The California Attorney General has called out Matthew Gregory McLaughlin's disturbing ballot initiative
If you haven’t heard of Kamala Harris yet, that is soon to change. California’s Attorney General has just made an unprecedented move in standing against a horrible anti-LGBT bill. One that threatens male homosexuals with the death penalty.
Most California voters have received petitions or “ballot initiatives” trying to collect enough signatures to get an issue pressed into law. Some of them are at the Federal level and some are at the State level. No other state in the United States is known for their ballot initiatives as California is.
State Elections in California are very arduous. Voter guides mailed out are as large, if not larger, than in Federal elections. California’s legislature isn’t the best, but they do want to know how their constituents vote on various initiatives, including bonds and budget issues. The lines are long and many people joke about how confusing initiatives are.
It was a surprise to me when the Proposition 8 ballot initiative passed. California is famously a gay-friendly state. I grew up across the street from a gay couple from the 60s through the 80s. Mostly they just mowed their lawn and minded their own business. But it does need to be pointed out that the couple who were together the longest in my neighborhood were gay.
So here we are in 2015 and in California, an attorney named Matthew Gregory McLaughlin of Huntington Beach, wrote an initiative called the “Sodomite Suppression Act.” He paid a $200 fee with the Attorney General’s office to get the initiative on the ballot with the caveat that he would return with the signatures. It is an initiative adding a law to the California Penal Code.
So far this jerk doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and even finding a picture of him has been exceedingly difficult. That’s sure to change soon.
His initiative addresses every male homosexual act as a crime punishable by death. Because of God. End of reasons. Firing squad is apparently Mr. McLaughlin’s preferred method of execution of gay men. He believes they should “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” We stress “male” as lesbians usually do not participate in sodomy. So this is not even about homosexuality in general, it is a specific double discrimination initiative against gay men.
This caused Attorney General Kamala Harris, who happens to have thrown her hat in the ring for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat, to make an unprecedented announcement against the initiative on Wednesday.
Ms. Harris has no power to keep McLaughlin from collecting signatures and no other AG has ever taken a stand against an initiative. But given that this particular initiative is suggesting genocide, she really didn’t have a choice, political or otherwise.
Ms. Harris said that she would do everything in her power to keep this ballot initiative from ever reaching a California ballot. “It is my sworn duty to uphold the California and United States Constitutions and to protect the rights of all Californians,” she said. “This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible and has no place in a civil society. If the court does not grant this relief, my office will be forced to issue a title and summary for a proposal that seeks to legalize discrimination and vigilantism.”
There is speculation by Republicans that this is just a political move by Kamala Harris, as she is running for the Senate. Well of course they think that. They’re Republicans. They’re passing laws discriminating against homosexuality whenever they can, so they see nothing wrong with McLaughlin’s initiative. Either way, Kamala Harris did the right thing by denouncing and raising awareness of the extremity of this awful initiative.
Other off-shoot groups have threatened to make the names of signatures of the petition public. This issue has obtained enough national attention to guarantee it’s not the last we’re going to hear of Matt McLaughlin of Huntington Beach. Surfing capital of the west coast! Come for the waves! Stay to kill gays!
Mr. McLaughlin will likely not prevail in California, but Red States would totally run with his idea if they thought they could get away wit it. Mike Pence in Indiana already has inched America closer to such naked hatefulness. Now McLaughlin has his name out there and there will be political credibility attached to him should his initiative gain any legs.
“Seventy-five years ago, California voters were asked to decide on a measure declaring the existence of an international Communist movement and requiring that teachers be investigated for Communist sympathies. The initiative failed, but not without winning 40 percent of the vote. Even that proposal couldn’t compare to the disturbing violence of McLaughlin’s proposal, which hasn’t made it to the ballot yet.” ~ Kamala Harris
Mr. McLaughlin’s initiative is an ongoing and fluid situation, and by the time this reaches publication, everything could change again. What won’t change is that McLaughlin is a homophobic, reckless, crude bigot.
Now fix that, America.
One supposes this guy is either (1) enamored of how Christianity is playing out in the Ugandan government or (2) hoping his extreme position will position him to be a GOP presidential candidate in 2020.
Or, both.
In the meantime, allow me to say that the Almighty doesn’t have to worry about non-believers smearing his reputation. Believers have become more than successful and efficient at doing it themselves.
Michelle Simmons, you wondered how Prop 8 could have passed in California. Easy. The Proposition was worded in such a manner as to confuse the truth and obscure the goal of passage. A yes vote was against gay rights, a no vote was for them. “Vote Yes On No”. People were purposely confused. There was much discussion. The more people discussed, the less they understood. It will never be known what percentage of the voting public purposely took a stand against gay rights that day, but we’ve been working to put it right ever since.