CALIFORNIA: Gay Death Penalty Advocate Vows To Have Court Force Ballot Measure

It turns out that there was more to that letter from Matt McLauglin than I reported early this morning. Via CBS San Francisco:

In a bizarre legal twist in a jaw-droppingly hateful proposal that calls into question the entire California ballot initiative process, the author of a bill proposing murdering California’s gays may ask a court to place his proposal on the ballot without gathering a single signature other than his own. In a letter quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Matt McLaughlin writes to the state attorney general, “Take notice that if your office and the California secretary of state refuse to clear the Sodomite Suppression Act for signature circulation, I may demand as remedy that it be placed on the election ballot directly.”

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.

It's not clear from the above-linked report if a court can indeed force the issue onto the ballot without the approval of the state or gathering the required signatures. (Tipped by JMG reader Benjamin)