Sunday, March 22, 2015

Initiative to shoot the gays

The San Francisco newspaper reports:
Southern California attorney’s “shoot the gays” initiative is not destined to become law — for one thing, it’s clearly unconstitutional. But Attorney General Kamala Harris is scheduled to clear it for circulation in May, and she may not have any choice.

Matt McLaughlin, a lawyer from Huntington Beach in Orange County, paid his $200 filing fee Feb. 26 to submit the “Sodomite Suppression Act” to the voters. Declaring it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath,” it would require that anyone who touches a person of the same gender for sexual gratification be put to death by “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”

The measure would also make it a crime, punishable by 10 years in prison and permanent expulsion from the state, to advocate gay rights to an audience that includes minors. It specifies that its constitutionality can be judged only by a state Supreme Court that has been purged of LGBT justices and their advocates. And it authorizes private citizens to step in as executioners if the state fails to act within a year. Another provision would require that the text of the initiative be posted prominently in every public school classroom.

It seems inconceivable that such a proposal would collect the 365,000 valid signatures it would need to make the 2016 state ballot. Or, if it did, that the voters would approve it. Or that any court this side of Uganda or Saudi Arabia would uphold it. ...

“The statute is clear: that the office has to prepare a summary provided the proponents have paid $200 and followed the right procedures,” said attorney Robert Stern, author of the state’s 1974 Political Reform Act. He said he’s never heard of a case in which the attorney general refused to issue a title and summary.
This is a state where judges cannot even be Boy Scouts, because of some LGBTQIA objection.

This initiative could be some sort of sick joke, I don't know. But I am wondering why other groups do not use this tactic. There are Libertarian and Green Party members who are happy to just get their message on the ballot, even if they only get 1% of the vote. Maybe a fathers rights group could put a radical rights initiative on the ballot to generate attention to the issues, even if losing. Same-sex marriage lost many times before winning.

Update: The text of the proposition can be downloaded here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Same-sex marriage didn't win -- the initiative to ban it passed, but the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that no one had standing to enforce it except the state Attorney General or the Governor. So much for the initiative process going forward.

George said...

Yes, I know, but there is going to be a US Supreme Court ruling on June 30 that mandates same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Anonymous said...

"Maybe a fathers rights group could put a radical rights initiative on the ballot to generate attention to the issues, even if losing. Same-sex marriage lost many times before winning."

excellent suggestion, best thing I've read on your blog. When and where do we get started?