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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Calif. Ballot Bid Calls for Death of ‘Sodomites’

SACRAMENTO (CN) - In a bid that ensures the phrase "Heard any good lawyer jokes lately?" won't die anytime soon, Huntington Beach attorney Matt McLaughlin has submitted paperwork to get his "Sodomite Suppression Act" before California voters - assuming he can get at least 350,000 people to agree it should be on the ballot.

McLaughlin - who lists his address as a strip mall in the Orange County coastal community, ensconced between Cricket Wireless and Thao & Hair - sent the text of his odious proposal and a $200 check to California Attorney General Kamala Harris' office, which received it on Feb. 26.

The biblically named "Sodomite Suppression Act" would amend state penal code section 39 to include equally biblical wording. To wit:

"a) The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is 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 [sic]."

Although Almighty God has apparently given freedom and liberty, McLaughlin's initiative adds that anyone who engages in sodomy "for purposes of sexual gratification" should die in a hail of state-sponsored bullets.

"b) Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that 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 proposed initiative continues.

If McLaughlin gets his way, anyone who distributes sodomite propaganda will also be punished - albeit less severely than by death: a $1 million fine per occurrence, and/or imprisonment for 10 years, and/or expulsion from the Golden State for up to life.

Rest assured, McLaughlin's initiative is iron-clad. It can't be invalidated by any federal or state court until heard by a quorum of California Supreme Court justices "who are neither sodomites nor subject to disqualification hereunder."

Anticipating that state officials may not be up for rounding up and executing the gays - and straight couples who enjoy a bit of sodomy from time to time - McLaughlin's proposal deputizes and immunizes the general public to do the rounding up and executing on the state's behalf.

And in a particularly Orwellian move, McLaughlin wants the text of the Sodomite Suppression Act "prominently posted in every public school classroom."

Sadly, Harris' office likely has no choice but to do McLaughlin's bidding, at least for now.

State election law requires that "on receipt of the fee and request, the Attorney General shall prepare a circulating title and summary, which will be the official summary of the initiative measure." Harris has until May 4 to do that and send it to the Secretary of State's office for circulation.

McLaughlin would then have 90 days to gather signatures to place his Sodomite Suppression Act on the 2016 ballot.

A change.org petition is currently collecting signatures of its own - for McLaughlin's disbarment.

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