Photo by American Spirit/Shutterstock.com 
 
 Last Friday, I wrote about California attorney Matt McLaughlin’s bizarre quest to have all gay people in his state executed. In February, McLaughlin paid $200 to file a ballot measure called the Sodomite Suppression Act, which, if passed, would require that gays “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” Although the goal of the act is clearly illegal, McLaughlin’s support for it is a constitutionally protected act of free speech for which he probably can’t even be disbarred. Further, California’s attorney general has no power to halt the proposal, thanks to an odd gap in the law. As a result, the Sodomite Suppression Act will now move on to the signature-gathering stage—and, in the unlikely event it receives 365,880 signatures, it will appear on the ballot in November. 
 
 Mark Joseph Stern Mark Joseph Stern covers courts and the law for Slate. 
 
 Frustrated by the attorney general’s inability to combat McLaughlin’s proposal, Charlotte Laws has decided to fight back with some free speech of her own. On Monday morning, Laws plans to file the Intolerant Jackass Act, accompanied by the requisite $200, with the California attorney general. Laws’ proposal cleverly mirrors and skewers the Sodomite Suppression Act, explaining that the “abominable crime known as prejudice against sexual orientation” is “a destructive view that society commands us to suppress.” Thus: 
 
 c) Any person, herein known as an "Intolerant Jackass," who brings forth a ballot measure that suggests the killing of gays and/or lesbians, whether this measure is called the Sodomite Suppression Act or is known by some other name, shall be required to attend sensitivity training for at least three (3) hours per month for twelve (12) consecutive months. In addition, the offender or "Intolerant Jackass" must donate $5000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization. 
 
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 I spoke to Laws about her initiative—which, she readily acknowledges, is not necessarily designed to become law. 
 
 “I’m fighting fire with fire,” she told me. “The only way to counter [the Sodomite Suppression Act] is … to let people know that most people in California don’t agree with something as incendiary and hateful as what this one attorney proposed.” Laws recognizes the merit of having a content-neutral initiative system, but she believes “we have a very open-minded state and country. This is one guy, and there are millions of us who do not agree with this.” ||||| It doesn't matter that a California lawyer's outrageous Sodomite Suppression Act ballot initiative proposes executing gays with "bullets to the head," or that it's unconstitutional and could never become law. California Attorney General Kamala Harris is forced to allow the measure to circulate for signatures, legal experts said. 
 
 The initiative, which mandates 10 years in prison and permanent expulsion from California for anyone who advocates gay rights to minors, stands no chance of collecting 365,000 valid signatures it needs to appear on next year's ballot. But because its backer, Matt McLaughlin, paid the $200 filing fee by the February deadline, Harris is bound by law to prepare a title and summary of the initiative by May so that its sponsor can begin collecting signatures, legal experts told the San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 Joe Mathews, a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University, argued on California politics website Fox&Hounds; that forcing the attorney general to allow the circulation of such an absurd proposal attacks the integrity of the initiative process. He said a "human rights exception" should be adopted for these instances. 
 
 "When you are taking away fundamental human rights -– as in the right to live -– it is appropriate to give our public officials a formal exception that they can invoke to block an initiative that violates fundamental human rights," Mathews wrote. 
 
 An innovative response to McLaughlin's initiative comes from activist Charlotte Laws, who told Slate she is filing the Intolerant Jackass Act on Monday. The bill reads: 
 
 "Any person, herein known as an 'Intolerant Jackass,' who brings forth a ballot measure that suggests the killing of gays and/or lesbians, whether this measure is called the Sodomite Suppression Act or is known by some other name, shall be required to attend sensitivity training for at least three (3) hours per month for twelve (12) consecutive months. In addition, the offender or "Intolerant Jackass" must donate $5000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization." 
 
 McLaughlin may face other repercussions for advocating murder. According to the Sacramento Bee, state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D) has askled the State Bar of California to investigate McLaughlin, and more than 3,800 people have signed a petition asking State Bar President Craig Holden to revoke McLaughlin's law license. ||||| A Southern California attorney’s “shoot the gays” initiative is not destined to become law — for one thing, it’s clearly unconstitutional. But Attorney General Kamala Harris is scheduled to clear it for circulation in May, and she may not have any choice. 
 
 Matt McLaughlin, a lawyer from Huntington Beach in Orange County, paid his $200 filing fee Feb. 26 to submit the “Sodomite Suppression Act” to the voters. Declaring it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath,” it would require that anyone who touches a person of the same gender for sexual gratification be put to death by “bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” 
 
 The measure would also make it a crime, punishable by 10 years in prison and permanent expulsion from the state, to advocate gay rights to an audience that includes minors. It specifies that its constitutionality can be judged only by a state Supreme Court that has been purged of LGBT justices and their advocates. And it authorizes private citizens to step in as executioners if the state fails to act within a year. Another provision would require that the text of the initiative be posted prominently in every public school classroom. 
 
