Trustees Aim to Fight Bill Protecting Gay Students

A state bill designed to halt bias against gay students in public schools is raising hackles among conservative trustees in Ventura County who fear it will bring gay clubs to local high schools, lessons on homosexuality to classrooms and “Heather Has Two Mommies” to the library shelves.

The so-called Dignity for All Students Bill written by Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Sheila Kuehl would amend the state Education Code to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public education.

But some conservative education activists in the county think it does more than ban bias. They fear that passage of Assembly Bill 101 would mean sliding toward “lifestyle education.”

So strong is the resistance to Kuehl’s bill that two Conejo Valley trustees have asked for a resolution opposing it to be placed on an upcoming agenda. The bill also worries trustees in Simi Valley and on the Ventura County Board of Education.

The bill is “kind of like a first step” toward lifestyle education, said Conejo Valley Unified School District Trustee Elaine McKearn. Homosexual issues “will be in your reading and language arts curriculum, you can be sure of it.

“I don’t think any of this stuff has any place in our schools, having heterosexual clubs or homosexual clubs,” she added. “The kids are in school for an education--reading, writing, math and science.”

But Kuehl, a Santa Monica Democrat who also represents Westlake Village, said naysayers are misinterpreting the bill, which enjoys wide support among PTAs, teacher unions and student groups.

“These accusations are just red herrings because [critics] don’t have any logical or legitimate criticisms of the bill,” Kuehl said Friday. “They raise these straw men so they can knock them down, which shows the poverty of their arguments.”

Instead, she said, AB 101 would prohibit bias based on sexual orientation in public education, including employment, athletics, financial aid, courses of study and student activities. Those same protections are already afforded based on race, creed, color, national origin, sex and economic status.

If a school district were to disobey the bill, the punishment would be mandated compliance rather than a fine.

“The basis of this bill is equality and human dignity,” Kuehl said. “We should never stand for our public school systems discriminating against their students on any non-merit-based basis.”

On Tuesday, the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee is scheduled to consider the bill, which is endorsed by dozens of educational, religious, gay and human rights groups. It could reach the Assembly floor by May. The bill was also introduced last legislative session but died in committee.

The fact that the bill is moving quickly through the lower house prompted McKearn and Conejo Valley board President Mildred Lynch to suggest a motion condemning AB 101. If passed, the motion would be forwarded to legislators and the governor.

At a recent board meeting, Lynch urged “parents, teachers and anyone interested in public education” to read the bill. All five Conejo Valley board members will be receiving copies of the bill within the week.

“It is serious,” Lynch said at the meeting. The bill “has serious implications--none of them good . . . for public education.”

Without having read it, Trustee Dorothy Beaubien suspended judgment of the bill but said she was worried about addressing such hot-button issues in schools.

“I have nothing against people having their rights,” Beaubien said. “We should certainly not have discrimination or intolerance. As far as teaching about [homosexuality] in schools? I would not want it taught in schools. . . . I think there’s too much controversy about it.”

The bill reminds conservative parent activist Debra J. Lorier of New York City’s much-publicized “Rainbow Curriculum,” which taught students about accepting people of all races, religions, physical abilities and sexual orientations.

The Thousand Oaks mother of four thinks the bill undermines her right to teach her children that homosexuality is immoral.

“As a parent who believes that this is not an acceptable lifestyle for me or my children, as a guardian of these children, I’m saying this is not an acceptable lifestyle in the eyes of God,” she said. “Is the school going to say, ‘You’re wrong, Debra?’ Is it my values against the state’s values? Why are my values wrong now? . . . It’s an infringement of my rights to control the values I teach to my children by the public schools.”

Such concerns are “absolutely ridiculous,” said Kuehl, the first openly gay person to be elected to the Legislature. The bill doesn’t mandate curriculum or create special rights, quotas or preferences.

The Education Code has nondiscrimination clauses protecting women and racial minorities, she noted. “If you have a book with a little boy as a hero, is there a requirement to read a book with a little girl as a hero? If you read a book about Nancy Drew, do you have to read a book with a child of color as a hero?”

Of course not, she said.

While the bill has not piqued the same intense interest elsewhere in the county, it hasn’t escaped notice either.

At first glance, Simi Valley Trustee Janice DiFatta said, the bill makes her uncomfortable.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” she said. “Existing laws prohibit violence and harassment to protect our students already.”

She also can’t help but wonder about the bill’s future implications.

“If AB 101 is a foot in the door to teaching our students that various forms of so-called sexual orientation are healthy and normal, as far as I’m concerned, they can take that political battle elsewhere,” DiFatta said. “I cannot and will not endorse such an idea. Not in Simi Valley, thank you.”

The Education Code does not specifically protect homosexual students, Kuehl said. Other state laws offer protection only in the areas of employment and housing, not education.

“The [proposed] state law tells the schools that they have a responsibility to protect their students against bigotry and prejudice and simply do their job, which is to help every student live up to his or her full potential,” she said.

Marty Bates, the president of the Ventura County Board of Education, also opposes the bill, but for different reasons. He frets that the bill will mean money spent on diversity training instead of in libraries or on arts and music programs.

“We all know that it will result in more of our education tax dollars being spent in areas that should not be a priority with us in improving our California education system,” said the fiscal and social conservative. “It will create a need for educating our current and future teachers as well as revising books and curriculum. This means it will cost money.”