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It started getting public attention as a movement in California a number of years ago, where activists all of a sudden demanded “respect” for homosexuals and transgenders in public schools and progressives in the West Coast state responded with a law that banned negative portrayals of those alternative sexual lifestyle choices.
Then activists moved forward to demand that school children celebrate such lifestyles, and again a law followed ordering the memorialization of Harvey Milk, a homosexual activist and politician whose biography described how he preyed on young boys.
Then students were being called “transgender” and they had to be allowed, activists demanded, to use the restrooms and locker rooms that corresponded with the sex they perceived themselves to be, and California accommodated them with a law.
The stunning idea that males had rights to be in facilities for females, and vice versa, reached national attention when a lesbian mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, pushed her transgender accommodation through city council, and the church community rose up against it.
She fought back by having her lawyers subpoena the sermons of various Christian pastors – giving the city a huge black eye on nationwide programs such as Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show.
Now the resistance that existed at the church level in Houston is being turned into a statewide effort in the movement’s home state of California to have the people authorize the “Personal Privacy Protection Act” that would provide that men use facilities for men, and women use facilities for women – and the lawsuits over the issue can be thrown out.
The proposal, which needs about 360,000 signatures by the middle of December to be placed on the 2016 ballot, isn’t complicated.
It states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person shall use facilities in accordance with their biological sex in all government buildings.”
And it provides that no business “shall be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, or civil suits, for requiring employees, patrons, students or any other person to use facilities in accordance with their biological sex.”
‘Biological sex’
Of course, in California, it would have to define “biological sex” so there is no misunderstanding, and it does, as “the biological condition of being male or female as determined at or near the time of birth or through medical examination…”
Karen England, a spokeswoman for the
Privacy for All coalition who also serves as chief of the
Capitol Resource Institute and is a veteran of the culture wars in California, told WND the organization already has documented 25 percent of the signatures required.
She said the goal is to solve a slew of problems that have followed the initial move to legitimize through state mandates a multitude of sexual lifestyle alternatives.
For example, she also was involved several years ago with a move to repeal, through a vote of the people, a law that mandates public schools place boys who say they’re girls on girls’ athletic teams and in girls’ locker rooms.
After successfully gathering more than the requisite number of signatures on that effort, the state fought back and eliminated the names of some of the registered voters, England said. That fight continues even today in the courts.
England said the new proposal is “model legislation” that would protect “the privacy of all people in all government-funded buildings, whether it’s a school” or something else.
She noted that California’s constitution has a specific guarantee of the right to privacy.
“We just want that upheld,” she told WND.
She said the coalition is going on the offense specifically because of all the controversies around the country.
Demands for opposite gender use of facilities where privacy historically has been considered a fundamental component have come from Colorado, Wisconsin, Texas and more.
She said it also would protect churches.
‘Why is there a man in my restroom?’
“We had a pastor who had a young girl come to him and ask, ‘Why is there a man in my restroom?’” she told WND.
The proposal has exceptions for a child needing assistance, or an adult with a medical condition who also needs the help of someone else.
The group’s website explains the simple goal: “Privacy For All exists to protect privacy in restrooms, showers, locker rooms and changing rooms in government buildings. We do so by asserting that individuals should use the facilities in accordance with their biological sex …”
But the decision by the Mount Horeb Elementary School in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, to promote the pro-transgenderism book “I Am Jazz” to grade-school students was withdrawn after school officials were warned by officials with
Liberty Counsel that the district’s claim it had a student with a “girl brain and a boy body” was “completely at odds with the rationale for equality between the sexes: there is no difference between male and female brains or mental abilities, and this idea fosters gender stereotypes.”
Further, the team of lawyers at Liberty Counsel told the district its plan to support a student with gender confusion by requiring students to call a boy “her” and “she” … “infringes upon the other students’ rights to tell the truth, in accordance with their religious convictions, and reality.”
“No one has a moral right to compel others to participate in a fiction (including compelling teachers and others to use pronouns that do not correspond to objective biological sex),” the letter from Liberty Counsel to the district said.
“Transgender education substitutes the beliefs of the principal and school psychologist for those of parents. Bringing transgender activism into schools undermines the privacy rights of students, the free speech rights of teachers who cannot in good conscience address a child by the opposite sex pronoun, and the religious rights of families,” the lawyers said.
