Don’t let the state trample on parental rights

Legislation passed in Sacramento affects the lives of Santa Barbarans. Often we are ignorant of the laws until it is too late. You have already lost control of your home and your neighborhood to the dictatorship in Sacramento. State lawmakers have eliminated single-family zoning, and taken from you and your local city councils, all powers of zoning decisions in your neighborhoods. Democratic members in the state Assembly are recommending two new bills that further reduce your parental-guardian rights, to add to one already passed by them.

According to Reform California, Assembly Bill 1078 would eliminate local education officials and parents making decisions on curriculum content, based on the needs and desires of parents and students in their community. Henceforth, all decisions on curriculum content would be made in Sacramento.

This bill is to prevent parental actions here that occurred in Virginia and Florida against school boards. Parents rebelled against the teaching of Critical Race Theory propaganda; against LBGTQ+ propaganda, teaching their sexual practices; and, against the encouragement of minors of 12 and above to change from the gender they were born with to the opposite gender, or a variation thereof.

Accompanying that bill is Assembly Bill 665 - 202324. (AB665), written by a Democrat, Wendy Carrillo. It allows a single “mental health professional” to place a child as young as 12 years old in a “Residential Shelter Facility” without parental knowledge or consent. This is without any prior allegations of child abuse, incest, or any other report or evidence of maltreatment by that child’s parents. Your Assemblyman Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara. voted for this.

Let me see if I have this right. It’s a federal offense to transport a minor under the age of 18 across a state line for immoral purposes. It’s also a felony for an adult to have sex with a minor under the age of 18.

But …

The Democratic-controlled California legislature is about to pass a law allowing the state to take control of a minor from another area of the country (or world as far as I know) and offer that under-age person “sanctuary” protection from his or her parents or guardians.

And it’s apparently OK to perform an abortion on, say, a 13-year-old girl without informing the parents of the minor child.

In states such as New York and California, Oregon, and Washington, it’s OK if someone brings say a 12-year-old girl from Texas, Florida, or another state with laws prohibiting the sexual mutilation of underaged minors and deliver said minor to some “doctor,” who would then offer “gender affirming” care that may include excising the breasts of the underaged minor female, or even worse.

Huh?

You may have been following the various school scandals in states that allow — even encourage

— nurses, teachers, counselors and administrators to “protect” students who’ve decided they’d like to change their gender (no doubt with the encouragement of an army of new-found on-line “friends”). If you are a parent, you no doubt are appalled that those same nurses, teachers, counselors and administrators are legally allowed to keep any and all information about your child’s transitional activities away from you.

Huh?

It’s difficult to understand how a teacher, nurse or anyone really, could do this to someone’s child in good conscience.

But they do.

All the time.

Those teachers, nurses, counselors and administrators are empowered to do so by virtue of Assembly Bill 1266, which became a provision within the California Education Code, Section 221.5(f), on Jan. 1, 2014, thanks to then-Gov.

Jerry Brown, who signed it into law on Aug. 12, 2013.

AB 1266, named the School Success and Opportunity Act, requires that “pupils be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs, activities and use facilities consistent with their gender identity, without respect to the gender listed in a pupil’s records.”

The California Education Code protects adult groomers further by requiring that “Private information such as transgender status or gender identity falls within this code requirement and should not be released.”

The code also stipulates that “a school cannot require a student to provide any particular type of diagnosis, proof of medical treatment, or meet an age requirement as a condition to receiving the protections afforded under California’s antidiscrimination statutes. Similarly, there is no threshold step that any student must meet in order to have his or her gender identity recognized and respected by a school.”

The cde.ca.gov website advises the following as steps a school or school district should take to “protect” a transgender or gender or non-conforming student’s right to privacy:

“To prevent accidental disclosure of a student’s transgender status, it is strongly recommended that schools keep records that reflect a transgender student’s birth name and assigned sex (e.g., copy of the birth certificate) apart from the student’s school records. Schools should consider placing physical documents in a locked file cabinet in the principal’s or nurse’s office. Alternatively, schools could indicate in the student’s records that the necessary identity documents have been reviewed and accepted without retaining the documents themselves. Furthermore, schools should implement similar safeguards to protect against disclosure of information contained in electronic records.

“Pursuant to the above protections, schools must consult with a transgender student to determine who can or will be informed of the student’s transgender status, if anyone, including the student’s family. With rare exceptions, schools are required to respect the limitations that a student places on the disclosure of their transgender status, including not sharing that information with the student’s parents.”

The state currently allows a minor 12 or older to request transgender treatment without parental supervision, if a counselor or doctor deems it appropriate.

There is some pushback.

In Arkansas, for example, newly elected Gov. Sarah Huckabee

Sanders signed into law the Given Name Act, which requires school officials to call a student by the name listed on the student’s birth certificate. It also demands that educators cannot address a child by a pronoun that does not match the child’s sex.

Here in California, Republican Assemblymen Bill Essayli and James Gallagher (who represent Riverside and Chico) have put forth a bill (AB 1314) that would require “teachers, counselors, and any other employee of a school to notify parents within three days in the event their child requests to be called by a name normally used by the opposite sex or different personal pronouns, or begins using a bathroom or locker room designated for the opposite sex.”

But don’t get your hopes up. The veto-proof California legislature and current governor are not likely to consider the bill.

The bill would restore the right of parents to be informed of any medical decision their child makes regarding gender — bolstering the original California law, which states that: “Parents and guardians of children enrolled in public schools have the right, and should have the opportunity, as mutually supportive and respectful partners in the education of their

The rationale behind such state-ordered kidnappings is that children of 12 years and up are susceptible to the desire to change their gender. It is claimed that opposition to, or attempts to ignore or prevent gender change, by parents, will increase the risks of suicide among those children. Therefore, the child must be removed from the protection of their parents into the care of strangers, to enable gender conversion treatments.

The adverse emotional impacts on the child in losing the love and guardianship of their parents to the dubious control of strangers, and the distress of their parents, are not considered.

You have voted so many of these activists into power that they have now become your masters. The Republican minority cannot even slow them down.

Around the nation, gender modification has grown to epidemic proportions. Children can be referred by one mental health professional to “Gender-Affirming Clinics” for evaluation. Puberty blockers and gender modification drugs could be recommended, together with later referrals for gender-changing surgery. In California, surgery of this nature would require the permission of the minor’s guardians or parents. However, how could this be enforced if the child keeps it secret and

Wendy McCaw

Arthur von Wiesenberger Co-Publisher Co-Publisher