Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is set to debate Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in November. In the meantime, he appears keen to continue transforming California into the leftist antithesis of Florida.
Whereas Florida prioritized freedom over fear during the pandemic, Newsom’s administration issued various mandates and all but shut down the state’s economy. Whereas the Sunshine State protects children from sex-change mutilations and irreversible hormone therapies, California is now a “refuge” for those seeking confusion-affirming medical interventions.
Whereas Newsom ratified a law enabling judges to keep men who prey on grade-schoolers 10 years their junior, between the ages of 14 and 17, off sex-offender registries, DeSantis signed a bill making sexual battery of a child a death penalty offense.
In his latest contrastive effort, Newsom has ensured that parental pressure and conscientious educators won’t get in the way of state-approved LGBT and identitarian propaganda finding its way into the hands of 5.9 million K-12 students in over 1,000 districts throughout California.
Newsom — whose state routinely ranks among the lowest on the CATO Institute’s “Freedom in the 50 States” index — ratified California Assemblyman Corey Jackson’s AB 1078 on Monday, ensuring that questionable library books, textbooks, and other curricular materials that contain “inclusive and diverse perspectives” cannot be dropped from circulation in schools.
School boards will now also face financial penalties if they reject works of leftist agitprop that extol the “contributions” of non-straights and various other favored identity groups.
Jackson’s bill glossed over the various reasons why certain works of LGBT propaganda have been removed in schools farther afield, providing instead a blanket accusation that restricted access to classroom and library materials featuring non-straights constitutes both discrimination and unlawful censorship.
The stated purpose of this legislation is to help California create “an equitable learning environment where all pupils, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) pupils and Black, Indigenous, and other pupils of color feel welcome, including through honest discussions of racism, the history of slavery in our society and in California, and the diversity of gender and sexual orientation that reflects the lived reality of those pupils.”
AB 1078 goes into effect immediately. State Assemblyman Josh Hoover (R) characterized the bill earlier this month as “just another example of Sacramento stepping in and telling local school districts what they can and cannot do.”
