Summary: A lawyer in California has submitted a ballot proposal that homosexuals be killed.
California’s new ballot proposal seeking to kill gays and lesbians – by a bullet to the head, it suggests – is testing the limits of the state’s initiative process and what counts as “free speech.”
Orange County lawyer Matthew Gregory McLaughlin filed the Sodomite Suppression Act on Feb.24, which not only bars gays from holding public office, but calls for those spreading “sodomite propaganda” to be fined $1 million or be sentenced to jail time, and for gays and lesbians meanwhile to be killed by “bullets to the head,” or “any other convenient method.”
Since such a proposal could never become a law, since it so obscenely denies both state and federal constitutions, the only purpose of proposing the murder of gays and lesbians could be to be provocative, or perhaps to attempt a tasteless joke.
“We are shocked and outraged that a member of the State Bar would so callously call for the disenfranchisement, expulsions, and murder of members of the LGBT community,” wrote the state Legislature’s LGBT Caucus, who are also asking the State Bar to investigate if McLaughlin is fit to practice law. “We believe that this measure not only fails constitutional muster, but that such inciting and hateful language has no place in our discourse, let alone state constitution.”
On other words, this is hate speech, and hate speech, meanwhile, should not count as free speech.
Carol Dahmen, a media consultant in Sacramento, hopes to disbar McLaughlin. “It’s an interesting discussion about free speech, and I get that,” said Carol, “But this is a lawyer and he’s advocating for murder.”
Nevertheless, Attorney General Kamala Harris must let the proposal proceed to the signature-gathering stage, and would need 300,000 valid signatures to make the ballot.
For those hoping to see this sort of measure curtailed, they are suggesting the ballot proposal submission fee be upped from $200 to $500 or $1,000.