A fire-and-brimstone California proposal that would require the government to kill all gay people was on Monday struck down by a judge as “unconstitutional on its face.”
“The proposed initiative, titled “The Sodomite Suppression Act,” is patently unconstitutional on its face,” wrote Superior Judge Raymond M. Cadei.
“Any preparation and official issuance of a circulating title and summary for the Act by the Attorney General would be inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public, and tend to mislead the electorate,” he added.
The proposal, drafted by Huntington Beach attorney Matthew McLaughlin, would require that the government kill homosexual members of society with “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”
“The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha,” the initiative begins.
Protocol would usually require State Attorney Kamala Harris to review and summarize the potential ballot measure within 30 days, but on March 25 she announced she would turn to the court for authority to abort the measure.
“This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society,” Harris said.
Little is known about McLaughlin, who has not spoken to the press and whose contact details have lead nowhere, but TPM did at one point speak with his old boss.
“My own personal opinion here is that he has crossed the line, between free speech and advocating illegal conduct,” Bruce Bridgman, a former deputy district attorney and McLaughlin’s onetime employer, told TPM in March.
“Go after him with a knife and fork,” he said.
The website of the California State Bar says McLaughlin’s law license remains active in Huntington Beach. He went to the University of California Irvine for his undergraduate degree and George Mason University for law school.
Read the decision, via Huffington Post:
