Fighting the transgender onslaught

Conservatives are rightly celebrating President Trump’s new executive order against so-called “gender-affirming care” for confused minors. However, we do well to remember that there are still many state-level battles to be fought against this toxic ideology. Fortunately, new winds may be blowing there as well, even in deep-blue California. 

Last summer, I wrote about the passage of AB 1955, a secrecy bill instructing school staff not to inform parents of children who were manifesting gender dysphoria. This put legal muscle behind district-level secrecy policy already in force, as well as overriding pro-parent policies. At the time, it was spun as “protecting the child-parent relationship” by keeping staff from “inappropriately intervening” in “deeply personal conversations.” 

Of course, many educators would like nothing better than to “intervene,” and indeed, we’ve seen California teachers exposed as positively relishing the chance to indoctrinate vulnerable children with progressive sexual ethics. One case even involved a young girl who actually did want her mother to be informed about her struggle (feeling too self-conscious to initiate a conversation herself) and had her wish denied. As with abortion and euthanasia, so here we see the same pattern of an evil ideology that cloaks itself in reasonable liberalism, only to rob people of the very autonomy it claims to honor. 

But the times, they are a’changing. A group of parents and teachers have filed a lawsuit against the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) claiming that AB 1955 constitutes a violation of their right to free speech, and the suit was allowed to proceed last month by U. S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez. The suit was expanded into a class action last year after initially being filed by only two plaintiffs, both Christian teachers resisting the EUSD’s secrecy policy. Judge Benitez made an initial ruling in their favor in fall 2023, with rousing language attacking the policy as “a trifecta of harm.” In another district, teacher Jessica Tapia, a Christian, went on to win a settlement after suing for wrongful termination. Attorney General Rob Bonta and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond have continued to threaten districts that follow Benitez’s court order, but if this class action continues to roll forward, it could render AB 1955 null and void.

The defense has attempted to argue that the plaintiffs lack standing because the policy is merely a “suggestion.” They further argued that parents “lose much of their federal constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door” anyway, as the child’s right to privacy and anti-discrimination take precedence. This logic is breathtaking in its arrogance, effectively replacing parents with state actors as a child’s primary guardians. 

It’s also arbitrary. Imagine the uproar if such arguments were employed to keep parents in the dark about a child threatening violence to himself or others, or a child suffering from a disorder like anorexia that isn’t the political flavor of the month. On the flip side, we’ve seen multiple cases where families are put through a bureaucratic inquisition if their child does something utterly innocuous, like chewing a Poptart into the shape of a gun. In short, there are no absolute rules guiding how leftist bureaucrats deal with families, except an absolute commitment to leftism. Any pretense to the contrary is pure legal casuistry.

The ruling describes the plaintiffs’ conviction that school staff shouldn’t deceive parents as “sincere religious beliefs,” but of course no prior religious commitment is required to be in favor of basic institutional transparency, just as one doesn’t have to be a Christian to be against abortion. Such things have only become “religious” because they conflict with the counter-religion of the ruling class. In these times, we’re reminded of why God gave us the Ten Commandments. Skeptics are fond of saying that surely all rational people should be able to agree things like murder or lying are bad, but every day brings new examples of supposedly rational people inventing elaborate excuses to do just that.

A source with school board ties in the EUSD told me she’s spoken to multiple trustees who were told they could be held personally liable for not enacting the secrecy policy. Many local officials are so cowed, they’re only willing to speak off the record. But by God’s grace, this reign of terror may soon be broken, and a new day may soon be dawning for the families of California.