‘Sodomite Suppression Act’ Initiative Would Make Homosexuality Punishable by Death

There is a proposal in California to execute anyone engaging in homosexual acts, or participating in ‘gay propaganda’. The proposal, filed on February 26th by Orange County lawyer Matthew McLaughlin, calls for anyone who engages in sex with the same gender “to be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”

View the application here

LEGAL PROCESS THREATENED

California is one of 21 states in the US to allow voters to propose initiatives for inclusion in a statewide vote, with successfully passed initiatives passing into law as amendments to the State Constitution. There is a fairly lax process involved for submitting such a proposal. In fact, in order to do so McLaughlin only had to submit at brief description of the Act and a $200 submission fee. The Attorney General is then required to prepare a summary and assign an official title to the proposition, and approve it to proceed to the next stage, in which proponents for the bill gather signatures in support of the initiative. If they manage to collect enough signatures (5% for a constitutional amendment and 8% for a statute), the initiative must be included in the November general election ballot, during which the state’s registered voters can vote for or against the initiative. If the initiative is passed by a majority, it is entered into law as an amendment to the constitution.

While the goal of the voter proposition process was to give more power to the citizens when it was adopted in California in 1911, The Sodomite Suppression Act is an extreme example of how this type of process can fairly easily compromise human rights at the state level. This is not the first time this process has been used to target the LGBT community, however. The well known Proposition 8, originally known as the ‘California Marriage Protection Act, used the process and sought to force the state to halt same-sex marriages.

McLaughlin has been unwilling to comment on the initiative that he sponsored, and so it is unclear as to whether he is doing it out of hatred for homosexuals, or in an effort to expose a loophole in the legal process and necessitate amendments to the process that will allow the Attorney General to reject initiatives that would endanger people or interfere with human rights.

ATTORNEY GENERAL COMMENTS

On March 25th Attorney General Kamala D. Harris issued a statement declaring her decision to file an action with the Court seeking judicial authorization to not issue a title and summary for the so-called Sodomite Suppression Act:

“As Attorney General of California, it is my sworn duty to uphold the California and United States Constitutions and to protect the rights of all Californians.  This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society. Today, I am filing an action for declaratory relief with the Court seeking judicial authorization for relief from the duty to prepare and issue the title and summary for the “Sodomite Suppression Act.” 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.” – Press Release

WILL IT PASS?

It’s not likely that the initiative will garner the hundreds of thousands of signatures of support that would be needed in order to be included on a ballot, but even if it does, it would still need to achieve a majority in the November general election. While Proposition 8 found much support amongst right-wing religious groups who paid for campaign ads, very unlikely those groups will endorse this proposition and align themselves with an act that calls for capital punishment for homosexuals.

Nonetheless, it does underscore the notion that despite positive gains for human rights based on sexuality, the LGBT community is still very much in the crosshairs.