A week before wildfires set southern California ablaze, Governor Schwarzenegger set sparks of his own when he signed into law a school anti-discrimination bill, which was characterized by the Campaign for Children and Families as a "sexual-agenda bomb dressed up as a child-caring Easter egg."
The new law expanded the list of prohibited bases of school related discrimination ("race, sex, color, creed, hanicap, national origin, or ancestry") to include "disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other cahracteristic contained in the definition of hate crimes that is contained in the Penal Code."
Gender-based claims, for example, will now encompass "gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."
The bill's prior incarnation was vetoed in early September midst public outcry to a provision prohibiting textbooks that "reflect adversely" on a person based on sexual orientation. That language was stricken from the recently enacted (and declawed) version of the bill.
But conservative organizations in California are still clamoring against the law and their rhetoric is panicked. The Campaign for Children and Families is urging parents to pull their children out of public schools and the Capitol Resource Family Impact is trying to obtain a ballot referendum to overturn the law as part of its " Save Our Kids " campaign.
The law's supporters have fended off these attacks by noting that the new statute merely clarifies school anti-discrimination laws that are already on the books.
Opponents argue that the law's broad language, which prohibits discrimination based on even "a perception that the person has any of those [defined] characteristics or that the person is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of those characteristics," will allow absurd claims to proliferate.
Conservatives counter that bastions of American culture, like a prom "king" and "queen," and gender-specific sports such as football will be trampled by discrimination-based claims. (We'll miss those sacred rituals, now won't we?)
The law will take effect in January 1, 2008, unless a ballot referendum can muster the support of some 400,000 people. (Can that many Californians really be so discriminating?)
To download a copy of the legislation, please use this link: SB777