Attorney Matt McLaughlin, an attorney in Huntington Beach, California, is facing a call for disbarment after he filed for a statewide resolution that would legalize the execution of gay people and make it a crime to support gay rights in the state. Anyone can file such papers and, for just $200, force the attorney general to prepare a title and a summary for the proposed new law. The question is whether this despicable act can or should be used for a bar action as conduct that shows that he is not of “good moral character.”
The 2016 initiative, named the “Sodomite Suppression Act”, is awaiting further review by the office of the state attorney general, Kamala Harris, and would mandate “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head, or by any other convenient method.” It would also make it a crime to support gay rights, punishable by a $1 million fine and up to 10 years in prison (as well as expulsion from the state). It would also make it illegal to distribute “sodomistic propaganda” to “any person under the age of majority”. Furthermore, being a “sodomite” or distributing “sodomistic propaganda” would disqualify a resident from serving in public office or public employment and from enjoying any public benefit. McLaughlin stated in his proposal that it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath”. Suffice it to say, McLaughlin has some serious issues as well as a serious need for psychoanalysis.
However, what he did was the exercise of a legal action with the political system. There is an ironic twist to the notion of his claims of morality being used to establish that he is not of “good moral character.” We have faced this type of issue before. If an attorney does not engage in discriminatory or hateful treatment of clients or witnesses, should he be punished for his political or moral views? I tend to be leery of speech being the basis for criminal or bar sanctions because it is difficult to see where to draw the line. There are many attorneys who engage in political speech as individuals that is deemed insulting to different races or genders.
State senator Ricardo Lara and others have filed a formal complaint with the state bar. It is not clear if any proceeding would bring up past controversies with McLaughlin, including his 2004 proposed initiative to add the King James Bible as a textbook in California public schools. Once again, such efforts are taken in his capacity as a citizen within the political system.
What do you think?
Mayoral candidate arrested for spraying ‘666’ on public buildings
http://www.sundayworld.com/entertainment/trending/mayoral-candidate-arrested-for-spraying-666-on-public-buildings
The love of God made him vandalize city property with 666… because the homo-sex-you-alls.
The animus is palpable in this one…
State Attorneys Tell Supreme Court That Gay People Are Too Powerful To Have Equal Rights
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/03/30/3640355/state-attorneys-tell-supreme-court-gay-people-powerful-equal-rights/
Non-Discrimination Laws: State by State Information – Map
https://www.aclu.org/maps/non-discrimination-laws-state-state-information-map
Max-1 – what you have are conflicting laws, so you would have to go to go to court to see which was supreme. Since religious rights are in the Constitution, but gay rights are not, I am going with religious rights.
Sorry Paul C.
What’s this… it’s not legit if Lamda legal doesn’t go after other states, too?
Again, who’s side are you on here?
Oh but Paul C.
The difference here is that Illinois has an anti-discrimination law on the books protecting people like me FROM overt discrimination even if it’s wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross…
Indiana GOP leader admits ‘No Gays Allowed’ sign would be legal in most of the state
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=44&v=WGi-8j2oFx8
“You guys have said repeatedly that we shouldn’t be able to discriminate against anyone, but if you just ignore the existence of this law, can’t we already do that now? Can’t so-and-so in Richmond put a sign up and say ‘No Gays Allowed?’” she asked. “That’s not against the law, correct?”
“It would depend,” Bosma replied. “If you were in a community that had a human rights ordinance that wouldn’t be the case.”
“But most of the state does not have that, correct?” the reporter pressed.
“That’s correct,” Bosma admitted.
Max-1 – thought you would appreciate the efforts of Rahm to get businesses to move to Illinois where they have a law just like it.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/30/rahm-emanuel-tries-lure-companies-indiana-over-law/
Go after Illinois, too. Or are Democratic states out of bounds for Lamda and Glaad?
One simple graphic shows the anti-LGBT animus behind Indiana’s new law
http://www.glaad.org/blog/one-simple-graphic-shows-anti-lgbt-animus-behind-indianas-new-law
http://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/styles/750px/public/images/2015-03/CBSZ0lMUkAAe3Sh.png?itok=4zxi9oaj
Oh Squeeky
If you can believe all the BS against gays… why can’t I believe some BS about a queen that hides behind Mitchell’s skirt?
Gov. Pence, Stop Deceiving the Nation on SB 101
http://www.lambdalegal.org/blog/20150329_pence-stop-deceiving-nation-on-sb101
Gov. Pence myth: SB 101 is just like an Illinois law that then-State Senator Obama voted to support.
