Guinness Evolution ad

Do you mind warning people if you’re linking to a resource-hungry site that blares out music at max volume?

Thank you…amazing.
Has there been a family values coalition boycott yet?

I’m not sure what would count as a “film like” Sommersturm in your book Slocum. My guess is that films in which teenagers have reasonably explicit gay sex wouldn’t go down well in that part of the world.

It doesn’t have to go down well generally, there only has be a large enough niche audience for it. In Googling, I ran across another article talking about how the art house business in Lawrence KS has been down in 2005 as compared to 2004 because this year lacked blockbusters like…Fahrenheit 9/11. Quick, off the top of your head, without Googling, do you guess that Kansas City does or does not have a visible, active gay community?

SommerSturm played Pittsburgh for one day this year, during the annual Gay and Lesbian Film Fest. We get lots and lots of foreign films, but not that one.

I would assume that it played in two cities in the U.S., and not any more.

I live in Lawrence, Kansas, where nobody would even bat an eye at that movie. You do look like a fool commenting about a place that you know nothing about.

I would like to follow up my comment by predicting that there is a 0% chance that SommerSturm will play in any cinema in the state of Kansas for a period exceeding two days.

Prove me wrong, Liberty Hall Cinema (the only independent theater in Lawrence, currently showing “Junebug” and “Thumbsucker” on its one screen). Prove me wrong!

Oh no!

Oh, I don’t dispute the fact that there are tons of religious nuts out there screaming about evolution, but I really doubt that they are that worried about this silly Guiness advert.

I saw La Mala Educacion at Liberty Hall. It played there for a couple of weeks.

cryptic ned – I hope you saw the :-) that I forgot to put after post 16.

What’s funny is the response you are getting.

Irony or arch-irony? As humourless as vegans.

Look, mate, I don’t know where you get off about Manchester, but I’m willing to bet you ‘aven’t even been there, ‘ave yer?
Not only do we have sunlight on a majority of days, every ware in Englind is, right-o!

Wot? Bloody Kansonians more tichy than a pimple faced school girl. Wot’s up wi’ that, then?

I think Sommersturm is supposed to play in Kansas City (at the LGBT film festival) in March of 2006. Of course, that is in Missouri, not Kansas – Kansans would likely have to travel a few miles to see it. Of course, Missouri still has anti-sodomy laws, so… there’s enough backwardness all over (I noticed that the prolbems with the pro-evolution IMAX showings were in still other states…)

I know, I know, just another humorless guy – I did enjoy the Guinness ad, though.

…He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose…

Uh-oh, sounds like prices will be going up again.

Good, because arguing with the humourless… is really tedious.

Yes, “tedious”, that’s the word I thought of too. Before I looked at the replies to your sneering comment.

Boy do you not know Kansas-
Go to the Volokh Conspiracy. There is a discussion there about a case in Kansas where a 19 year old raped a 14 year old retarded boy. The State, naturally, punished him for it, and the Kansas Supreme Court overthrew the case, insisting that the relationship be treated the same as a love affair between two heterosexual teenagers.
So don’t worry, Chris. No matter how ‘disagreeable’ the citizens of any State behave in your eyes, you’ve got buddies in the Court system to slap them back into line-even in Kansas. That’s the beauty of democracy in America; there’s a role for the chattering elites to slap down the ignorant voter if he actually does something disagreeable, like vote. So don’t worry about those creationist, heterosexual parents. All you need is a good judge. Sometimes ya gotta stamp out a voter if yer gonna save democracy, ya know.

Steve

I threw in the movie reference as an afterthought. How tedious that that you should all feel the need to leap to the defence of progressive Kansans.

Well, you know, I started it, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even been to Kansas — I may have driven through once on my way to somewhere else about 20 years ago, but I’m not certain. I don’t have any kind of vested interest, anyway. (Though if I were going to defend Kansas City, I’d start with Charlie Parker, Barbecue, and “Mr Bridge” and “Mrs Bridge” — underappreciated works of genius, IMHO).

