Metro Weekly

No, California won’t be voting on whether to kill gay people

"Sodomite Suppression Act" shot down by judge

San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, Credit - David Goehring / Flickr
San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, Credit – David Goehring / Flickr

A California judge has struck down a ludicrous ballot initiative which proposed legalizing the killing of gay people.

The Sodomite Suppression Act was filed on February 24 by Matthew McLaughlin, a Huntington Beach resident. It called for “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” The author noted thatΒ β€œbuggery” is an β€œabominable crime against nature,” and as such, β€œoffenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath.”

Thankfully — and as expected — SacramentoΒ County Superior Court Judge Raymond Cadei has told the state’s attorney general not to proceed with the ballot initiative. She stated that it would be “inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public and tend to mislead the electorate.” If Cadei had allowed the initiative to proceed, which is inconceivable given its unconstitutional and unconscionable premise, McLaughlin would have had to gather 366,000 signatures to bring the measure to voters.

“This proposed act is the product of bigotry, seeks to promote violence, is patently unconstitutional and has no place in a civil society,” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a statement.

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