Judge smacks down fundamentalist Attorney General Kline of Kansas, who ordered doctors to report as a - SEX CRIME - ANY consensual sex activity they learn about from their minor patients, including when teenage girls seek birth control.

See this brief news article: Judge smacks down Kansas Attorney General Kline’s order that Doctors must snitch on sexually active youths.

Attorney General Kline sought to discourage sexual behavior among young people. Since he and his religious Republican party have been unable to persuade minors to stop sexplay, they decided to try another tactic, the totalitarian tactic: Order the minors’ doctors to rat them out for ANY consensual sex conduct, including requesting birth control, among many other things.. Presumeably, the sex police would then visit the homes of the girl and her boyfriend.

A court ruled that even young people have a right to privacy, and the state’s sexual abuse laws do not cover consensual sexual activity young people might engage in. Read excerpts from a news article below.

The fundamentalist attorney general took it upon himself to force everyone to follow his religious preferences, by re-interpretting an existing law that mandated the reporting of sex abuse. He redefined abuse. He decreed that henceforth, ALL underage sex conduct whether consenusal or not is, ipso facto, Injurious Sex Conduct and therefore is “abuse” that must be reported.

Parent would not argue with Kline’s hopes: discourage teen pregnancy, discourage STDs, etc.

But I think the great majority of parents, who probably engaged in sexplay as youngsters, don’t like the idea that consensual sexplay will be reported to the sex police by Doctors. That’s just too much Big Brother for them, too much like the Soviet Union for them (where everyone must be a snitch).

I recall years ago Rush Limbaugh lambasting liberals for their efforts to ban smoking, crying rightly about the “nanny culture”. Sure would be nice to see Rush apply the same kind of thoughtfulness to the excesses of the religious right.

In the court case, the judge defined consensual underage sex as follows:

See Kansas judge permanently enjoins Kline’s order from being enforced - PDF file.

As the phrase “consensual underage sexual activity” appears in this opinion, “consensual” means: 1) no coercion was involved; 2) no appreciable power differential existed between partners; and 3) the age difference between partners is no more than three years. “Underage” means neither of the persons involved is younger than twelve years of age and that at least one of the persons is under the age of sixteen. “Sexual activity” includes: penile-vaginal intercourse, oral sex, anal sex, and touching of another’s genitalia by either sex.

Here’s a quote from the Attorney General Kline’s infamous order:

Taken from the judge’s opinion. See Kansas judge permanently enjoins Kline’s order from being enforced - PDF file.

We are aware that although this opinion is limited to the question posed, the consequences of the conclusion reach further. Other situations that might trigger a mandated reporter’s obligation, because sexual activity of a minor becomes known, include a teenage girl or boy who seeks medical attention for a sexually transmitted disease, a teenage girl who seeks medical attention for a pregnancy, or a teenage girl seeking birth control who discloses she has already been sexually active.

If such an order had been enforced, more pregnancies and health problems would have occurred, as young people would have kept secrets from doctors

Ask yourself how minors would react if such a law had not been Stopped by the courts:

All minors in Kansas would have instantly SHUT UP around their doctors.

They would have bought their birth control off the internet.

Some would have died from bad internet medicine, and a whole hell of a lot would have become needlessly pregnant, leading to more abortions and more of the problems that flow from unwanted pregnancies. ….. Wonderful result, Mr. Kline, more pregnancies, more abortions, more STDs gone untreated, and kids scared to be honest with the doctor! Ahh, but your conscience was satisfied, that you had done your part to advance your religious agenda.

We should be wary of trusting fundamentalists to protect our personal liberties - they are compelled by their faith to be totalitarian, to use governmental coercion to impose their dogma

Fundamentalists are good decent people, but we should be quite skeptical of their fitness to govern in a pluralistic society, because they may feel compelled by their faith to impose their dogma on others, to LIMIT the freedom and rights of others, using the coercive power of government, in the name of God.

Religious right radicals rail against the liberals for using the legal system, but liberals are typically seeking to EXPAND personal rights and freedoms, not contract them, and are seeking to PREVENT government interference in our personal lives, not INJECT government into our personal lives.

Folks, religious extremists in government have a conflict between their faith and their duty to protect our rights on matters of personal liberty. Their faith imposes severe restrictions on liberty. They see the world in a way that is not compatible with secular values of freedom from governmental interference. When they have power, they feel compelled to use the power to impose what they believe to be the mandated-by-God correct way of living.

They seem to believe in a form of totalitarianism, in a society where you are ONLY free to do those things that are consistent with the prevailing fundamentalist dogma. The Dogma to be legislated is probably the common Dogma endorsed by the big TV and Radio preachers (and repeated by the local preachers), which is not so much different than the Middle Eastern religious states.

Let’s hope that one day our media will ask these fundamentalist politicians a lot of very tough questions about their commitment to personal liberty, and not let them skirt around admitting their true intentions. Our media don’t press them enough, and the politicians are then able to lie by omission and doubletalk, knowing full well what they truly intend to do once in office: impose their religious dogma be any means possible.