CALIFORNIA: Court Grants AG More Time To Quash Sodomite Supression Act

California's infamous Sodomite Suppression Act, which would ask voters to approve of executing all gay people, was due to enter the petition-gathering stage next week. Yesterday a state court granted Attorney General Kamala Harris more time to quash the referendum.

Harris asked a state court in late March for permission to reject the measure, calling it obviously unconstitutional and "utterly reprehensible." But since a judge has not yet acted on the unusual request, she said in legal papers filed Wednesday that she would be legally bound to clear the initiative's author on Monday to start pursuing the 366,000 signatures needed to put the law before voters in November 2016.

Judge Steven Rodda in Sacramento agreed to give the attorney general until June 25 to prepare an official title and ballot summary for the initiative, which would amend the California penal code to make sex with a person of the same gender an offense punishable by "bullets to the head or by any other convenient method."

The attorney general plans to move then to have her original request to quash the measure granted by default. Her office said in its appeal for more time that the Orange County lawyer who paid $200 to submit the initiative, Matthew McLaughlin, has not attempted to defend his so-called Sodomite Suppression Act in court.

McLaughlin sent Harris a letter in early April in which he declared, "Costly litigation is not something that you may require me to incur prior to exercising my rights under both the California Constitution and the initiative statute." He has not yet responded to any inquiries from the press and we still don't even know what he looks like.