California has become the first state to implement a law giving special privileges to \u201ctransgender\u201d individuals \u2013 those who supposedly identify with the gender opposite to the one they were born with. On August 12, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law giving transgender students in public schools the right to use whichever restroom or locker facilities they desire, and to decide whether they will participate in boys or girls sports activities. The new law will impact an estimated 6.2 million students in the state’s k-12 public schools.<\/p>\n
Homosexual activists insist the law is necessary to protect transgender students from confusion, bullying, and discrimination. The Associated Press<\/a> reported that the measure comes \u201cas the families of transgender students have been waging local battles with school districts across the country over what restrooms and locker rooms their children can use, disagreements that have sometimes landed in court.\u201d<\/p>\n In July The New American<\/a><\/em> reported that the school district of Arcadia, California, was pressured by the federal Department of Education and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to change its policy so that a female student \u201ctransitioning\u201d to the male gender would be able to use the boy’s restrooms and locker rooms at her school. The school district signed on to an \u201cagreement\u201d written up by the DOJ ensuring that the girl who supposedly identifies as a boy \u201cwill be treated like other male students while attending school in the district,\u201d according to a DOJ statement.<\/p>\n Masen Davis of California’s Transgender Law Center, which advocates for such measures nationwide, said that under the new California law, \u201cevery transgender student in California will be able to get up in the morning knowing that when they go to school as their authentic self they will have the same fair chance at success as their classmates.\u201d<\/p>\n The group quoted Calen Valencia, an 18-year-old transgender student, as saying: \u201cI\u2019m so excited that California is making sure transgender students have a fair chance to graduate and succeed. I should have graduated this year, but my school refused to give me the same opportunity to succeed as other boys. Now other transgender youth won\u2019t have to choose between being themselves and graduating high school.\u201d<\/p>\n The homosexual group said in a press release that the measure \u201cbuilds on a national movement\u201d aimed at implementing similar restroom-use laws nationwide. \u201cMassachusetts and Colorado have statewide policies in line with [the California law],\u201d the group said, \u201cand the Colorado and Maine state human rights commissions have held that state law requires schools to respect students\u2019 gender identity.\u201d<\/p>\n Pro-family and conservative groups fought diligently to block the bill, and warned of the consequences of the new measure. \u201cThis radical bill warps the gender expectations of children by forcing all California public schools to permit biological boys in girls restrooms, showers, clubs, and on girls sports teams and biological girls in boys restrooms, showers, clubs and sports teams,\u201d said Randy Thomasson of the group savecalifornia.com<\/a>. \u201cThis is insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Karen England of the pro-family Capitol Resource Institute<\/a> accused the state’s homosexual lobby of \u201cforcing San Francisco values on all California public schools at the expense of the most vulnerable, our children.\u201d She charged that the bill \u201cwas never about helping a few children that experience gender dysphoria. It is about furthering the radical lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] agenda by utilizing the public school system to force acceptance of the lifestyle on our children.\u201d<\/p>\n England noted that the law does not require a student to prove that he or she has gender identity issues, \u201cso school administrators will have to take the child on his or her word when they want to use the facilities of the opposite sex.\u201d<\/p>\n Wondered England: \u201cWhat about the right to privacy of a junior high school girl wanting to go to the bathroom and having some privacy, or after PE showering and having to worry about being in the locker room with a boy?\u201d She warned that the law \u201cdoes not provide safety measures to prevent abuses of this policy,\u201d and predicted that school districts will ultimately face lawsuits \u201cfrom both sides, because schools have no authority to fully protect the majority of students.\u201d<\/p>\n The Virginia-based Liberty Counsel<\/a>, which has monitored the issue over the past few years, noted a number of troubling \u201ctransgender\u201d incidents around the nation:<\/p>\n – In 2006 \u201ca teacher at Batavia High School in New York was a male one year and returned to school a female the next,\u201d recalled Liberty Counsel.<\/p>\n – In 2007 Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston’s Children\u2019s Hospital, \u201cwas administering hormone-blocking drugs to children as young as seven years of age who self-identify as the opposite sex,\u201d the group noted.<\/p>\n – In 2012, recalled Liberty Counsel, a prosecutor in Thurston County, Washington, \u201cignored indecent exposure incidents to young girls when a cross-dressing man exposed his genitals to women and under-age girls in the Evergreen State College women\u2019s locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n – \u201cJust this week, the Maine Supreme Court heard arguments in a case where a 15-year-old identical twin boy, who identifies himself as a girl, is suing for access to the girls\u2019 restrooms,\u201d reported the Liberty Counsel.<\/p>\n In June The New American<\/a> <\/em>reported that Colorado’s civil rights bureaucracy ruled that the Fountain-Fort Carson School District discriminated against a six-year-old boy who identifies as a girl because officials at the elementary school he attends refused to allow him to use the girls’ restroom at the school.<\/p>\n Speaking about the new California measure, Matt Staver, founder and director of the Liberty Counsel, said that Governor Brown\u2019s signature allowing \u201cstudents the right to use dressing rooms, locker rooms, and restrooms based on their subjective self-perceived sex, regardless of their birth gender, is unconscionable and extremely dangerous to children. Now, girls in elementary and high school will be forced to shower and change in locker rooms with boys masquerading as a girl. When an incident happens \u2013 and no question, it will \u2013 Governor Brown will have the innocence of that abused girl on his hands. This is not about intolerance or hatred or bigotry: it is about biology, which you cannot change, and common sense, which seems rare today.\u201d<\/p>\n Staver warned that \u201cuntil there is a public outcry and people stand up and say, \u2018Enough is enough,\u2019 our children will be in jeopardy!\u201d<\/p>\n Savecalifornia.com’s Randy Thomasson recommended that California parents \u201cprotect their children from the insanity of biological boys in girls’ restrooms and girls’ showers and biological girls in boys’ restrooms and boys’ showers by exiting the dysfunctional, immoral public schools for homeschooling and solid church schools.\u201d<\/p>\n