Judge strikes down local attorney’s ‘Sodomite Suppression’ ballot proposal calling for killing gays

Saying a proposed ballot measure calling for the killing of gay people is “patently unconstitutional on its face,” a Sacramento County judge has ruled that the state attorney general can halt the proposal.

With the judge’s ruling, the so-called Sodomite Suppression Act will not move forward to the signature-gathering phase and cannot be placed on a future ballot.

The proposal, submitted by Huntington Beach attorney Matthew McLaughlin — who graduated from Costa Mesa High School and UC Irvine — sought to authorize the murder of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or “any other convenient method.”

“This proposed act is the product of bigotry, seeks to promote violence, is patently unconstitutional and has no place in a civil society,” Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris said in a statement Tuesday.

Harris is required by state law to give all proposed ballot measures a formal name and summary before they advance to the signature-gathering process.

Earlier this year, Harris filed an action for declaratory relief with the Sacramento County Superior Court asking the court to let her essentially ignore McLaughlin’s proposal and stop it from advancing.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Raymond M. Cadei granted Harris’ request in a decision issued Monday.

Requiring Harris to advance McLaughlin’s proposal to the signature-gathering phase “would be inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public and tend to mislead the electorate,” Cadei wrote.

McLaughlin’s proposal has tested the limits of the state’s normally liberal attitude on putting even the most extreme ideas on the ballot if enough signatures are collected.

For a fee of $200 he submitted the proposal to Harris’ office in February. To get on the November 2016 ballot, McLaughlin and any supporters he had would have had to collect more than 365,000 signatures in 180 days, a high bar even for well-financed efforts.

“Today’s decision has affirmed what we believed all along,” said Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), chairwoman of the LGBT Caucus. “This measure was unconstitutional and was itself speech inciting violence, and therefore unprotected by the 1st Amendment. We applaud the initiative taken by Atty. Gen. Harris and the wisdom of Judge Raymond Cadei, together sparing California any further effort in fighting it.”

McLaughlin has avoided the media since his proposal became public.

Harris said she applauded the court’s decision and that her office would “continue to fight for the rights of all Californians to live free from hatred and intolerance.”

Costa Mesa and Irvine connections

Costa Mesa High School alumni actively worked against McLaughlin’s efforts. Hundreds signed an online letter in March expressing their “shame and remorse” over McLaughlin’s actions.

“McLaughlin’s cruel words don’t reflect our values,” the letter says. “If anything, the Mesa we remember stands for just the opposite. As a public school in a mainly working-class part of town, Mesa has long served a community of many different races, nationalities, beliefs and sexualities.”

McLaughlin has said in the past that he attended Costa Mesa High School in the late ‘80s and was a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist.

He later graduated from UC Irvine and George Mason University law school. He drafted an initiative more than a decade ago that would have allowed public school teachers in California to use the Bible as a textbook.

“How sad that McLaughlin, who boasts that he made the honor roll at Mesa, never learned the Golden Rule,” the alumni letter says.

Staff Writer Emily Foxhall contributed to this report.