Truth: Gov. Pence fails to point out that Illinois has a robust statewide Human Rights Act that specifically protects LGBT people, just as it protects others in Illinois. Indiana does not. This matters because those seeking to discriminate in Indiana may claim that the lack of a statewide law barring sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination means that there is no compelling state interest even to enforce local ordinances providing such protections.
Gov. Pence myth: This law only reinforces established law in Indiana.
Truth: The language in SB 101 is so broadly written that someone can sue even without their religious beliefs having actually been burdened simply by claiming that is “likely” to happen.
Gov. Pence myth: SB101 is just like the federal law that President Clinton signed 20 years ago.
Truth: SB 101 is substantially broader than the federal law. It extends religious rights to all businesses, no matter how large and completely secular they are. In addition, the federal law can only be invoked against government action. SB 101 goes much further, inviting discrimination by allowing religious beliefs to be raised as a defense in lawsuits and administrative proceedings brought by workers, tenants and customers who have suffered discrimination in a business transaction based on someone else’s religious beliefs.
Max -1 – Truth – anyone with the filing fee can file a suit. Actually, if you have the filing fee the clerk of the court will file your hat.
FREEDOM INDIANA ANNOUNCES LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL TO PROTECT LGBT HOOSIERS FROM DISCRIMINATION
http://freedomindiana.org/freedom-indiana-announces-legislative-proposal-to-protect-lgbt-hoosiers-from-discrimination/
The “Fairness for All Hoosiers Act” legislative proposal would:
Update the state laws against discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations to provide protections for LGBT Hoosiers.
Clarify that the recently enacted RFRA cannot be used to allow discrimination prohibited under state or local laws.
https://twitter.com/GovMalloyOffice/status/582554117324800000
@Ken Rogers
Oh, you are sooo tolerant! You even care for all those murderers and rapists who are locked up! Oh, if only they could be turned loose in your neighborhood where they could find a constant source of tender, loving care instead of those poor black neighborhoods with all those mean old iron bars on people’s windows and doors to keep the riff raff out, and where somebody is likely to pop a cap into them if they try any funny business.
I tell you, Mother Teresa better look out, because pretty soon people are going to be mistaking you for her!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@ Sqeaky Fromm Pom, Scourge of the Gayness and the Darkies
“You are obviously smarter than I thought, and I will quit disrespecting you!”
It isn’t you as a person created by God whom I disrespect, it’s the expressions of your virulent homophobia, racism, and coldblooded advocacy of “putting down” like diseased animals people you refer to as “human garbage,” that are beneath contempt.
@Ken Rogers
OK. I will accept that as a long-winded, “Oh Crap! I should have checked the source but I got such a thrill up my leg that I forgot all about it!” I guess Max-1 is off somewhere crying in his beer over the story not being true.
You said, “Fiction, and particularly satirical fiction, can often embody more truth than a prosaic reporting of the facts, which often are too separated in time to afford as imaginatively coherent a picture. This is why Christ spoke in parables.”
True. But it also why some black kids in college write “KKK” and “n*gger” on doors and then complain about campus racism. Or why Lena Dunham wrote fake rape stories. Or why Al Sharpton does half the stuff he does, like Tawana Brawley. Then, when caught, these kind of people invariably come out with the excuse that they did it to call attention to real problems. Yeah. Sure.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@ Squeeky Fromm, Girl Scourge of the Gayness
Although I almost invariably check out multiple sources when doing online research, I’m OK with not having done so in this case both because of the quality of The Nation Report’s satire, and also because it inspired me to write a little of my own in response, albeit on only four hours’ sleep.
Fiction, and particularly satirical fiction, can often embody more truth than a prosaic reporting of the facts, which often are too separated in time to afford as imaginatively coherent a picture. This is why Christ spoke in parables.
“Political humour has always been an important part of the democratic process. For centuries, political cartoons have channeled dissent, lampooned politicians, and even educated readers. Satire can broach uncomfortable topics, shake up rigid beliefs, and make us more receptive to alternatives.
“As Ian Ellis writes, ‘Political humour, in the hands of our finest satirists, involves delving and questioning, thereby unveiling truths and alternative perspectives the political establishment would prefer kept hidden and unspoken.’ ”
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/10/satire-project-why-political-humour-good-democracy
“Nonfiction generally has the lead over fiction in being true: on having a substantial glitter of one-to-one correspondences to verifiable details of what we fairly and efficiently term the ‘real world.’ This may be the force behind the notion that nonfiction is the more relevant of the two. Sometimes the relevance concerns a trend of babies wearing overalls made out of watermelons, and sometimes it relates to an understanding of civil forfeiture in the American justice system, but either way, nonfiction is, basically, more true and more relevant, more or less.
