The Intolerant Jackass Act - An Antidote to Legalizing Hate Crimes?

Are you an intolerant jackass? You are if you try to put an initiative on the California ballot that mandates killing gays. And there's a guy, an attorney no less in Southern California who has just such an initiative in the works. Yes, attorney Matt McLaughlin seems serious about his "Shoot the gays" initiative. He even ponied up the $200 to the Secretary of State's office to get the process started.

"The Sodomite Suppression Act" would punish any person who her commits the "the abominable crime against nature known as buggery" or even "who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification" by death "by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method." Anyone who distributes literature sympathetic to gays to a minor gets off a little easier with a fine  a fine of $1 million "and/or imprisoned up to 10 years, and/or expelled from the boundaries of the state of California for up to life."

Enter activist Charlotte Laws with her own initiative, the "Intolerant Jackass Act."  This
only semi-tongue in cheek would counter McLaughlin's mean spirit hate filled ballot measure by providing that anyone submitting such a measure would have to attend at least three hours a month of sensitivity training for a year and contribute $5,000 to a pro-gay or pro-lesbian organization.

The low $200 filing fee means any yahoo with a pencil and the ability to spell his own name can submit any kind of a wack-a-doodle language to be put on the California ballot providing they get the requisite number of signatures.

California Attorney General Kamela Harris has already taken the unprecedented step of petitioning the court to keep the "Shoot the Gays" provision off the ballot, even if it gets the required signatures, saying in an  interview with the Guardian: "This proposal not only threatens public safety, it is patently unconstitutional, utterly reprehensible, and has no place in a civil society,” 

Although unspoken, the specter is not unthinkable, that some deranged indivividuals, who sign the petition, may think they have now joined a vigilante mob that gives them carte blanche to execute gay people on the spot. Weirder things have happened.