The California Catholic Conference and advocates for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights are at odds over the California Student Civil Rights Act, a proposed law designed to protect public school students against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Catholic advocates charge the measure could undercut marriage and harm children by further fragmenting families while adding no legal protections to those that already exist to protect students against discrimination.
The bill, which passed the state Assembly Sept. 11 by a 21-to-15 vote, was approved by the Senate in May and will become law if signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It would amend the state Education Code to specify that students are entitled to equal rights regardless of disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or any other characteristic contained in state Penal Code's definition of hate crimes.
Gender, under the bill, includes a person's "gender identity and gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."
Religion is defined as including all aspects of religious belief and observance, including agnosticism and atheism. Sexual orientation, as the bill is written, means heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality.
Sponsored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, the bill is intended to consolidate various anti-discrimination provisions scattered throughout the Education Code, said Alice Kessler, government affairs director for Equality California, a statewide lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender advocacy group and the bill's sponsor.
"There is inconsistency among all those different statutes," she told Catholic San Francisco. "What our bill seeks to do is make them consistent with one another and consistent with the overall prohibition against discrimination."
By listing all the classes protected against discrimination in the Penal Code, bill supporters say it is designed to cover all students and to guide school districts in developing policies that outlaw discrimination. The lack of clarity in the existing law has resulted in expensive lawsuits against school districts that have failed to protect LGBT students from harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, according to Equality California.
The bill exempts religiously controlled schools if the provisions would be inconsistent with a school's religious tenets.
The Catholic Conference is urging the governor to veto the measure, arguing it is unnecessary because existing law prohibits teachers and school districts from giving any lesson or sponsoring any activity that reflects adversely on students because of their identity.
The conference also is concerned that the bill, SB 777, could prompt a backlash against traditional Catholic views of marriage and gender and promote alternatives as equally valid.
"We feel it fails to make clear the legal distinction between the appropriate prohibition of discrimination against individuals and groups based on certain characteristics, and the promotion of certain characteristics and behaviors," said Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the conference.
"We're asking the governor to veto this and move to other ways to protect students," he said.
Bill May, chairman of Catholics for the Common Good, a San Francisco-based national lay apostolate for the evangelization of culture, called the measure "part of an ongoing agenda to change marriage and family."
"There is a public interest in civil marriage that people are not discussing, and that is marriage is the foundation of the family, which is providing children with a mother and a father, which is indisputably the best environment for human development," he said.
May also cited AB 43, a bill that would legalize marriages between any two people regardless of gender. The bill would provide that marriage is a personal relationship arising out of a civil contract. If signed by the governor, it would make California the first state to permit same-sex marriage by a legislative act.
Another pending bill, SB 11, would expand eligibility for domestic-partner status to include any two unrelated people who are at least 18 years old and share a residence.
The legislative proposals are part of an attempt to redefine marriage for the benefit of adults - with "children left out of the picture," May said.
May cited research by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University on the precarious state of the institution.
"The traditional family is an especially attractive unit for attacks from a secular, individualistic perspective" because it is a seeming impediment to personal autonomy and social equality, project founder David Popenoe writes in an essay published on the project's Web site.
He writes that although marriage remains at the heart of American life, it is eroding as the nation heads toward increasing secular humanism and more fragmented families.
May sees the student civil rights proposal as part of the trend.
"We're not focusing on homosexuality --- that's a pastoral issue," he said. "What we're defending is the rights of parents to educate their children the way they want to with their faith and values. This bill is a violation of that. Also, we're defending religious liberty to be able to express the truth about marriage and family without retribution."
May added: "This kind of legislation is going in the direction of prohibiting people from even discussing the real meaning of marriage."
Kessler said that is not the intent and added she is not aware of any legal case that has arisen from such a backlash.
"In terms of a hidden agenda," she said, "really what we're trying to do is make sure all students have a safe place to learn. The bill would protect students based on religion just as much as it would protect them based on sexual orientation."
She said the bill gives no direction on what is taught in the classroom --- provided the instruction is not discriminatory.
"Teachers have a lot of say in the way they talk about families," she said. "There are all kinds of families." |