On July 15, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB1955, legislation that forces educators in the public school system to withhold from parents any knowledge that their children are suffering from gender dysphoria. The bill came in response to California’s growing parental rights movement, which successfully advocated for transparency polices at the local level, with at least seven school boards passing laws in the past year that will require educators to inform parents if their child begins to identify as the opposite sex.
The sweeping, radical bill “would prohibit school districts, county offices of education, charter schools and the state special schools, and a member of the governing board or body of those educational entities, from enacting or enforcing any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that requires an employee or a contractor to disclose any information related to a pupil’s (so-called) sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent unless otherwise required by law.”
The legislation was signed in direct contravention of a growing consensus that so-called “social transitioning” is harmful to gender-confused children. The Cass Review in the United Kingdom condemned the practice, and it has been abandoned in the UK with cross-party support. The American mainstream media, by contrast, is presenting the bill as “new protections for transgender and gay students” (Politico) and denying the very idea that parents might be best suited to know what their children need — Politicoreferred to the “so-called parental rights movement.”
Newsom’s decision will cost California a lot of money.
In response to a post on X by a podcaster who shared a Libs of TikTok report on the bill with the question “So the state is the parent in California now @GavinNewsom?” Elon Musk declared his intention to leave the state entirely. “This is the final straw,” he wrote. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.” Musk added “I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”
