Karen Holgate

Since 1999, several bills advancing the gay agenda have passed the California legislature. Two of the most recent, AB 1785 and AB 1931, passed by one-vote margins and went into effect on Jan. 1, 2001. Together, the new laws:

• Add "sexual orientation" to all prohibited discrimination clauses, including all public schools and religious or private schools receiving state funds.

• Provide money for assisting school personnel in determining the motives of students who display tendencies toward "hate violence."

• Revise curriculum frameworks to include "fostering an appreciation" for diversity, and give grades K-12 access to "supplemental resources" to combat "gender or sexual orientation" bias.

• Require schools to develop "tolerance programs" to foster "mutual respect" for differences, including "gender and other characteristics."

• Create programs that will include staff development and instructional practices "responsive to the diversity" of students.

"No one wants to see any child mistreated or harassed, even by other children," says Karen Holgate, director of policy for the Sacramento-based Capitol Resource Institute (CRI), "but the laws that were passed and the task force's new policy recommendations and strategies go far beyond just protecting children. They constitute a plan that includes teaching all California students what the state believes they should know about homosexuality, even if that is different from what parents want their children to know."

According to CRI, the task force's recommendations and strategies will:

1. Repeal the right of parents to exempt their children from taking certain surveys.

2. Integrate all curricula, including math, science, history, and language arts, with positive, pro-homosexual, transgender, and "gender variant" messages.

3. Create new policies "to reduce adverse impact of gender segregation . . . related to locker room facilities, restrooms and dress."

4. Trample local control by forcing all schools to adopt the rules and regulations set forth in the report.

5. Use taxpayer dollars to establish Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) on school campuses, conduct training for all school personnel, fund a media blitz to convince parents that the new rules are wonderful, create a response system that will "provide rehabilitation to perpetrators" of discrimination, and hire "monitors" (thought police) for each school.

The education department is expected to adopt the task force's recommendations, although those involving funding must be approved by the legislature. Attorney Brad Dacus, director of the Pacific Justice Institute, believes many of the recommendations will be implemented by Governor Gray Davis through executive order. "When implemented, these overreaching state mandates will virtually shut the coffin on the rights of parents with children in California public schools," Dacus said, "and we intend to challenge them."