Kline appears on national talk show

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Oct 1, 2003 by Chris Grenz Capital-Journal

By Chris Grenz

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Attorney General Phill Kline told a national audience Tuesday evening that a civil liberties group's argument in a Kansas court case involving sex with a developmentally disabled teenager "is a remarkable assault on the authority of the family."

Kline appeared for about five minutes on The O'Reilly Factor, a nationally syndicated news talk show airing on Fox News to discuss a Kansas case currently before a state appeals court. Kline believes if the case --- Limon v. Kansas --- is overturned, it could invalidate state laws regarding marriage and sex with children.

Kline said Tuesday evening that the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that teenagers have a constitutional right to have sexual relations with anyone they want.

"It is absolutely a remarkable assault on the authority of the family because when your daughter walks out the door and says, 'I'm going to meet my 40-year-old boyfriend' and you try to guide her and parent her, and say, 'No, that's not going to happen' and she holds up an ACLU card and says, 'Call my attorney,' we are living in a different type of America," Kline said.

The ACLU is representing Matthew Limon, convicted in 2000 of having sex at age 18 with a 14-year-old boy when both were residents of a Paola group home for the developmentally disabled. Limon was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. But had one of the teens been female, the maximum sentence would have been one year and three months in prison.

In introducing the segment, host Bill O'Reilly said "on paper, it looks like it's a little unfair." But after hearing Kline's interpretation of the ACLU's argument, O'Reilly said the group had a "disgraceful" position.

"I am just stunned that the ACLU is saying that a child of 13 or 14 has a constitutional right to make a decision to have sex with an adult," O'Reilly said. "If this continues, we're not going to be living in America anymore. We're going to be living in some country with no boundaries."

No one from the ACLU appeared on O'Reilly's show. During an earlier, unrelated segment, O'Reilly said the ACLU "won't talk to me because I ask questions that they can't answer."

But responding to similar comments from Kline earlier, an ACLU attorney said Kline had distorted the group's arguments and dismissed his statements as "an act of desperation."

Chris Grenz can be reached

at (785) 296-3005

or chris.grenz@cjonline.com.

Phill Kline

says ACLU argument is an 'assault' on the family