 It seems inconceivable that such a proposal would collect the 365,000 valid signatures it would need to make the 2016 state ballot. Or, if it did, that the voters would approve it. Or that any court this side of Uganda or Saudi Arabia would uphold it. 
 
 For starters, the constitutional guarantee of due process of law protects people, at a minimum, from being executed for their private, consensual sexual activity. Or from being locked up for advocating any viewpoint, let alone one that is probably shared by a majority of the population. 
 
 The state Supreme Court has the power to keep measures off the ballot if they violate the California Constitution. It has exercised that power to disqualify measures that cover more than one subject, broadly defined, and to block last year’s attempt by legislative Democrats to seek a statewide advisory vote on a U.S. constitutional amendment that would limit corporate spending in federal elections. Presumably the justices could locate a state constitutional provision that would discourage shooting people in the head. 
 
 But McLaughlin’s measure is currently before Harris, whose options appear to be limited. Once the sponsor has paid the required fee, state law directs the attorney general to prepare a title and a maximum 100-word summary of the initiative and forward it to the secretary of state for a 90-day period of public signature-gathering. The secretary of state’s website says Harris is scheduled to take those actions by about May 4. 
 
 Does she have the power to refuse if the measure is patently unconstitutional? Harris isn’t saying; her office did not return repeated phone calls. But some veteran practitioners of election law said they don’t think so. 
 
 “The statute is clear: that the office has to prepare a summary provided the proponents have paid $200 and followed the right procedures,” said attorney Robert Stern, author of the state’s 1974 Political Reform Act. He said he’s never heard of a case in which the attorney general refused to issue a title and summary. 
 
 Richard Hasen, a UC Irvine law professor who has written extensively on election laws, said he doesn’t believe Harris “would have the authority to keep something substantively unconstitutional from the ballot.” 
 
 Former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp, who held the office from 1983 to 1991, said he didn’t recall the issue ever arising, but added, “We did not offer advance opinions on constitutionality.” 
 
 While the proposed initiative awaits further review, a state legislator wants the California Bar to look into McLaughlin’s sponsorship and consider disbarring him. 
 
 Lawyers are supposed to demonstrate “good moral character,” which includes respect for the rights of others, said Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County). “I support freedom of speech,” he said, “but calling for state-sanctioned execution of a protected class calls into question the proponent’s character and judgment.” 
 
 Lara was joined Thursday by five other members of the Legislature’s LGBT Caucus, who filed a formal complaint with the bar. “Such inciting and hateful language has no place in our discourse, let alone (our) state Constitution,” they said. 
 
 McLaughlin, a lawyer since 1998, tried to qualify an initiative in 2004 that would have added the King James Bible as a literature textbook in California public schools. He was quoted at the time as saying he was promoting classroom use of the Bible for its “rich use of the English language” and was not trying to indoctrinate students. 
 
 Attempts to contact him about the new initiative were unsuccessful. But assuming Harris clears the measure for circulation and McLaughlin can come up with the funds for signature-gathering, Californians may be asked sometime this spring to sign petitions that would authorize target practice on some of their fellow citizens. 
 
 Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
– Activist Charlotte Laws says she is "fighting fire with fire"—and fighting an intolerant jackass with the Intolerant Jackass Act. With California Attorney General Kamala Harris unable to halt the progress of lawyer Matt McLaughlin's Sodomite Suppression Act ballot initiative, which calls for homosexuality to be punished by "bullets to the head," Laws' lighthearted counter-initiative calls for anyone proposing a ballot measure involving killing gay people to be punished with a year of sensitivity training and a hefty donation to a gay rights group, Slate reports. The measure mocks the language of McLaughlin's initiative, which describes homosexuality as an "abominable crime." Laws, who like McLaughlin only had to pay a $200 fee to file the initiative, tells Slate that the measure is a way to show that most Californians "don't agree with something as incendiary and hateful as what this one attorney proposed." McLaughlin's deranged initiative appears bound for the signature-gathering phase, though the state Supreme Court would be certain to step in to keep it off the ballot even if he found the necessary 365,000 signatures, the Guardian reports. The State Bar of California, meanwhile, has been asked to investigate the Huntington Beach lawyer, reports the Huffington Post. A petition to have him disbarred for advocating murder now has more than 18,000 signatures.