At this point, we have put in somewhere between three minutes and sixteen hours of research on one Matt McLaughlin, of Huntington Beach, CA, who has filed with the California Attorney General’s Office a truly insane proposed ballot initiative that he has creatively titled “The Sodomite Suppression Act.” Since we have always secretly wanted to be A Private Investigator, we are delighted to thank tipster “Josh” for sending this our way! McLaughlin’s initiative, filed on Feb. 24, 2015, is a real gem[.]
This story intrigued me, not from the standpoint that “The Sodomite Suppression Act” has an iceberg’s chance in Hell of actually becoming law (or if it did become law, of withstanding ANY sort of constitutional challenge), but because it’s so brazen in it’s hatred and sense of entitled Old Testament justice. There’s really nothing remotely redeeming or appealing about a bill that proposes 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.”
Any other convenient method? So, if the only thing available are pinking shears, those would pass muster as serviceable execution tools? McLaughlin’s bill certainly would leave no doubt that “sodomites” are better off dead, and that there should be no real limitations on the method used to separate them from their mortal coil.
What remains unanswered are how and why McLaughlin believes that his beliefs and prejudices should be encoded in statue law? And why is he so concerned with what consenting adults do behind closed doors? What’s he really afraid of? I have to wonder about someone so concerned with the sexual proclivities of others, especially when you think these are perfectly good examples of justice being (not so very) blind:
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.
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.
He seems nice, huh??
Among the problems with the bill (besides the patently unconstitutional nature of it) are things like who will enforce the bill? How will it be enforced? Where will the money for enforcement efforts come from? Will the state be required to send bureaucrats into the bedrooms of same-sex couples to ensure no one’s willingly and knowingly touching “another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification?” And what if the touching is accidental? Who gets to serve as the arbiter of that not inconsequential question?
Your honor, I was minding my own business in the sauna when I suddenly felt the need to yawn and stretch. In so doing, my hand brushed against the erect, throbbing penis of [insert name of doomed sodomite here]. He gasped in surprise…and then suddenly I felt a warm, gooey liquid running down my palms and my arm….
Even “better” is the bill’s requirement that anyone who “distributes, performs, or transmits any sodomistic propaganda” be fined $1 million and imprisoned for up to ten years For. Each. Occurrence. After their debt to society is paid (assuming that prison didn’t abuse them of their sodomitic proclivities), the offending sodomite is to be cast out out from California- perhaps by driving them to the Hoover Dam and frog-marching them into Arizona??
Oh, and it doesn’t end there. Convicted sodomites (if they haven’t been executed or frog-marched into Arizona) will be banned from life from holding public office…but, really, what kind of punishment is that? What right-thinking person would want to run for public office in California, anyway?
This isn’t McLaughlin’s first foray into shredding the barrier between Church and State. In 2004, he filed papers seeking a ballot measure that would provide each California public school student with a Bible as a literary text, which never came close to getting on a ballot.
Here’s the deal with California ballot initiatives: Any California citizen can propose a statutory or constitutional initiative for the state ballot. In order for a statutory initiative to qualify for the ballot, the sponsor-citizen must file the text with the CA AG’s office and pay $200. After a 30-day public review period, the AG must publish a summary of the initiative, and then, hooray, reason and logic kick in, saving the citizens of California from having to wade through hundreds of delusional initiatives every time they vote. The sponsor must collect the number of signatures equal to five percent of the number of votes in the most recent gubernatorial election, which in this case is about 365,880 signatures. Fortunately, that is a pretty high hurdle if you are a lone sociopath with a thing against “sodomites,” because it might be hard to (1) collect that many signatures, especially if (2) you lack a huge group of signature-collectors, because you are a sociopath and you have no friends.
Yeah, good luck collecting those signatures, eh? I suspect McLaughlin, if he even makes the effort, will fall about 364,000 signatures short of what’s required to put his proposed bill on the ballot. We probably shouldn’t expect to see him manning a table in front of a Safeway in the Castro anytime soon, knowhutimean?
I’m guessing that someone just pissed away $200 for no good reason…other to get people to pay attention to him.
Mission accomplished.
