By Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — A California judge has thrown out a proposed ballot initiative that advocated killing anyone who engages in gay sex, calling the measure “patently unconstitutional.”

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Raymond Cadei relieved California’s attorney general late Monday of the duty to clear the so-called Sodomite Suppression Act for signature-gathering. Cadei said it would be “inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public, and tend to mislead the electorate” for Attorney General Kamala Harris to process the proposal.

Harris had asked for a judge’s permission in March to reject the initiative through a legal complaint against its sponsor, Orange County lawyer Matthew McLaughlin. After McLaughlin did not attempt to defend the measure in court, the attorney general last week sought a default ruling in her favor, a request Cadei granted.