Calif. AG Will Try to Block Act Legalizing Gays' Murder

Kamala Harris seeking court order to avoid title and summary
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 26, 2015 7:40 AM CDT
Calif. AG Asks Court to Block Act Legalizing Gays' Murder
Kamala Harris keynotes the UCLA Law Review Symposium: "Examining the Roots of Human Trafficking and Exploitation," Friday, Jan. 30, 2015.   (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

California's AG is doing her best to ensure a proposed ballot measure that would legalize the murder of gay people never makes it off her desk. Kamala Harris yesterday declared she's seeking a court order that would allow her to stop the Sodomite Suppression Act, proposed by lawyer Matthew McLaughlin, which advocates killing gays and lesbians by "bullets to the head" or "any other convenient method," the Los Angeles Times reports. Harris says the measure "not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society." Harris is asking for "declaratory relief" from her duty to give an official title and summary to the measure before the signature-gathering stage. Harris tells the Sacramento Bee that advancing the measure would waste state resources and mislead the public.

"This is not about whether we like something or not, or whether we simply find it offensive or troubling," she adds. "We are talking about a proposal that literally is calling for violence." If the court denies relief, the measure—which would also impose a $1 million fine on "sodomistic propaganda" and bar gay people from holding public office—would need 365,880 signatures in 180 days to move to the November 2016 ballot. "This has the same chance as a snowball's chance in hell," a professor says. To avoid similar measures in the future, however, two lawmakers have proposed a bill to raise the fee to initiate legislation from its current $200 to $8,000, the latter being the cost the state incurs in preparing that title and summary. (McLaughlin's measure, meanwhile, inspired the Intolerant Jackass Act.)

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