Kaitlyn Hunt Gay rights advocates are concerned an American 18-year-old has been targeted because she is gay, as she faces charges over her relationship with her 14-year-old girlfriend. Miami teenager Kaitlyn Hunt plays on the basketball team with her younger girlfriend and shared the same circle of friends, her mother Kelley Hunt Smith has told media. Media reports are that the couple two had a consenting relationship that began soon after Kaitlyn Hunt turned 18, and Hunt Smith says she assumed the younger girl's parents knew that. Hunt was kicked off the basketball team near the end of last year after the coach learned of the relationship because players were not allowed to date each other, her parents say. Then, in February, she was charged with ‘lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16’, after the younger girl's parents secretly recorded a phone conversation in which the two girls discussed kissing in the school bathroom. "It's horrible. For my daughter's sexual preferences, she's getting two felony charges. It could possibly ruin her future," Kaitlyn Hunt’s father Steve Hunt has said. Prosecutors have offered a plea deal to Kaitlyn Hunt that would allow her to avoid registering as a sex offender if she pleads guilty to lesser charges of child abuse. State Attorney Bruce Colton said he would recommend two years of house arrest followed by one year probation if she takes the deal. He says the fact Hunt is gay has nothing to do with the charges: "The law doesn't make any differentiation. It doesn't matter if it's two girls or two boys, or an older boy and a younger girl or an older girl and a younger boy. Whatever the combination, it doesn't matter." However, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida believes Kaitlyn Hunt is being criminalized for behaviour that "occurs every day in tens of thousands of high schools across the country, yet those other students are not facing felony convictions ... and potential lifelong branding as sex offenders." A "Free Kate" Facebook page has more than 30,000 followers.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 22nd May 2013 - 12:37pm