen years in jail for a gay blowjob! If one of them had been female, the sentence would have been, at most, 15 months.

I blogged about this in June. The Kansas Court of Appeals had previously ruled the same way; the Kansas Supreme Court had declined to review the case and it went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two days after Lawrence, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment:

The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Kansas for further consideration in light of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003).

The U.S. Supreme Court was basically telegraphing to the Kansas Appeals Court that the original Kansas decision was unconstitutional. “The court’s directive… that the Kansas courts reconsider the Limon case with Lawrence v. Texas in mind was tantamount to an instruction to set aside the prison term imposed on Mr. Limon,” the New York Times said in June. But apparently the justices should have been more explicit, because the judges of the Kansas Appeals Court (two of them, anyway) chose to ignore this directive. I don’t see why the justices didn’t just reverse the ruling instead of sending it back to Kansas for reconsideration. Judge Green is correct that Limon v. Kansas involved a minor and the Equal Protection Clause, while the Lawrence decision involved adults and was based on the Due Process Clause. (Justice O’Connor’s concurrence was based the Equal Protection Clause.) But this still stinks. I hope this case goes back to the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices reverse.

So, yeah. Homosexual sex in Kansas with someone who’s 14 or 15 can get you 17 years in jail. That’s right. If a high school senior and a high school freshman in Kansas have gay sex, the senior can go to prison for SEVENTEEN YEARS.

Sure, let’s send him to prison. No chance for gay sex there.

This is outrageous.

Soldier’s Girl

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winchell.jpgLast night I watched Soldier’s Girl, a TV movie based on the true story of U.S. Army soldier Pfc. Barry Winchell. Winchell was murdered in Tennessee by a fellow Army soldier who suspected that Winchell was gay. In reality, Winchell was in love with a pre-operative transsexual, Calpernia Addams, and therefore he didn’t fit neatly into one category.

I became intrigued by this movie after seeing a clip of it on the Golden Globes a couple of weeks ago (it received three nominations). It’s available on Netflix. It’s dramatic — simultaneously brutal and uplifting — and Lee Pace, who plays Calpernia, is terrific. I highly recommend it.

Here’s a great summary of the case that was based in part on an interview with Calpernia.

Superbowl

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I attempted to watch the Superbowl last night. Well, I attempted to watch the commercials, at least. And you know what? Either Superbowl commercials are not as good as they used to be, or I’ve just gotten older, or I watch so little TV these days that TV commercials have become a foreign language to me, or commercials are more fun when you’re watching them with other people. Most of the Superbowl commercials involved some combination of animals, bodily functions and misogyny. If I were a 14-year-old hetero teenage boy, I would have loved it. My favorite commercial (out of those I saw; I turned off the TV after the halftime show and wasn’t even looking at the TV when the infamous breast moment happened) was the one with the braying donkey who wants to be a Clydesdale horse. I also liked the one where the bear attempts to buy Pepsi with a fake ID. For some reason the idea of a bear trying to pass for a mountain man was cute.

Other than that, though, I felt like all of America was in on some joke that I just wasn’t getting. The Superbowl is one of those things that make me feel entirely alienated from the rest of the country. (This is another.)

Eventually I gave up and went back to my book (which I suspect not too many Americans are reading).