Valentine's Day

February 27, 2004

The old Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times, came to mind this past Valentine's day weekend as I read about the lines of people being married by the City of San Francisco. This past years has become an interesting time for gay civil rights. From the striking down of US sodomy laws to the legalization of gay marriage in Canada and then Massachusetts. It must seem to straight people that we have come very far in a very short time. Those of us who are gay, however, know that these rights have been a long time coming.

There was a particularly good article in the New York Times on February 19 profiling the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. He decided to order the County (San Francisco is a city and a county), to begin issuing marriage licenses as a result of attending Bush's State of the Union Address. After listening to Bush speak against same-sex marriage, Mayor Newsom thought to himself, This is not the world I grew up aspiring to live in, that he was talking about. I just found some of the words divisive. Upon his return, he became convinced that he had a moral obligation to grant these licenses.

I fully expect that the over-3,000 licenses now granted in San Francisco will be declared void. But for a short time, over 3,000 same-sex couples have a marriage license. As Mr. Newsom said, I just say to the president, ‘Come out and meet with the three-plus thousand couples that have committed themselves to one another, committed to a long-term loving relationship with equal status, the same status that he and his wife are afforded. And recognize the spirit and the pride that comes with that.’

With all that's been going on, however, it is easy to lose focus on some of the other legal issues that continue to effect our community. Despite the victory in the Supreme Court striking down US sodomy laws, several states still try to limit our right to love.

Shortly after the Lawrence decision struck down the Texas sodomy laws, I mentioned the case of Matthew Limon, the 18-year-old Kansas man who was sent to prison for 17 years for having consensual sex with a minor.

Kansas law makes any sexual activity involving a person under 16 illegal. The 1999 Romeo and Juliet law, however, provides lesser penalties for consensual sex when one partner is 19 or under and the other partner�s age is within four years. Convicted of sodomy for having sex in 2000 at age 18 with a 14-year-old boy, Matthew R. Limon was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. Had Limon�s partner been an underage girl, he could have been sentenced at most to one year and three months in prison.

Limon appealed the case to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the law singled out homosexuals for disparate treatment, allowing them to be sentenced to much greater punishment. Several days after the Lawrence case, the US Supreme Court directed the Kansas Supreme Court to reconsider its decision in the light of the Lawrence decision. Unfortunately for Limon, on January 30, 2004, in a 2-1 decision, a panel of the Kansas State Court of Appeals upheld the law and Limon's sentence. The case will next be appealed to either the full Court of Appeals or to the Kansas Supreme Court and may need to go to the US Supreme Court again.

Other states have been busy trying to ignore or minimize the Lawrence decision. The Virginia legislature has been busy with an attempt to replace their statute forbidding sodomy in private with one prohibiting sodomy in public. In Florida, which has the only US law forbidding homosexuals from adopting, a federal court of appeals upheld this law, arguing that the Lawrence decision was completely inapplicable to the Florida law, a decision which seems to fly in the face of the majority decision in Lawrence.

Despite the Lawrence decision, the US military continues to prohibit sodomy and continues to discriminate against gays and lesbians in the services. Immigration laws in the US continue to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples. In many US states, it is still permissible to discriminate against us in jobs, housing, and other crucial areas. Clearly, there is still much that needs to change. Please be sure to send a contribution to organizations such as Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, and the ACLU Gay Rights Project, who've won some hard-fought battles and continue to work hard to win our rights.