Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Kaitlyn Hunt vs. The State of Florida

Free Kate

Amidst growing controversy in the wrongful arrest of Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, for her same sex love affair with a fellow student, 15, Florida's state attorney general stubbornly insists he "will not drop charges."
 
Ms. Hunt's long term romance with the younger girl -- an advanced placement student -- enraged the minor's homophobic parents, so they maliciously waited until her eighteenth birthday to file a criminal complaint alleging statutory rape.
 
Assistant State Attorney Brian Workman: Stop the prosecution of an 18 year old girl in a same-sex relationshipThereafter police set up a scheme to entrap Hunt into admitting to the supposedly *illicit* relationship via a phone conversation and, once she did, subsequently arrested her for "lewd and lascivious" conduct with a child.
 
Biased prosecutors had been hoping to quietly persecute Kaitlyn Hunt and add the LGBT teen's name to the national sex offender registry, thereby ruining her life forever. But her parents reached out through Facebook this week and even created a Change.org petition to stop the abuse of their lesbian daughter and her lover.
 
Florida's Romeo and Juliet Statute was enacted in 2007 to protect young people like Hunt who engage in premarital relations from being mistreated by the law and mischaracterized as sex offenders, though an exception is clearly being made because of Hunt's sexuality. 
 
In a month that has seen the shooting death of a gay man in the heart of New York City's famed Village district, and a nationwide escalation of similar hate crimes toward the homosexual community, the idea of state sanctioned harassment of gays and lesbians is quite onerous.
 
This case, one of the ugliest to emerge from Florida since butterfly ballots and Anita Bryant, needs as much attention as possible. A large public outcry will aid in preventing further harm to these two brave young ladies by unabashed bigots and deter those same authorities from discriminating in the future as well.
 
Whatever your own sexual persuasion is then, it doesn't matter, intolerance cannot be tolerated by a free people. So please take a moment to show some support for Kate in this battle. She and her parents are frightened, of course, and worried sick about a future that had once seemed so promising.
 
Visit the Free Kate page and join the fast growing group of supporters there, and also consider joining the 100,000+ citizens who've already signed the Hunt family's petition to free their daughter from such shocking injustice.
 
(And thank you for visiting my blog today!)
 

  

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