(CA) K-12 Transgender Law Repeal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Opponents of a new California law that gives transgender students certain rights said Sunday that they had collected enough signatures for an initiative that would repeal the law.

A coalition of conservative groups called Privacy for all Students submitted 620,000 signatures to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot, said Frank Schubert, the political strategist handling the signature gathering effort.

To qualify, at least 505,000 valid signatures must be submitted. To verify the signatures, each of California’s 58 counties will first check that the overall count is correct, then conduct a random sampling to make sure they are legitimate. After that, it is likely the state would order a full review.

If, after all of the reviews, the group has the requisite number of valid signatures, the initiative would qualify for the ballot.

“Many people said we had no chance to collect over half a million signatures in just 90 days, but we have proven them wrong by gathering over 115,000 more signatures than the minimum needed,” Gina Gleason of the group Faith and Public Policy, said in a statement.

California is the first state to pass a law detailing the rights of transgender K-12 students.

One of the provisions gives transgender students the choice of playing on either boys or girls sports teams. It also allows them to choose which restroom that want to use.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law, AB1266, in September. It goes into effect Jan. 1.


The goal of the law is to reduce discrimination against transgender students.

John O’Connor, executive director of Equality California, the organization that co-sponsored the transgender student law, said he was alarmed by the initiative effort.

“Protecting this law is our number one priority, and we will put everything we’ve got into it,” O’Connor said, adding that he believes public opinion is opposed to discrimination against LGBT people.

The effort to repeal the law got a boost last month when the National Organization for Marriage, which organized the 2008 ballot initiative that outlawed gay marriage in California, joined the effort.

Schubert, who helped organize the signature push, previously led successful campaigns to block same-sex marriage in Maine and North Carolina.

Supporters of the repeal effort argue the law violates the privacy of non-transgender students.

They said 400,000 of the signatures gathered were done by volunteers, as opposed to 220,000 collected by paid staff.

“It shows the degree of opposition that exists to opening the most vulnerable areas of public schools to the opposite sex,” Karen England of Capitol Resources Institute, a coalition member, said in a statement.

I just don't get what the issue is.

I just don't get what the issue is.

“Protecting this law is our number one priority, and we will put everything we’ve got into it,” O’Connor said

The effort to repeal the law got a boost last month when the National Organization for Marriage, which organized the 2008 ballot initiative that outlawed gay marriage in California, joined the effort.

“It shows the degree of opposition that exists to opening the most vulnerable areas of public schools to the opposite sex,” Karen England of Capitol Resources Institute, a coalition member, said in a statement.

Because a diverse and tolerant world is a terrifying thought to the people that push these kinds of initiatives. It's not surprising in the least that an organization like NOM would stick their noses in something like this. These people know that acceptance in the law is an indication of acceptance in the larger society, and they would like nothing more than to sweep the non-traditional elements back under the rug and hope they stay there permanently this time. If transgenders start getting "special rights" (i.e. rights that everyone else enjoys), it makes their insular little bubble that much harder to maintain.

i think hell must be freezing over if im actually in agreement with pleebo... /panic ;)

The concern about selecting the bathroom doesn't make sense unless we're talking about informally diagnoised transgender children who still identify themselves as their original sex, which is a bigger problem since minors having this operation is extremely rare.

Transgender doesn't mean you have had an operation, it just means you identify with the gender you were not assigned.

If we go with that definition of "transgender", then it's more trouble than it's worth.

The concern about selecting the bathroom doesn't make sense unless we're talking about informally diagnoised transgender children who still identify themselves as their original sex, which is a bigger problem since minors having this operation is extremely rare.

This usually isn't something that happens in K-12 since generally speaking the operation isn't performed on minors and even with respect to adults there is 2-5 yrs worth of psychological evalutions involved.

It is better to make every little girl uncomfortable then it is to make one little boy that thinks he is a girl poop in the same bathroom as other little boys.

How does the LGB community get lumped in with people with a severe mental disorder?

How does the LGB community get lumped in with people with a severe mental disorder?

But to stay slightly on topic what really needs to happen for the US culture to move forward is to somehow obtain the level of acceptance Polynesian culture has for its fa'afafine

It appears that DSM-V giveth and it taketh away. On one hand, gender dysphoria may align DSM-V with current moves to affirm trans identity, but on the other, concerns over Tranvestic Disorder’s broad and damaging nature may undercut the good found in the first change.

Experts in the field of psychiatry are concerned about the influence of this volume. Ron Rosenbaum wrote about the DSM in “The Gonzo Neurologist,” an article about Oliver Sacks in the December 2012 edition of The Smithsonian: ”[The DSM's] supposedly objective quantifiable ‘criteria’ for mental illness … [reshapes] the way we think about what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘malfunctioning’ … because the health insurance industry demands a certifiable DMS diagnosis from a psychiatrist before it will agree to subsidize payment for medication and treatment.”

Sacks compares the use of the DMS in diagnosis to using “a sledgehammer rather than a scapel, obliterating questions such as what is the difference between ‘justified’ sadness and clinical depression.”

The British Psychological Society in the United Kingdom has an equally harsh response, stating that it has “more concerns than plaudits”. Like Sacks, the Society criticized proposed diagnoses as “clearly based largely on social norms, with ‘symptoms’ that all rely on subjective judgements … not value-free, but rather reflect[ing] current normative social expectations.” Other doubts about the reliability, validity, and value of existing criteria are that personality disorders were not normed on the general population. In addition, “not otherwise specified” categories covered a “huge” 30% of all personality disorders.