State v. Debaun

“We do not inquire what the legislature meant; we ask only what the statute means.” So wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Theory of Legal Interpretation,,6 The majority argues that in 1986, when the Florida Legislature amended section 384.24(2) to substitute the gender neutral word “person” for “female ... with any male person” and vice versa, it must have “meant” to expand the application of section 384.24(2) to include sexual relations between two males or two females. The focus of the majority obscures the real issue: what is the meaning of “sexual intercourse.”

The phrase “sexual…