From Slate:
Good places for curious adolescents to experiment with sex: backseat of dad's Volvo, under musty tarp in garage, last row of movie theater. Bad places for curious adolescents to experiment with sex: Wednesday night PTA meeting, choir practice, Kansas.
That's right. If you're under 16 in Kansas and wondering about the costs and benefits of stealing second vs. idling at first, think again. Your attorney general has your number. Why he cares who's fumbling around to the sultry musical stylings of Aaron Carter is a mystery. And it grows odder by the day.
It all started with Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. You may remember Kline from such earlier pro-life Movies of the Week as Phill Kline Subpoenas 90 Women's Abortion Records on Child-Rape-Fighting Pretext, as well as Phill Kline Files Suit To Terminate State Funding of Abortions for Medicaid Beneficiaries. The Kansas Supreme Court will issue a decision in the former suit tomorrow. A judge dismissed the latter suit last week, which attempted to define the instant of conception as the beginning of life—to bolster his argument that abortion violates the right to life under the state constitution, despite the clear constitutional rule announced in Roe v. Wade.
But striving for the 2006 pro-life trifecta, Kline is also embroiled in a lawsuit over the mandatory reporting of all teen snogging in Kansas. The trial, which opened on Monday in federal district court, surrounds Kline's 2003 advisory opinion on the state's mandatory reporting law. While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline's written interpretation of Kansas' reporting law makes it the only state requiring that doctors, nurses, counselors, and all other care providers report—as abuse—any sexual interaction between teens under 16. Failure to report is a misdemeanor. Under Kline's view, professionals must report even when the sex is consensual, committed with partners their age, and where there is no suspicion of injury. The plaintiffs who filed suit—a group of doctors, nurses, and counselors—contend that under Kline's policy, even evidence of teen necking must be reported.
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