Teachers will pass their new found religion onto the students for a cool $10M a year to the Transactivists, while the medical complex will get billions as more kids catch the gender contagion.
Assembly Member Zbur 1021 O Street, 4350 Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: OPPOSITION FOR ASSEMBLY BILL 5 – Amending Section 218 of the Education Code
Dear Assembly Member Zbur:
Our Duty is an international group of parents and allies that advocates for children and young adults against gender ideology. We are nonpartisan and are not affiliated with any religion. Our membership includes those from the LGB community, and we are thousands strong.
We oppose AB5.
A. Fiscal Impact – California Cannot Afford This Bill
a. Enrollment is at an all-time low.
The number of families trusting public schools to educate their children is at its lowest in a decade. A mere 5.8 million students are enrolled in California schools. This is because schools are no longer places of learning, but places of indoctrination. The Assembly’s Appropriations Committee’s analysis – the only one available the afternoon before the Senate hearing – failed to mention the expected drop in enrollment and cost thereof, as droves of parents continue to pull their kids out of California public schools because they don’t want their children force-fed theories that they find offensive, contrary to science, and predatory. The drop is anticipated to be an additional 40,000 unenrollments for the sixth straight year in a row. As more parents wake up to school’s distain towards parents’ rights and this administration’s assumption that teachers – not parents – have control of their kids, the families rejecting public schools will only increase.
Missing, too, from the analysis is the cost for early retirement by teachers, attrition, and the need to pay substitute teachers, as teachers with morals leave the profession rather than be forced to follow pseudo-science, practice medicine without a licence (social transition is a pyscho-social intervention), and hide dangerous, life-threatening secrets from parents about their children.
b. California is facing a $32B deficit and cannot afford to implement new statewide policies for the 5.8 million school children.
The 2023-24 state budget cuts art and music programs by $200 million from its already insufficient funding.
Through AB5, instead of using available funds to instruct teachers to raise literacy and math proficiency, the state is looking at spending $1.3 million for a portal designed to “educate” teachers (falsely) that transgenderism is based upon science and fact, another $487,150 on annual maintenance of the portal, and approximately $8 million to instruct the teachers in all things gender once a year. One must not forget to add into the calculation the funds estimated to have been already expended on teaching queer theory to the teachers since AB493 was enacted in 2020 ($3.25M annually). Thus, California is looking at a total of $10 Million for the AB5, plus a cost bill from the last 3 years, totaling an astounding $20 Million having been spend to ensure that teachers will facilitate the transgendering of parents’ students without the parents’ knowledge or consent.
Imagine the rise in achievement scores growth if Sacramento spent $20 Million on teaching Hispanic and African American students to add, subtract, and read. Imagine the personal and economic benefits to these communities if they had more high school graduates that genuinely meet the standards. Imagine the drop in drug addition, homelessness, and crime when California schools churn out educated students.
$20 million dollars on a theory that is being quickly debunked in Europe.
$20 million dollars on a new religion when the poorest and most needy kids cannot read.
We wonder how the average Hispanic voter will vote in 2024 knowing that transgenderism is the most important subject in California schools.
c. The lawsuits for harms caused to children on school grounds by school personnel, as a result of policies that exclude parents are mounting.
The analysis also failed to mention the financial risk of all of the lawsuits in payouts, settlements, and attorney fees. Parents are no longer afraid to stand up to Sacramento.
This $20 Million dollar price is just the tip of the ice berg. A tsunami of lawsuits have and will be filed against schools. There are lawsuits threatened against school districts and the lawyers are just gearing up for more. In the UK, a class action suit being filed against its Department of Education. Lawsuits, like Jessica Konen’s that just settled for a significant undisclosed amount, are just portents of things to come. This administration is setting up the collapse of public education.
There is absolutely no evidence that more lessons on transgenderism will result in more successes in school. As schools turned their back on true education and moved into the social justice space, suicide rates have risen; mental health issues have risen; and, of course, the number of kids with gender confusion has exploded. (See the enclosures.) Ask any teacher of 20 years, if they ever heard the term “trans kid” 5-10 years ago. They always respond “no”, because it is the implantation of the ideology through schools that have created them.
d. The lawsuits by teachers forced to violate their professional, ethical, and legal obligations to children in their care, as a result of policies that exclude parents, are mounting.
Per the declaration in SB596 (2023-2024 session) teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Those who are not comfortable teaching or supporting a transgender belief system are retiring early, or, like Jessica Tapia from Jurupa Unified School District, are being fired for refusing to fall into line and then filing lawsuits. Her lawsuit is pending. In Escondido, two other teachers are suing for being forced to lie to parents.
