Posted on 05/25/2007 7:45:14 AM PDT by ZGuy
A controversial bill that bans bias against homosexuals, transgenders, and bisexuals in public schools was passed on Thursday by the California Senate, unleashing a wave of concern through those opposed to normalizing homosexuality.
SB 777 went through by a 23-13 vote, and would prohibit all classes, textbooks, and teachers from any instruction that "reflects or promotes bias against" those perceived with gender issues. All instructional materials and school activities would then have to positively portray all of these sexually alternative lifestyles, something many refuse to support.
Children starting from kindergarten would learn about the practices, as a result, and would be forced to accept them as socially acceptable, pro-family conservatives argue.
"SB 777 is designed to transform our public schools into institutions that disregard all notions of the traditional family unit," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute (CRI), in a statement. "This reverse discrimination is an outright attack on the religious and moral beliefs of California citizens."
Voting for the bill went strictly along party lines with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed, passing a slim margin of three votes. No Republican senator made an address to oppose the legislation.
SB 777 is much like a previous bill that was passed in the last session of the California legislature, SB 1437, but was subsequently vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"Parents are angry at the Democrats for passing this school sexual indoctrination bill and frustrated that Republicans did little to fight it," explained Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), a California-based pro-family organization, in a statement. "We call on Arnold Schwarzenegger to pledge that he will respect parents, protect children, and veto this bad bill, just like he did last year."
As part of the bill, which was authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl, a lesbian, the language also redefined what the word “gender” means, stating that “gender” means “sex” but that a person’s gender identity and related appearance can constitute “sex” despite the person’s assigned “sex” at birth. SB 777 also erased the current definition of “sex” from the education code, which originally defined it as the biological condition of being male or female.
Several parents, Christians and non-Christians, have voiced their concern over schools regulating what their children should think is acceptable. They feel their children should not be forced to support homosexuality and other non-traditional gender lifestyles as being normal and healthy.
"The notion of forcing children to support controversial sexual lifestyles is shocking and appalling to millions of fathers and mothers," added Thomasson. "Parents don't want their children taught to become homosexual or bisexual or to wonder whether they need a sex-change operation. SB 777 will shatter the academic purpose of education by turning every government school into a sexual indoctrination center."
Under the bill, school districts must comply with the new standards or else they will be regulated by the California Department of Education. In addition, teachers do not need parental permission to teach about the subjects to their students.
According to CRI, the Los Angeles Unified School District has already implemented the policies in this bill.
"In that district, boys who perceive themselves as girls may enter the girls' locker room and restroom,” described Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for CRI, in a statement. “Teachers and school officials are required to hide the gender identity of a transgender student if the parents are unaware of what's taking place at school. This astonishing policy will be expanded to every school in the state if SB 777 becomes law."
Students up to the twelfth grade would be affected by the bill.
Homosexuality is a behaviour, it is not a race, religion or gender or creed.
It is a learned behaviour, that is why they want it in the schools.
California Cornhole Curriculum
This is beyond belief.
Great. Marching straight into Sodom and Gomorrah!
Anyone who disagrees with this bill is guilty of a hate crime! (sarc)
Why are the liberal legislators tripping over themselves to portray homosexuality as a "normal" thing? The gay demographics ain't that big....
Does Ahnuld have stones enough to veto this?
“In that district, boys who perceive themselves as girls may enter the girls’ locker room and restroom,” described Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for CRI, in a statement. “Teachers and school officials are required to hide the gender identity of a transgender student if the parents are unaware of what’s taking place at school. This astonishing policy will be expanded to every school in the state if SB 777 becomes law.”
How many boys will claim to be “confused”? How long before the girls will refuse to enter the bathrooms without teaming up?
Cali ping
Don't laugh... that is already in the books in some states.
The only reason I can think of is that although they are not that big a group, but they contribute lots of $.
This world has gone crazy.
Destruction of the traditional family unit is essential to tear down society as a whole. And all traditions, and society that is based on those traditions, must be destroyed in order to rebuild our society and culture based on leftist "values". (PS: Stop calling them "liberals")
I guess California doesn’t believe in the United States Constitution.
Sad.
More postmodernist gender bending. As mentioned on another thread, postmodernists deny that reality is something objectively out there, or that truth (i.e., that which IS) is something objectively out there. Rather, reality and truth are social constructs.
That's why they love the word "gender," which used to have a specific meaning apart from "sexuality" but now is confused with it, in a new form of Orwellian duckspeak.
People now can CHOOSE their gender. People can reconstruct themselves. That's why you have GLBT as the standard gender formulation--gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered. There aren't that many people out there who have had sex change operations, but it's extremely important to these ideologues that people shall get to CHOOSE their gender, and transgendering yourself is the perfect model for that attitude.
So, it doesn't matter how many x or y chromosomes a person is born with--and continues to have, regardless of any surgical mutilations performed on him. You are whatever you say you are. Each individual constructs his own truth and reality, and everyone else has to bow down and worship it. That's basically what this law says.
Interestingly, that's also the new constitutional right that was proclaimed by SCOTUS in the Casey decision. Each person has a right to construct his own version of truth and reality, and the hell with whether or not it's actually true.
You think it's OK to kill babies? Go ahead and do it, it's your right, under the reconstructed constitution. Forget the baby's right, he's not old enough yet to construct his own version of reality.
(That fault is going to crack open pretty soon. I don't think Babylon California can get any more abominable)
Senator Kuehl has finally enlightened us as to why the term "gender" has increasingly replaced the term "sex" in recent years. "Gender" traditionally referred to the classification of nouns, pronouns, and their modifiers on the basis of sex--as in the "masculine" and "feminine" nouns found in languages such as German, French, and Russian--but the term was rarely used outside of linguistics or foreign language study.
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