A California man's proposed ballot measure that called for the killing of gay people is "patently unconstitutional," and the state's attorney general is not required to "waste public resources" to process the initiative, a Sacramento County Superior Court ruled on Monday, USA Today said.

The measure, submitted by Orange County lawyer Matthew McLaughlin, sought to amend the California penal code to make sex with a person of the same sex an offense punishable by "bullets to the head or by any other convenient method"; it also called for a fine of $1 million or "banishment from the state" for the distribution of gay "propaganda."

But Judge Raymond Cadei ruled that the proposal would be "inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public, and tend to mislead the electorate," the newspaper noted. He relieved Attorney General Kamala Harris of the duty to clear the so-called "Sodomite Suppression Act" for signature-gathering.

"This proposed act is the product of bigotry, seeks to promote violence, is patently unconstitutional and has no place in a civil society," Harris said in a statement on Tuesday. "I applaud the court's decision to block its title and summary," the attorney general added.

McLaughlin had submitted the proposal to Harris' office in February and paid a $200 fee for its filing, the Los Angeles Times detailed. His measure "tested the limits of the state's normally liberal attitude on putting even the most extreme ideas on the ballot," the newspaper commented.

"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," the initiative said, according to Talking Points Memo.

Few facts are known about McLaughlin, but the attorney appears to be a graduate of the University of California Irvine and George Mason University School of Law and retains an active law license in Huntington Beach, California.

"My own personal opinion here is that he has crossed the line between free speech and advocating illegal conduct," Bruce Bridgman, a former deputy district attorney, told Talking Points Memo about McLaughlin, whom he once employed.