B. Substantative Problems for AB 5
AB5 mandates that teachers and other certified employees be indoctrinated with transgender ideology, a new pseudo-religious belief system that has no basis in science. There is no evidence that anyone can be born in the wrong body. Despite serious mental health conditions that can cause dissociation, the brain is not a separate entity from the rest of the body. For a school system that ranks 40th in the nation, and is losing students and teachers at an unprecedented rate, there are doubtless more effective options for spending our tax dollars and helping California students. Law makers should be clamoring for the development of best practices for elevating the student body to reach the minimal math and English standards, not dealing with uniquely personal mental health issues of children that are best left to their parents who know them best – and are legally and morally responsible – to attend to.
We also hear from teachers alarmed at the sudden marked increase in gender-confused students in their classrooms. A 2022 report from the Williams Institute, based on CDC survey data, reveals that “the number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years.” And going back just over a decade reveals that current rates represent a 20- to 40-fold rise in youth trans identities. California now has one of the highest rates of trans identifying youth in the US, with 1.93 percent of those between ages 13 and 17 identifying as transgender—almost 38 percent higher than the national average. According to their 2020-2021 survey of students, Davis Joint Unified School District has an astounding baseline of 6 percent who can be considered transgender. This does not even include students with cross-sex identities. This estimate is nearly 4.3 times the national average, and 3 times California’s average.
The legislative intent of AB1487 (2022-24) states that an unfathomable “27 percent, or 796,000, of youth 12 to 17 years of age, inclusive, are viewed as gender variant by their peers at school.” The Seattle School District has a 834% uptick from 2016 to 2019 in students stating that they are transgender. Nothing increases by this degree naturally. Activists claim that increases are the result of a suddenly more accepting environment. If this trope is to believed, then why the need for the myriad anti-bullying laws and school support clubs? Parents and astute teachers uncompromised by ideology know that these increases are the result of social contagion.
Minors trying on identities would not be such a concern if social transition wasn’t tied to a medicalization pathway that involves lifelong administration of puberty blockers (a decidedly not reversible, not risk-free “pause button” – Lupron – the drug used has over 10,000 complaints), cross-sex hormones (with their equally irreversible, damaging, life-changing effects), and surgical removal of breasts and removal and reconfiguration of genitalia. All gender-related medical interventions exact an extremely high physical cost: sterility, loss of sexual function, higher risks of cancer, suicide, drug use, alcoholism, life without a partner, homelessness, bullying, and dementia, to name a few. There isn’t a single study on the long-term effects of these interventions on the new cohort of trans-identifying youth that exhibited no prepubertal gender dysphoria. We have grave and reasonable concerns about the more than doubling of minors initiating puberty blocker treatments or starting cross-sex hormones over the 5-year period ending in 2022. With each incremental law that California passes pressuring students and teachers to accept transgender ideology, more young people take on transgender identities. Schools are the pipeline for the medical industry.
Children are extremely vulnerable — malleable and susceptible to fantastical thoughts and beliefs. This legislature recognizes this with its Declaration to SB274 (2023-24 session):
For more than a decade, the Supreme Court, in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), and supported by neuroscience research, has recognized that young people are different and, because of the hallmark features of youth, such as ‘immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,’ are both not as culpable as older people and capable of remarkable change.
Schools are creating the extraordinary, unprecedented increase in young people who believe they are a gender not reflective of their sex or even recognized on the binary of male and female. By simply asking, “What are your pronouns?,” public schools, push children toward a “trans” identity. They plant the seed with that simple question, that everything could be wrong with that’s child’s body – EVERYTHING.
The topics covered by the mandated indoctrination of teachers promote a new religion. Teachers must believe in a mystical soul that can change and appear at any age, but becomes static once revealed, knowable only by the individual, and for which medical providers must perform any and all medical interventions that only the individual (regardless of age) can dedicate — all of which is life saving and medically-necessary, or else the trans-identified individual will commit suicide.
C. Proposed Section 218.3 (A) of the Education Code
AB5 changes to section 218.3 (A), at a minimum, states the instruction needs to create a “safe” and “supportive” environment for pupils. The bill does not define either of those terms. Does “safe” mean an environment where children are encouraged to keep secrets from their parents? Apparently, the Democrats believe so, since they refused to hear AB1314 (2023-2024), a bill which would have required that schools inform parents if their pupil is struggling with gender identity issues — a mental health crisis.