“But of course fiction also claims to be true. In Mary Shelley’s preface to ‘Frankenstein’ (a preface that turns out to have been ghostwritten for her by Percy Bysshe Shelley), she (or he) says of her tale of the monster jolted to life by electricity, ‘However impossible as a physical fact,’ it ‘affords a point of view . . . for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield.’ She (or he) adds, ‘I have thus endeavoured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate upon their combinations.’
“Fiction, the argument follows, can be true in the same way ‘If’ statements are true. If I collide two hydrogen atoms just so, then . . . there will be an explosion. Or, If a man awakens to discover himself turned into a monstrous insect, [Kafka’s Die Verwandlung], then. . . . As Marianne Moore said of poets, a fiction writer aims to make ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’ [Such as the Bachmanns :)]
“That most fiction arguably fails at this is just a practical definition of ‘most,’ and a parallel of the fact that most journalism, also, is good enough only for the ‘jour’ — the day. When Ezra Pound observed of literature that it is ‘news that stays news,’ he was excluding a majority of nonfiction and fiction, and also admitting a measure of each.
“But fiction and nonfiction do tend to deploy different methods for getting to the truth. Fiction, we have been told, tells the truth but tells it slant. It familiarizes the strange and estranges the familiar. Nonfiction aims, if not exclusively and not uncomplicatedly, for Orwell’s model of the clear pane of glass.
“In that case: Is there something about our present moment — the Internet! late capitalism! the death of reading! the overuse of exclamation points! — that makes the methods of nonfiction consistently yield more truth than those of fiction? Was there an ideal era for epic poetry, and are we now in the epoch fated for fact-checked tweets? Maybe.
“But I suspect it is the techniques of fiction, also often used by nonfiction writers, that are especially valuable now. I say this because it’s possible that we as a culture suffer from a particularly debilitating case of thinking we know much more than we know. (A statement with a grammatical subject as broad as ‘we as a culture’ has acquired a lot of inaccuracy and even profound wrongness before it reaches its predicate — and ‘we as a culture’ seem more drawn than ever to these sorts of broad pronouncements.)
“This false sense of knowing — not a new problem, but perhaps a newly pressing one — has been made worse by the ease with which we find Web sites devoted to telling us what we already want to hear and already suspect is true. There are even algorithms for this; confirmation bias has never been more pervasive or insidious. We inhabit fanciful castles of facts.
“Mostly we read the nonfiction that suits our fancy, and tend to ignore that which does not. Not for aphoristic economy alone did Nietzsche observe that convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Because we are less sure of what fiction is ‘saying,’ we are less pre-emptively defended against it or biased in its favor. We are inclined to let it past our fortifications. It’s merely a court jester, there to amuse us. We let in the brazen liar and his hidden, difficult truths.”
http://benchmarkpublishinggroup.info/bookends-whats-behind-the-notion-that-nonfiction-is-more-relevant-than-fiction/
It’s worth noting, by the way, that “Snopes” is just a husband and wife team of Web researchers who know how to spell “Google,” and who may or may not get a story “right.” In this case, they did so in an important sense, but easily, based on The Nation Report’s disclaimer.
@Ken Rogers
What??? No remorse for having bitten at the National Report phony story about Marcus Bachmann??? No, “Oh, I can’t believe I fell for that obviously false article???” No, “Oh Squeeky! I feel like an idiot! It really stings my pride that you are the one who discovered it was phony. You are obviously smarter than I thought, and I will quit disrespecting you!” Oh well, no matter.
Sooo, here is a review of Borowitz, from Wiki, which appears to be spot on:
Hmmm. Kind of sounds like the Lawrence Welk of liberal stories. Uh one, and uh two, and uh. . .
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Indiana Defines Stupidity as Religion
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
27 March 15
“In a history-making decision, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana has signed into law a bill that officially recognizes stupidity as a religion.
“Pence said that he hoped the law would protect millions of state residents ‘who, like me, have been practicing this religion passionately for years.’
“The bill would grant politicians like Pence the right to observe their faith freely, even if their practice of stupidity costs the state billions of dollars.
“While Pence’s action drew the praise of stupid people across America, former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was not among them. ‘Even I wasn’t dumb enough to sign a bill like that,’ she said.”
Hmmm. I guess the silly sodomites and their toadies will fall for anything:
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/marcusbachmann.asp
ROTFLMAO!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
re:
Paul C
I’m talking about you… Lol 😉
= = =
I found this song for ya…
Ken
Re: Bauchmann… The irony is rich on that one.