Anyway, my point, though, is that to float the idea that a commercial featuring evolution or a gay film would be beyond the pale everywhere in Kansas seems to me to display a lazy, simplemindedness that is supposed to characterize those bible-thumping knuckle-draggers on the other side rather than sophisticated, nuanced thinkers like the denizens of CT.

And sneering at Kansas in general not only ignores progressives there (of which I’m sure there are a non-trivial number), it seems to me that it tends to push Kansans in the middle in the opposite direction one might like them to move.

Derision for the creationists themselves? Yeah, OK. Sneering at the whole state as an irredeemable outpost of ‘Jesusland’? Nah.

The funny thing is, Private Eye was saying just the other week that this was another Guinness ad that failed to live up to the brand’s high expectations.

What’s “your typical coffee shop denizen”? Are patrons of Starbucks shorter on self-esteem than the rest of the population? I’m mystified.

JR-
Here is the link to the Kansas Supreme Court decision on the case.

http://www.kscourts.org/kscases/supct/2005/20051021/85898.htm

To summarize it for you (though, since you ‘know the case’ presumably you already know where you were wrong below-this means you lied, n’est pas?).

“Steve- I don’t read Volokh on principle. But I know the case. It’s State v. Limon. And the facts are these:

1) Both boys are retarded. They lived in a state-run residence for developmentally disabled boys.

Correct

2) The boys were 18 and 15, not 19 and 14 – a 3-year difference, not 5.

The boys were 18 and 14. See the first few pages of the decision, linked above (you ‘know the case,’ so this was a knowing lie?)

3) Limon, the older boy, performed fellatio on the younger boy. He did not “rape” him.

I don’t know your age or gender, but if you ever perform oral sex on a developmentally disabled 14 year old girl, I would warrant you would be charged with ‘rape’ (or, its legal equivalent, sexual assault). Another lie, perhaps? And there is commentary on the Volokh Conspiracy suggesting that the younger boy complained, the man stopped, and the younger boy then complained to his parents. If this is true (and admittedly, I don’t know if it is), how is this not forcible assault (i.e. ‘rape’). Note that this skips the question of whether a 14 year old is capable consensual sex with an adult, much less a retarded 14 year old (of either sex).

4) The younger boy told investigators that the act was consensual. The state has never denied this.

See above. If it was consensual, how was a crime even determined-how was a charge even brought up? And, again-can a retarded 14 year old even offer consent?

5) Limon was charged with statutory rape, not forcible rape.

Limon was charged with sodomy, not statutory or forcible rape (another lie?)

6) If Limon had had any sort of sex with a girl no more than 4 years younger than himself, his maximum sentence would have been 15 months.

Limon was charged the extended time because of the circumstances of the case- this was the 3rd time he had been charged with ‘aggravated criminal sodomy’ (see the link with the discussion of the status of the defendent-he was a ‘Category B’ defendent because of the two prior convictions).

So Limon had been charged for criminal aggravated assault three times. Care to guess what the charge would have been for THREE convictions for the criminal aggravated assault against 14 year old girls? Retarded 14 year old girls? Do you know it would be 15 months?

(Mistakes or lies? There are so many of them, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt-maybe you’re simply mistaken over and over and over…)

7) Limon was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Your second one right.

8) The Kansas Supreme Court held that the sex of the victim could not be considered in determining the sentence of a defendant convicted of statutory rape.

Nope. As mentioned, Limon wasn’t charged with statutory rape-criminal sodomy. And the Romeo and Juliet law wasn’t even the law under which Limon was originally convicted (Romeo and Juliet Law is K.S.A. 2004 Supp. 21-3522). He was convicted for criminal sodomy (K.S.A. 21-3505(a)(2)). So again, he wasn’t even charged with statutory rape-it was criminal sodomy. The Kansas Supreme Court changed the law under which the defendant was charged in order to find that the sex of the victim could not be used in determining the length of the sentence. The Kansas Supreme Court also ignored the previous convictions of the defendent in orde to make the crime analogous to a Romeo and Juliet conviction. See the link for details.