Does Section 218.3 mean an environment in which child protective services will be called on parents who do not socially or medically transition their child, as was done to California’s Abigail Martinez, whose 16-year-old, Yaeli, was taken from her, bounced from affirming foster home to affirming foster home and pumped with testosterone, only to kneel in front of train three years later? All abuse charges were dropped against this immigrant mother, but it was too late. Yaeli called her mother complaining that her body was in constant physical pain before she decided to end her short life.
D. Proposed Section 218.3(B) of the Education Code
Pursuant to section 218.3(B), at a minimum, the instruction of the non-affirming parent needs to address the “lack of acceptance at home.” This phraseology presupposes that any parent who does not support a child’s trans-identity is abusive. What does acceptance mean? Must the parent accept the new belief system that all humans have a gendered soul, a sense of feeling female or male or some other gender such as, agender, demiboy, nonbinary, autism gender (all offered as a distinct and valid gender in San Francisco Unified Schools)?
“Acceptance” in parents’ eyes means acceptance of their child in their natural state as perfect: lovable and worthy, without alteration. Is acceptance of perfection in a natural state something that the cultural competency course includes or must parents and teachers be re-educated to believe the perfect, healthy child is deficient and in need of medical alteration?
Instruction by the transactivist have one definition of “acceptance”: that the child is the sex/gender that he conjures up. Full stop. Anything outside of socially transitioning the child is “unsupportive” and “unaccepting”.
In the recently filed Regino v. Staley (Chico Unified) 2:23-cv-00032 (CA Eastern District), a fifth grader believed that she was a transgender child, but once she left the school, the child returned to identifying as her biological sex. This case is on appeal.
My own child believed that she was a transgender boy which was affirmed by her school against my wishes. We removed her from the public schools, and cut her social media, and my child returned to loving her female body.
There are countless other accounts of children changing their minds about an adopted gender, and subsequently dropping their transgender identity entirely. Why should teachers be taught that they must believe in an ideology that places their child on an evidence-free, harmful medical pathway knowing that there is a reasonable likelihood that if the child is not affirmed, she would desist?
E. Proposed Sections 218.3 (C) and (H) of the Education Code
Sections 218.3 (C) and (H) of the Education Code will encourage schools to send children 12 and older to counseling services without the parents knowledge. Should the counselor and child believe that the parent is not affirming the trans-identity, under AB665, the child could potentially be sent to a residential facility without any evidence of abuse of the parent or suicidality of the child. Teachers will be encouraged to send young children to places such as the Landing Spot – a trans advocacy group that made the news – when pastor Tinnin-Martinez proudly admitted to telling children to lie to their parents and to calling Child Protective Services on parents if they don’t use the child’s transgender name or pronouns. Teachers will be encouraged to recommend community-based services such as CommuniCare where Kenna Cook works in tandem with Davis Joint Unified School District. Ms. Cook is known in kink circles, promoting BDSM events. Section 218.3 encourages the dissolution of families, replacing loving parents with highly questionable ideologues.
F. Sections 218.3 (J) of the Education Code
Based on Sections 218.3 (J), teachers will be pushed to create more clubs through which California students will be encouraged to question their gender and embrace a new one. As the LGBTQ caucus of the CTA teaches, it’s best to hold these clubs at lunch time to avoid detection from parents. The CTA also provides instructions on how to spot vulnerable students to recruit to join the club — students who are awkward or gender non-conforming, outliers who are susceptible to teacher influence.
In the case of Jessica Konen v. Caldeira (Union) 5:22-cv-05195 (CA Northern District), Ms. Konen’s daughter was pressured by her teacher into acquiring a transgender identity at the middle school’s UBU club, a euphemism for a gender-sexuality alliance club, started by the activists’ teachers. With no student participants, these teachers scanned students’ searches on their school I-pads for kids who might be suspectable to the transgender ideology they pushed in the club. Ms. Konen’s child was pressed to take on a transgender identity by the activist teachers. Once Ms. Konen found out, she removed the middle schooler from the public school, and she returned to identifying as her biological female self. The case settled with the school paying out.
G. Missing from the Training Requirements
1. Desistence and Detransitioning
The trans advocacy groups that “educate” the teachers never discuss desistence or the fact that transgender intervention is the ultimate conversion therapy. An effeminate boy that would just grow up to be gay is not actually a girl trapped in a boy’s body. A female with stereotypical masculine attributes is not a boy trapped in a female’s body. She is just a girl who likes things that boys typically like.
