The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Democracy is way scary, sometimes

There is no legal way to stop the process, so the self-righteous, frightened, and furious liberals will stop it illegally, if they can.

Kamala Harris Moves To Stop Advance Of 'Kill The Gays' Ballot Initiative

Yes, this is a horror, but there is not and ought not to be any advance filtering apart from the requirement of at least noticeable popular support, indicated in California by 360,000 valid signatures.

The whole point of the initiative process - a brainchild of the original progressivism of the eponymous Progressive Era especially disliked by today's liberalism - is to let the people decide.

Filtering would just give power back to the panicky establishment.

So liberal officialdom ought to suck it up and let the thing run its course.

The measure is unlikely to find 360,000 signatories, very unlikely to find approval of the voters, and certain to fail its first constitutional test.

All the same, if she can't find a judge in California willing to twist the law to stop this I will be quite surprised.

Though I will be somewhat disappointed if she can.

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As reported, the thing criminalizes homosexuality in a kind of Christian parody of legally enforcing Shariah, and goes on to command vigilantism.

California acts

("Gomorrah" is misspelled in the Yahoo piece.)

The proposed initiative declares: "The abominable crime against nature known as buggery, called also sodomy, is a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.

"Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God's just wrath against us... the people of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that 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 reads.

As to criminalizing homosexuality, the liberal judicial establishment has already made creative use of the equal protection clause and the altogether fictitious right to privacy to declare any such thing unconstitutional and thus deny the people as well as all legislatures the right to criminalize it.

Since the measure expressly aims to enact a Christian understanding of divine law into California state law it certainly in spirit at least runs afoul of the establishment clause, as extended to the states via that judicial fraud, incorporation, but I would be surprised if a court used that against the initiative, if passed.

As to the last point, I have to admit the question is new to me whether the federal government or any state government can, consistent with the constitution, command vigilantism.

But I would see this as a literal violation of both the equal protection and the due process clauses.

The whole exercise would be an interesting civics lesson in so many, many ways.

Not least because of the demonstration it would afford of the PC variant of the Daddy Knows Best attitude of today's left.

Kamala Harris, by the way, is much admired among liberals and is being shaped for a fine future, being a very bright, not entirely white woman with a not entirely white name, already en route on the cursus honorum.

Finally, I have to ask.

Is this a prank?

Perhaps a provocation by the left aimed at giving them a chance to place restrictions on the process favoring their own values and agenda?

The process in California and other states has, in recent decades, let to results that have annoyed the left in many ways.

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