In 1911, when Governor Hiram Johnson unveiled California’s modern ballot initiative system, he said the direct democracy plan would “arm the people to protect themselves hereafter.”
Memo to the future: He didn’t mean it literally.
More than 100 years later, an obscure Orange County lawyer has triggered a far-flung debate, pitting civil rights supporters versus First Amendment purists, with his own proposed initiative, calling for gay people to be executed. You know, for being gay.