A bill that seeks to include the
historical contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
Americans in California textbooks cleared its first legislative
hurdle on Tuesday.
Voting along party lines, the
Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee voted 3 to 2 in favor of
sending Senator Mark Leno's FAIR Education Act to the Senate
floor.
“There is already a law on the books
that says that various groups and their civil rights struggles have
to be included in the education of the California children. And
we're just asking to be included in that group – that list of
groups [that are legally mandated to be included in current
California social sciences books],” Jim Carroll, interim executive
director of Equality California, the state's largest gay rights
advocate, told Southern California Public Radio.
Opponents of the legislation include
SaveCalifornia.com, the socially conservative group headed by Randy
Thomasson.
“If the Democrats pass this perverse
bill into law with [Governor] Jerry Brown's signature, it will be
California's 7th statewide sexual indoctrination law
indoctrinating impressionable children,” Thomasson said in an email
to supporters. “There is no biological basis for homosexuality,
and the overwhelming majority of HIV transmissions are the result of
homosexual and bisexual behavior. To protect their kids from a raft
of lies, parents have more reason than ever to leave behind
government schools for the safe havens of homeschooling and church
schools.”
The bill “corrects the
straight-washing of California curriculum, which currently requires
that students learn about the cultural and historic contributions of
every group except LGBTs,” Stop8.org's Matt Baume said in his
group's weekly video news update. “It's important that we end our
exclusion for a lot of reasons. But the most urgent is that we know
that learning about LGBT figures in schools reduces anti-LGBT
harassment.”
Sarah Allis Yang testified against the
bill in the Senate Education Committee last week, telling members
that she had escaped from transgenderism.
“The reason I am here before you
today is because I spent 19 years of my life as a man,” Yang said.
“My first words were, 'I'm a boy.' If anyone can claim they were
born this way, it was me. I thought I had no choice but to either
get surgery or continue dating women as a man trapped in a girl's
body. I became suicidal not because of societal pressures or lack of
understanding or acceptance from others, but because I personally
didn't want to live this way.”
“That is until God came into my life.
Thirteen years later I totally embrace and accept myself for who I
really am: a woman.”
“I am here before you today to ask
that you vote against SB 48 because it promotes gender confusion and
experimentation that threatens the safety of California's youth.”
Being gay, Yang added, “is a choice.”
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)