Of trans-identifying children and youth, 61% to 98% will outgrow gender dysphoria if not socially transitioned. Many trans-identified kids are just gay or lesbian. Most children with gender confusion have co-morbid mental health issues that if treated will also resolve their gender confusion.
Chloe Cole and Layla Jane, both Californians, underwent transgender medical procedures. Surgeons removed Chloe’s healthy breasts at age 15 and Layla’s at age 13. Both, as they matured, quickly grew to regret the surgeries and now have irreversibly harmed bodies. Currently, there are over 49,500 members on detrans/Reddit— a moderated internet site for those who feel regret and concern over their medical transition. The rapidly increasing number of those who are experience regret indicates that a trans identity is dynamic and should not be treated as a permanent state, especially in adolescents who are just beginning to understand themselves.
Recent data indicate that upwards of 30% of those who have medically transitioned experience regret, but the real numbers aren’t known because no one is tracking transitioners or regret rates.
2. Suicide
Another missing component of gender “instruction” is the reality in regard to suicide. Despite the horrific narrative spread about the necessity of medical transition, trans-identified children do not have a narrow choice between suicide or transitioning.
A study on the outcome of “gender-affirming” medical treatment, commissioned by the National Institution of Health and conducted by the four most prominent pediatric gender clinics in the U.S. is now in its second year. The study includes no control group and suffers from a huge loss to follow-up — an abundance of participants dropping out skews the data. Tragically, of the 315 children in this study, two committed suicide within one year of starting cross-sex hormone treatment — more than 50 times the national suicide rate for minors.Without any explanation NIH dropped suicidality from the criteria tracked, presumably because the results didn’t meet the “life-saving treatment” narrative.
Despite the oft-quoted statement that if kids don’t get hormones as soon as possible, the comprehensive data from the UK showed a suicide rate of .03% over eleven years (2010-2020) with no difference between those youth treated or untreated with gender intervention, and of the thousands of non-affirmed children in our parent groups, none have committed suicide. Additionally, the instruction must include that the long-term study(30-years) from Sweden – one of the most progressive countries in the world – showed that those who engaged in transitional interventions have a 19 times higher suicide rate than the population, and Denmark’s study 40 years shows an increase of 3.5 times in completed suicide by those who underwent transgender interventions.
3. European Countries Are rejecting “gender affirmative care”
The instruction would be remiss if it didn’t include the results of the systematic reviews performed by England, Swedenand Finland— countries that found that a significant lack of evidence to support medical or social transition. A few weeks ago, Norway announced that it will conduct a systematic review. Full disclosure about all of the countries that are ceasing to socially and medically transition children must be included in the instruction. Italy and France will be the next countries to stop transitioning children. EVEN THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS IS RE-EVALUATING ITS POSITION ON GENDER INTERVENTIONS ON MINORS.
4. No one can actually Change Sex
Honest instruction about gender identity would address that no one has a male or female brain that is mismatched to their body, and no number of surgeries or hormones will change a human from one sex to the other.
5. Profits being Made from their bodies and there is a High Medical Cost
No gender instruction would be complete without mentioning that each child who medically transitions is worth over $1 million dollars to the medical community Investors are profiting off of gender medicine. Plume and Folx are on-line providers of hormones with substantial investors. The Global Market Insights report states that the gender surgery market is worth $623 Million in 2023 and predicted to grow to more than $11.5 Billion dollars in the U.S. and this is just the surgeries. Any person placed on hormones for a long enough time will be sterile, four months for males and 5 years for females, ensuring profits in the fertility industry. (Plume has paired up with Stork Club, an adoption and surrogacy for-profit company). Discussions of the profit-side of “gender affirmation care” should include the entities that are making all of the money, are the “white privileged” men and women running or investing in the more than 300 pediatric gender clinics in the US, when there was only 1 a little more than a decade ago. Please make sure that the teachers are informed that the pharmaceutic companies producing the hormones and puberty blockers are unwilling to perform any studies to show that their drugs, used off-label, actually cure gender dysphoria (rather than exacerbate symptoms and lock young people into a lifetime of medical care) and are the best treatment with the least amount of long-term side effects for children and youth.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully request that you vote “no” on this dangerous, costly bill that Californians – literally – cannot afford to pass.
Respectfully, Erin Friday, Esq. Co-Lead Our Duty
TRANSGENDERISM’S METEORIC RISE IS NOT ORGANIC BUT A SOCIAL CONTAGION. NOTHING IN MEDICINE INCREASES AT THESE RATES NATURALLY
