Act mocking antigay measure cleared for signature drive

Attorney General Kamala Harris answers questions about her 2016 Senate run in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, April 16, 2015. Attorney General Kamala Harris answers questions about her 2016 Senate run in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, April 16, 2015. Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Act mocking antigay measure cleared for signature drive 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

An initiative by a Southern California attorney that would require the state to execute all gays and lesbians is apparently headed for oblivion. But a countermeasure that would label the author of any such initiative an “intolerant jackass” and require him to take sensitivity training and contribute $5,000 to a gay rights organization has been cleared by the state for circulation.

Charlotte Laws — a Los Angeles-area writer, television commentator and local politician — said when she proposed her “Intolerant Jackass Act” in March that she was just trying to ridicule the “shoot the gays” author and didn’t intend to circulate her own ballot measure.

But on Wednesday, Laws’ initiative was given a formal title by Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office — “Sexual Orientation Prejudice. Initiative Statute” — and an official summary that made no reference to jackasses. The measure was then cleared by Secretary of State Alex Padilla for signature-gathering, with 365,880 signatures required within 180 days to make the November 2016 ballot.

Laws said Wednesday that she still doesn’t plan a signature-gathering campaign, but has heard from others who may circulate the measure on their own. She said her measure was intended “to support gay rights and show the world that California is an open-minded state, and ... to mock Matt McLaughlin, and I think it worked.”

Meanwhile, the initiative she was responding to may soon disappear.

McLaughlin, a lawyer from Huntington Beach in Orange County, filed his proposed “Sodomite Suppression Act” in February. Warning of “God’s just wrath” for “tolerating wickedness in our midst,” 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 any other convenient method,” and would authorize private citizens to step in as executioners if the state failed to act within a year.

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.

California law requires the attorney general to issue a title and summary to any initiative sponsor who pays the required $200 filing fee. But Harris has filed suit in Sacramento seeking to keep McLaughlin’s initiative out of circulation. She argues that the state shouldn’t give an apparent seal of approval to a clearly unconstitutional measure that would encourage discrimination and violence.

McLaughlin sent Harris a letter in April saying he wouldn’t take part in her court proceedings and might instead take legal action to try to place his measure on the ballot without signature-gathering. With no opposition to her lawsuit, Harris has asked a judge to find McLaughlin in default and relieve her of any duty to certify his initiative.