So, the defendent was charged with one crime (his third conviction). In order to establish an equal protection problem (and throw out the conviction), the Kansas Supreme Court 1) ignored the law under which he was charged, and ruled unconstitional a second law under which he wasn’t charged, 2) ignored two previous convictions, and 3) ruled that sexual contact with a mentally disabled (‘retarded’) 14 year old is ‘consensual.’ This doesn’t even address the finding by a Kansas lower court (see the link) that same sex sexual abuse of minors is inherently more dangerous than opposite sex sexual abuse of minors, due to concerns with the immature sexual identity of 14- (retarded 14-)
year olds.

“So, Steve, the next time you want to get all huffy and self-righteous about something, how about knowing what the fuck you are talking about before you open your shitty little mouth.”

Please read the link. To review your mistakes: 1) the defendant was in fact 18, and the victim was in fact 14. 2) noone was charged under the Romeo and Juliet law. 3) Noone was charged with statutory rape. The defendant was charged with criminal sodomy. 4) In order to make it look like the case was just a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Case, the Kansas Supreme Court ignored two previous convictions for criminal sodomy. 5) You, and the Kansas Supreme Court, are making the assumption that sexual consent is even possible for a retarded 14 year old (male or female). You probably don’t have children, and almost definitely don’t have ‘retarded’ children. 5) One finding of the lower court (that the Kansas Supreme Court overruled) was that same sex assault is be definition worse than opposite sex assault on children, due to the fact that children are by definition in their formative years (whether developmentally disabled or healthy). I find this statement utterly convincing-I would guess you do not. (to paraphrase a commentator on the Volokh Conspiracy-this is so obvious you’d have to be a lawyer or an academic to not see it).

So it sounds like the Kansas Supreme Court did exactly what I was suggesting-imposing its will on those pesky citizens/rubes in Kansas. They had to distort the facts of the case to do so (ignore the mental capacity of the victim, ignore the lower courts finding on relative harm by same-sex sexual assault, ignored the prior convictions of the defendent), they had to actually ignore the charges (criminal sodomy) and substitute a different law (the so-called Romeo and Juliet law), but by god, they made Kansas safe for pedophiles.

Note there are plenty of problems with the case-the most obvious being the question of whether a retarded 18-year old is capable of knowingly committing a crime. This seems an entirely reasonable means to attack the case. But the Kansas Supreme Court didn’t use it.

Please review the link. Then come back and use ‘fuck’ and ‘shitty’ again. It makes you sound wise.

Steve

As I recall Kansas City, or that part of it in which Count Basie et al were active, lies in the state of Missouri.

Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri are a single metropolitan area bisected by the state line:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=kansas+city&spn=0.118837,0.258316&hl=en

From the second paragraph of the KSC opinion:

“The statute subject to this challenge, commonly referred to as the Romeo and Juliet statute, applies to voluntary sexual intercourse, sodomy, or lewd touching when, at the time of the incident, (1) the victim is a child of 14 or 15; (2) the offender is less than 19 years of age and less than 4 years older than the victim; (3) the victim and offender are the only ones involved; and (4) the victim and offender are members of the opposite sex. K.S.A. 2004 Supp. 21-3522. Limon’s conduct meets all of the elements of the Romeo and Juliet statute except the one limiting application to acts between members of the opposite sex.”

So to say that the Kansas Supreme Court 1) ignored the law under which he was charged, and ruled unconstitional a second law under which he wasn’t charged seems inaccurate.

There also seems to be a bit of talking past each other on the notion of “consensual.” I don’t think anyone is saying that a 14-year-old, especially a retarded one, is capable of full consent to sex. That’s why there’s an age of consent. Still, there is a difference between a 14-year-old who says “Go ahead” and one who doesn’t. That is probably what the non-Steve parties to the discussion mean when they say this was “consensual.”