I often mention my overwhelming load of homework, but rarely discuss the nature of it. Well today is different because my homework involves a subject that I feel needs to be publicized as much as possible. California State Bill 777. If you have heard little or nothing about this bill let me bring you up to par. Mind you, this is a bill which has already been passed without going to a public vote. As a parent and future educator I find it both frustrating and ridiculous. What SB 777 has done is changed the definition of “gender” in California education code. Where it used to read that your gender was “the biological condition or quality of being a male or female human being”, it no longer does. Now your gender is what you “perceive” yourself to be. Educators are not allowed to challenge a student who may be born male who now feels he is a female (or vice versa). Nor are they allowed to disclose the child’s chosen gender to the parents.

Big deal right? What this means is that males who perceive themselves as females (and vice versa) if not allowed to use the facilities of their choice are now being discriminated against. That if they want to go into a restroom of the opposite sex they must be allowed. That anything that was previously male or female only, is now open to the opposite sex if they perceive them self as that gender. Before you think this is extreme and will never happen, LA Unified has already put it in to place where students of the opposite sex must be allowed into the locker room of their choice as a result of this bill.

What you may find if you start reading up on this is that the advocates of the bill are claiming that SB 777 is necessary to remove discrimination and hate crimes against trans gender and homosexual students. Except this was already very clearly specified in Ed. Code 200, 220, and others if you read them. They state, in many terms, that it is unacceptable to discriminate against students for any of the above reasons and more. So the advocates of SB 777 decided rather than spending their time, energy, and state tax dollars to enforce the laws that we already have in place, they would instead put their energy into re writing the law so as there would be no misunderstanding that “gender” is NOT how you are born.

Before anyone misunderstands my position and thinks that I do not support the rights of these innocent children, or that I would condone hate crimes on a trans gender individual, that is not the case. However our children were already protected under the existing laws which apparently have not been actively enforced every where. What this bill seems uninterested in taking into account however are the rest of the children who are now being put into uncomfortable and unsafe environments. When educators are being told that they are no longer allowed to stop a male student from entering into a female restroom, other students security is being put at risk. There is a lot more to this bill if you are interested in reading up on it hopefully with enough attention to the matter it will be forced to be brought back to a vote or appealed. As parents and citizens we should at least have that right.