By Law, California Must Circulate ‘Shoot the Gays’ Referendum

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, an announced candidate for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat in 2016, may have to prepare a title and 100-word summary of a ballot initiative titled the “Sodomite Suppression Act,” which calls for anyone participating in homosexual sexual acts to be shot to death by a bullet to the head.

The Secretary of State’s website notes: “Upon receipt of the fee and request, the Attorney General will prepare a circulating title and summary, which will be the official summary of the initiative measure. (Elections Code section 9004(a).)”

Harris has until May 4 to prepare the initiative and forward it to the Secretary of State. Once the bill reaches the Secretary of State’s office, backers would have 90 days to secure the 365,000 signatures needed to be placed on the 2016 ballot.

Matt McLaughlin, a lawyer from Huntington Beach, created the initiative and paid the $200 filing fee on Feb. 26. The initiative’s language states it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath,” adding that anyone making sexual contact with someone of the same gender be executed by “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”

The bill calls homosexual activity, “a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.”

If the state refuses to implement the provisions of the bill, the bill states, “the general public is empowered and deputized to execute all the provisions hereunder extra-judicially, immune from any charge and indemnified by the state against any and all liability.” In addition, anyone supporting gay rights to minors would spend 10 years in prison and be forced to leave the state.

The state Supreme Court can keep measures off the ballot if they violate the California Constitution.

The Chronicle reports that Sen. Richard Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), called for McLaughlin’s disbarment, arguing, “I support freedom of speech, but calling for state-sanctioned execution of a protected class calls into question the proponent’s character and judgment.”