Don’t ask Phil Kline, cuz he don’t know.
For those who missed it, Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline reinterpreted his state law to require all health-care workers, doctors, counselors, social workers, and others to report every single instance of intimate contact between consenting teens under 16, on the theory that each such incident constitutes a rape, regardless of the parties’ mutual consent. What started as his office’s zealous prosecution of sexual abuse is turning into a first-year lit class on the hermeneutics of exegesis. And as the trial grinds on, no one appears to be more frustrated than U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten, who described the proceedings last week as “wallowing in a sea of uncertainty.” This Tuesday Marten went further: “We have also in the course of several days engaged in totally asinine game playing in terms of semantics.”
If you’re going to make a law against “intimate contact,” you should probably know what “intimate contact” means, right? Well, apparently, illegal intimate contact in Kansas is “Whatever Phil Kline thinks is icky”:
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who has concentrated on protecting young teens from sexual abuse, drew a legal distinction Friday between the activities of boys and girls.
Kline’s comments about oral sex included stating that it is illegal for boys 15 and younger to perform the act — but he wasn’t sure if the same is true for girls.
Boys receiving oral sex = good clean fun. Girls receiving oral sex = BAD and WRONG and IMMORAL. Additionally,
Illegal sexual activity is conduct “which is so clearly offensive as to shock the moral conscience of a reasonable person.” He further refined this answer to explain that it’s thus a crime for a 15-year-old boy to perform oral sex on a 15-year-old girl, but it’s only a crime for a 15-year-old girl engaging in oral sex on a 15-year-old boy “if there’s penetration.” When questioned as to what such penetration might involve, Kline responded, “I’m not certain.”
So a reasonable person is shocked at girls getting off, but not boys. Fair enough.
But here’s where I’m confused: If the standard is “penetration,” wouldn’t giving oral sex to boys be a bit more, uh, penetrative? Not to mention the fact that if we’re worried about things like STIs, you’re much more likely to get one by giving oral sex to a man than to a woman. And if it’s not a crime for an underage boy to receive oral sex from an underage girl, would it be a crime for an underage boy to receive oral sex from an underage boy? Or would that offend our moral sensibilities, since it involves a boy taking a supposedly submissive sexual role? I’m betting Kline wouldn’t cut Steve and Jim the same slack he’d cut Steve and Jane when it comes to Steve getting head. Because it’s not about the sexual act at all — it’s about misogyny, homophobia and general hostility toward any sexual behavior outside of what one guy deems acceptable.
If you live in Kansas, you’re probably very confused. So let me (and Slate) help you out. Here are the standards of underage sexual conduct in your state:
* According to Kline’s advisory opinion that launched the dispute, “any lewd fondling or touching of the person of either the child or the offender, done or submitted to with the intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desires.” That would, in theory, include what my high-school friends would have called “kissing.”
* According to Kline’s trial testimony last week: Illegal sexual activity is conduct “which is so clearly offensive as to shock the moral conscience of a reasonable person.” He further refined this answer to explain that it’s thus a crime for a 15-year-old boy to perform oral sex on a 15-year-old girl, but it’s only a crime for a 15-year-old girl engaging in oral sex on a 15-year-old boy “if there’s penetration.” When questioned as to what such penetration might involve, Kline responded, “I’m not certain.”
* According to Kline’s Assistant Attorney General Camille Nohe, only “significant sexual conduct” such as vaginal or anal intercourse and oral sex among willing adolescents must be reported under the Kline policy.
* But according to Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston, “the law requires reporting of all illegal sexual activities between underage adolescents. That would include a boy touching the breast of a girl or either adolescent touching the genitals of the other.”
* And according to Cathy Hubbard, program administrator for the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Service’s Child Protection Unit? It was her initial understanding that Kline’s 2003 opinion, which reinterpreted the state’s reporting law, mandated reporting of all sexual activities by underage youths, but within the last month, an attorney for Kline’s office informed her that the interpretation applied only to sexual intercourse.
Hope that clears things up.