California Ballot Measure Will Put Anti-Gay Bigot In Timeout For Being 'Intolerant Jackass'

A few weeks ago we reported on mysterious California lawyer Matthew McLaughlin and his use of the state’s ridiculous ballot proposition system as a vehicle to assuage his fear of a gay planet. McLaughlin had filed a proposition in favor of the fanciful notion that California should shoot in the head anyone who engages in sodomy, aka the "abominable crime against nature known as buggery," aka The Gay. To which the only appropriate response is, “In California? The land of fruits and nuts? HA HA HA... oh, right. ”

Unfortunately, because McLaughlin paid the $200 filing fee, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has little choice but to write the title and 100-word summary for the initiative and then allow its backer to begin gathering enough signatures to get it onto the ballot. Which is even less likely to happen than Ted Cruz being our next president, thankfully.

[contextly_sidebar id="bg8WbZ726ckETCTjMJAWfk5bTnZu8pru"]

The low barrier to getting initiatives on the ballot has long been contentious in California, since it obviously allows even the craziest people like anti-gay bigots and conservatives – but we repeat ourselves – to participate in our flowering democracy. Now one activist, unable to do anything about McLaughlin’s Sodomite Suppression Act, has struck back with a ballot initiative of her own that can only be described as “high-level trolling.”

The initiative, filed by activist Charlotte Laws (previously known for helping to take down revenge porn kingpin Hunter Moore), is titled the Intolerant Jackass Act. Its language mirrors much of the Sodomite Suppression Act, but instead of killing gays with bullets or anything else convenient, the anti-jackass bill would mandate three hours of sensitivity training a month for twelve months, plus a $5000 fine for anyone who files a ballot measure like the SSA.

Now, Laws’s initiative has zero chance of ever becoming a law even if it makes it on the ballot. She herself acknowledges that the Intolerant Jackass Act runs headfirst into the First Amendment, which protects even hateful bullshit like McLaughlin’s. The nice thing about it is that it mocks the Sodomite Suppression Act without giving it the serious response its writer so obviously craves.

Though why McLaughlin thought this would fly at all in the state containing San Francisco, West Hollywood, and the headquarters of most of the entertainment industry is surely one of the great mysteries of our time. But fuck that guy. More like Charlotte Laws, please.

[ Slate / Sacramento Bee ]