Intolerant Jackass Act proposed to counter bigot’s anti-gay initiative in California

WHEN a lawyer paid $200 to introduce an initiative that could see killing gay people “by bullets to the head” legalised, one activist didn’t get mad. She got even.

Woman’s perfect smackdown to anti-gay measure

WHEN a lawyer paid $200 to introduce an initiative that could see killing gay people with “death by bullets to the head” legalised, one activist didn’t get mad, she got even.

Californian woman Charlotte Laws was so outraged by Orange County lawyer Matt McLaughlin’s so-called Sodomite Suppression Act that she submitted one of her own: aptly titled the Intolerant Jackass Act.

California’s legal system allows citizens to create their own law by paying a fee and then gathering enough signatures to qualify their idea for a vote by politicians.

Ms Laws hopes to use that same legal loophole, one that afforded Mr McLaughlin airtime, to publicly shame his proposal.

Under Mr McLaughin’s initiative, gays would “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method,” Slate reported.

The unbelievable official document.

Ms Laws’ initiative proposes that anyone who proposes a ballot initiative calling for gay people to be killed must attend one year of sensitivity training and donate $5000 to a pro-LGBT group.

The two initiatives have highlighted a system in need of change.

So enshrined is California’s ballot initiative that not even California’s attorney general Kamala Harris has the power to stop the proposal going to the signature-gathering phase.

In order to pass, however, Mr McLaughlin’s initiative would need 365,000 signatures in six months or 180 days, according to the LA Times.

If it were then to qualify for the ballot and be approved by voters, courts would almost certainly strike it down as unconstitutional, towleroad reported.

Ms Laws, who describes herself as an anti-revenge porn activist, author, columnist, as well as animal advocate, said she was simply making a point.

“I’m fighting fire with fire,” she told Slate.

I just did an interview on @KCBSNews about "The Intolerant Jackass Act." We all need to fight injustice. We all need to speak out.

— Charlotte Laws (@CharlotteLaws) March 23, 2015

We have to wait until the attorney general gets it onto her website then you are welcome to gather signatures. Thanks. @CarrilloA1

— Charlotte Laws (@CharlotteLaws) March 24, 2015

Once the attorney general gets it processed, you are welcome to gather signatures. @MrBrandonBrock

— Charlotte Laws (@CharlotteLaws) March 24, 2015

“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.”

And it seems her initiative isn’t the only opposition to Mr McLaughlin’s proposal.

A change.org petition has called on the state of California to disbar him.

“It is disturbing and outrageous that a lawyer admitted to the California State Bar would disgrace the profession and the state,” the petition reads.

“This immoral individual is unfit to practice law. He should be immediately be barred from practicing law in California.”