‘No credibly medical authority’
They continued, “No credible medical authority establishes the proposition that biological sex can be changed. Dr. Paul McHugh, former chief psychiatrist for Johns Hopkins Hospital, wrote in a June 12, 2014, Wall Street Journal op-ed, ‘Policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered’ by refusing to treat transgender confusions ‘as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention.’ While students suffering from gender confusion should be treated with kindness and respect, schools should not, by their policies or practices, attempt to coerce other students and teachers into participating in what amounts to a harmful delusion.”
That followed only by days a ruling from the Obama administration that a different school must allow a boy who describes himself as a girl full access to the girls’ locker room, or lose federal Title IX funding.
It became the subject of discussion on Fox:
Watch video:
The issue sparked a reaction from WND commentary writer Dr. Jane Orient, who wrote the Fox program participants "both profess concern for the vulnerable transgender child, they seem blind to the fact that he ('she') is being used as a pawn in a political/cultural war. They imply that parents' objections are solely about their girls' seeing body parts different from theirs."
She said the "science cannot be clearer" that there are two sexes – and they are not changeable.
"If 'Caitlyn' Jenner's skeleton is dug up a few hundred years from now, it will unequivocally be identified as male," she said.
"In psychiatry, it is generally taught that the doctor should not affirm a patient's delusions," she wrote. "Eventually, the transgender child will have to confront reality as an adult. He may well change his 'self identification,' but his chance to fully develop as a man may be irrevocably taken from him."
She said the goals are clear: "There are excellent reasons not to have boys and girls undressing in front of each other, and a transgender 'girl' is just a wedge. The real agenda is to further the sexual and cultural revolution: to undermine the family, to stigmatize the Christian faith and indeed all traditional morality, and to break down all resistance to a totalitarian state that dictates belief and behavior."
The
Houston fight gathered headlines for nearly two years, as Parker fought for special permissions for transgenders choose whether they were male and use the facilities for men, or female and use the facilities for women.
WND reported at the time that a new campaign in Massachusetts was revealing more than was intended – because transgenders there already are protected in just about every situation – with the only exception being they are not allowed into public facility restrooms and locker rooms of something other than their physical gender.
So they are demanding that very specific permission, in a proposed law that is coming before state officials.
In a statement released by the
Massachusetts Family Institute, traditional family advocates straightened out some statements released earlier by Attorney General Maura Healey, a strong advocate of protections for transgenders.
Healey claimed the state does not, in fact, "adequately protect transgender people from discrimination in places of public accommodation."
But attorney Andrew Beckwith, president of Massachusetts Family Institute, said that's not quite the situation in the state.
His new memo to lawmakers said the state's Commission Against Discrimination already protects transgenders in almost every way.
"As early as 2001, a ruling of the full commission declared, 'We … hold that 'sex' discrimination, as prohibited by chapter 151B, includes a prohibition against discrimination against transsexual individuals,'" he explained.
'Only exception' now targeted
With the only exception being for bathrooms and locker rooms.
"What is it then, that advocates of HB 1577 see as inadequate in MCAD's application of existing law? In a word, bathrooms. MCAD, taking its cues from the Supreme Judicial Court and the MA Legislature has liberally construed the existing nondiscrimination laws regarding sex to include gender identity and transgenderism. However, the Commonwealth's public accommodation laws include a specific exemption for claims of discrimination based on sex when bathrooms and single-sex fitness facilities are involved," he wrote.
Pastors and other leaders who fought the Houston transgender plan also recently volunteered with help with the same fight, which now is developing in Dallas.
"We will work with Dallas pastors to determine how to appropriately respond to the wholesale catering by city council to the radical, anti-faith, anti-family agenda of the LGBT Human Rights Campaign," said Rev. Dave Welch, president of the Texas Pastor Council.
Welch said Dallas' change to its existing nondiscrimination ordinance "not only opens but essentially removes the doors of women's restrooms, showers and locker rooms in Dallas, as well as criminalizes businesses, employees as well as eventually, churches who attempt to keep men out."
In Houston, voters ultimately rejected the mayor's transgender plan, 62 percent to 38 percent.
When the fight was going on over California's requirement to let students choose their gender and restroom, England visited with Mike Huckabee on his radio program to talk about it.
