'Kill The Gays' Author Schemes To Get Murderous Hate Law On Ballot Without Gathering Signatures
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF / AP) -- In a bizarre legal twist in a jaw-droppingly hateful proposal that calls into question the entire California ballot initiative process, the author of a bill proposing murdering California's gays may ask a court to place his proposal on the ballot without gathering a single signature other than his own.
In a letter quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Matt McLaughlin writes to the state attorney general, "Take notice that if your office and the California secretary of state refuse to clear the Sodomite Suppression Act for signature circulation, I may demand as remedy that it be placed on the election ballot directly."
California Attorney General Kamala Harris is required by law to issue a title and summary for proposed initiatives after the filer pays the $200 fee. Then, the organizer can gather the 366,000 signatures needed to place it on the ballot for a public vote.
Harris on Thursday received an extension to the deadline her office faced next week for processing the proposed ballot initiative advocating shooting anyone in the head who touches someone of the same gender for "sexual gratification."
Harris asked a state court in late March for permission to reject the measure, calling it obviously unconstitutional and "utterly reprehensible." But since a judge has not yet acted on the unusual request, she said in legal papers filed Wednesday that she would be legally bound to clear the initiative's author on Monday to start pursuing the 366,000 signatures needed to put the law before voters in November 2016.
Judge Steven Rodda in Sacramento agreed to give the attorney general until June 25 to prepare an official title and ballot summary for the initiative, which would amend the California penal code to make sex with a person of the same gender an offense punishable by "bullets to the head or by any other convenient method."
The attorney general plans to move then to have her original request to quash the measure granted by default. Her office said in its appeal for more time that the Orange County lawyer who paid $200 to submit the initiative, Matthew McLaughlin, has not attempted to defend his so-called Sodomite Suppression Act in court.
The filing included a copy of a letter signed by a Matt McLaughlin and mailed from the same Huntington Beach address used for the initiative saying that McLaughlin did not intend to respond to the case.
"Costly litigation is not something that you may require me to incur prior to exercising my rights under both the California Constitution and the initiative statute," said the letter dated April 2.
McLaughlin did not respond to a telephone call Thursday seeking to verify he was the letter's author.
Gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to qualify an initiative in California is expensive and time consuming. Few of dozens submitted to the attorney general each year make it on the ballot. But McLaughlin's proposal, which even die-hard conservative groups in California have repudiated, has renewed calls for reforming how easy it is for residents with an ax to grind to gain clearance to circulate their proposals at shopping centers and in other public places while seeking signatures.
The agitation aroused by McLaughlin's initiative has reached as far as his law school alma mater, Virginia's George Mason University School of Law. After being inundated with calls and emails demanding that the school renounce both the measure and its 1998 graduate, Dean Daniel Polsby wrote a letter to the campus community saying it was neither the school's place nor inclination to do so.
"Mr. McLaughlin's filing suggests views that undeniably are out of keeping with the normal civilities of life. But so far as appears, they are also lawful and constitutionally protected expressions," Polsby said.
TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten. The Associated Press contributed to this report.