A ballot petition in the Democrat stronghold of California could repeal transgender legislation and be a major setback for the trans agenda in a significantly hard blue state.
Launched by Protect Kids California, the three-part initiative could potentially “require schools notify parents when their child wants to socially transition in school settings” and ensure that “girls’ athletic programs are for female athletes only.” It may also “prevent child sterilization by prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or transgender surgeries on minors.”
California avoided the encroachment of radical transgenderism when Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required “courts to consider a child’s gender identity when it comes to custody decisions,” as Politico reported earlier this year.
Gavin Newsom greets spectators at the Pride parade in San Francisco in 2017. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
According to the New York Sun, the petition has garnered some serious traction in the Golden State after having collected its required signatures in November with thousands of downloads. Speaking to the outlet, Protect Kids California’s co-founder Jonathan Zachreson said the state has become a “central point where a lot of these horrible policies relating to youth and gender dysphoria are happening”:
Recent polling suggests nearly 70 percent of California voters oppose schools keeping gender identity information secret from parents. That polling information, along with other polls indicating a “disconnect” between voters and state legislators, Mr. Zachreson said, was “the impetus for starting these initiatives.”
The state attorney general’s office — responsible for titling the petition — named it the “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative, language that Mr. Zachreson said his group is considering suing over ahead of the initiative even making it on the ballot.
Zachreson said that the initiative will not be restricting rights and will instead be “protecting them.”
“It’s protecting parental rights to know what’s going on with their kids at school,” Mr. Zachreson said. “It’s protecting the rights of female athletes and students for their privacy. And it’s protecting the rights of children to be able to keep their private parts and be able to grow into adults to be able to healthily reproduce.”
“If we are successful in California, it’s going to completely change the direction and conversation on this issue across the country and probably internationally as well,” he added.
Equality California said that the initiative seeks to demonize LGBTQ youth.
“It’s extremely awful and it’s terrible that we’re going into 2024 and there are folks here in California that continue to demonize LGBTQ+ youth,” the group’s communications director, Jorge Reyes Salinas, told the outlet.
“We know that none of this hate and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has a place here in California, especially knowing that 69 percent of Americans at-large support the LGBTQ+ community,” he said. “We’re working with community partners hoping that this awful side of history doesn’t happen and that people don’t get the signatures that they’re trying to get.”
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