Hear the interview:
"We respect that some students are struggling with their own sexual identity, but we ask for respect for the other students who will be humiliated when a boy walks into the girl's locker room," said England. "This is a privacy issue, a safety issue, and a common sense issue."
She said it seems "unbelievable that this bill would ever have made its way through the legislature and signed into law by the governor."
Drawing wrath
The law, the first of its kind in the nation, drew the wrath of state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly.
Allowing teenage boys and girls in the same locker room, showering side by side, is a bad idea. In fact, AB 1266 is a recipe for disaster. This will take the normal hormonal battles raging inside every teenager and pour gasoline onto those simmering coals. The right to privacy enjoyed by every student will be replaced by the right to be ogled.
While trying to address a concern of less than 2 percent of the population, California is now forcibly violating the rights of the other 98 percent. Many of the parents I have heard from within the last few days have literally pulled their kids out of public schools and have enrolled them in homeschool and private school programs. My boys, who went back to the public school after many years away, will not be returning.
It is completely unreasonable to expect teenagers, who are uncomfortable with themselves at this age, to accept this level of privacy invasion. After all, in the Capitol building, not only do they not allow men in the women's bathroom, the women must enter a code to access their restrooms.
See Thomasson's closing words in the CNN interview:
California's record of promoting sexual alternatives is long.
For example, SB48, requires positive portrayals of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in public school social studies and history classes.
Other state laws:
- SB 543, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, "allows school staff to remove children ages 12 and up from government schools and taken off-campus for counseling sessions, without parental permission or involvement. The purpose is to permit pro-homosexuality teachers and administrators to remove sexually confused children in 6th grade and up from campus and take them to pro-homosexuality counselors who will encourage them to embrace the homosexual lifestyle."
- ACR 82, approved by the California Legislature in 2010, "creates de facto 'morality-free zones' at participating schools (pre-kindergarten through public universities). Schools that become official 'Discrimination-Free Zones' will 'enact procedures' (including mandatory counseling) against students from pre-kindergarten on up who are accused of 'hate,' 'intolerance,' or 'discrimination'." What is the hate? Peacefully speaking or writing against the unnatural lifestyles choices of homosexuality and bisexuality.
- SB 572, signed by Schwarzenegger in 2009, establishes "Harvey Milk Day" in K-12 California public schools and community colleges. In classrooms, schools and school districts that participate, children will now be taught to admire the life and values of late homosexual activist and teen predator Harvey Milk of San Francisco the month of May.
- SB 777, signed by Schwarzenegger in 2007, prohibits all public school instruction and every school activity from "promoting a discriminatory bias" against (effectively requiring positive depictions of) transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality to schoolchildren as young as five years old. SB 777 means children will be taught their "gender" is a matter of choice.
- AB 394, signed by Schwarzenegger in 2007, effectively promotes transsexual, bisexual and homosexual indoctrination of students, parents and teachers via "anti-harassment" and "anti-discrimination" materials, to be publicized in classrooms and assemblies, posted on walls, incorporated into curricula on school websites, and distributed in handouts to take home.
- SB 71, signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 and implemented in 2008 through the new "sexual health" standards approved by appointees of Schwarzenegger and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, teaches children as young as 5th grade that any consensual sexual behavior is "safe" as long as you "protect" yourself with a condom, and teaches children that homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality is "normal."
- AB 1785, signed by Davis in 2000, required the California State Board of Education to alter the state curriculum frameworks to include and require "human relations education" for children in K-12 public schools, with the aim of "fostering an appreciation of the diversity of California’s population and discouraging the development of discriminatory attitudes and practices," according to the state legislative counsel's digest.
- AB 537, signed by Davis in 1999, permits teachers and students to openly proclaim and display their homosexuality, bisexuality or transsexuality, even permitting cross-dressing teachers, school employees and student on campus, in classrooms, and in restrooms.
That case involved David Parker, who brought a case against Estabrook Elementary school in Lexington, Mass., several years ago. Parker eventually ended up withdrawing his children from the school because of the harassment they endured because of the dispute.
An appellate court said the indoctrination was appropriate because same-sex "marriages" are legal in Massachusetts following the work of former Gov. Mitt Romney and others, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.
That left the school district not only teaching behaviors the Parker family considered immoral, but deliberately refusing to tell them when it would be taught so they could keep their children home.
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