How do you stop the encroaching gay menace threatening the well-being of [one particular interpretation of the Christian] God's country? Well, if you're attorney Matt McLaughlin, you crawl out of the Mailbox Express box you practice out of in Huntington Beach and you spend $200 of your own money to file a ballot measure called the “Sodomite Suppression Act”. This charmingly titled proposal re-criminalizes homosexuality and makes it a capital crime.
The text also specifies that the death penalty must be carried out by “bullets to the head or any other convenient method.” Good call there: Wal-Mart has been sold out of rifle bullets the last few times we went to stock up for Gay Marksman Days.
]
Not only is being a homosexual to be a capital crime, but if you espouse any feelings toward the gays except sheer, utter hatred, you get fined $1 million, clapped in prison for 10 years (because nothing cures gayness like being locked up with people of the same gender), and then thrown out of the state. (Primm, Nevada would instantly become the gay capital of the entire world.)
It's hard to decide which is the best part of his ballot measure. Is it the death penalty, which has been under a moratorium in this state for nearly ten years? Is it the attempt to establish a state religion? Is it the requirement that this text be posted in every public school classroom? Or is it the reintroduction of the word “buggery” into California political discourse?
No, the best part of this is someone who theoretically has qualified as an attorney attempting to preempt challenges to the measure. Apparently, in McLaughlin's rosy pink universe, you can stop your law from being overturned by saying in its text that only straight members of the California Supreme Court can nullify it, and you can force the state of California to defend an obviously un-constitutional law. You'd think an attorney would know how judicial review works.
The ballot measure requires 365,000 signatures to actually make it to the ballot. We're not too sanguine about its chances. Matt, that $200 could have bought you two years of Scruff Pro. We're just saying.
Stay classy, Orange County!
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
One Reply to “Huntington Beach Attorney Matt McLaughlin Files Ballot Measure Requiring Gays To Be Shot”