Protect Kids California has launched a three-part initiative with the goals of repealing “the California law that permits students to compete in female sports and students to be in female locker rooms and bathrooms,” prohibiting “schools from deceiving parents about their students’ gender identity crisis,” and stopping “sex change operations and chemical castrations on minors.” The organization notes that half a million signatures are needed by early May to get the initiative on the ballot.
According to the New York Sun, Jonathan Zachreson, co-founder of Protect Kids California, stated that the initiative was launched in response to California becoming a central hub for numerous detrimental policies related to youth struggling with gender dysphoria and parental rights.
For example, the California Department of Education tells schools they must keep the gender identity of minors secret from parents, if a child wants to change his or her name and pronouns at school. But a mother received a $100,000 settlement from a Monterey County school district after suing them for secretly socially transitioning her daughter to a male identity. Then two middle school teachers also received a favorable ruling in federal court when they sued the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) and the state education board over policies that forced them to deceive parents regarding the gender identity changes made by students.
In San Diego, men who “identify” as women are legally permitted to use showers with minor girls under AB 887, which redefines gender as a “person’s gender identity and gender expression.” Last year, Governor Newsom signed SB 107, empowering state courts to remove out-of-state children from their parents’ custody if those children come to California because they can’t get sterilizing transgender drugs and mutilating surgeries in their home states or because their parents object to these experimental treatments for gender dysphoria.
California teenagers are now suing their doctors for cutting off their healthy breasts and for giving them sterilizing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as the only treatment option for gender dysphoria. Detransitioner Chloe Cole has filed a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente. At just 9 years old, Chloe first expressed feelings of gender dysphoria to her pediatrician. Rather than inform Chloe and her parents of the many options available to her, including certain non-invasive therapies and counseling services, doctors told her parents that life-altering, irreversible surgeries to transition her into a male were the only solution. Using fear tactics and claiming that Chloe would be suicidal without these surgeries, doctors performed a double mastectomy on her as a 15-year-old minor.
To make matters worse, over $4 million in taxpayer dollars have funded trans surgeries for California inmates. Additionally, there is a law allowing prisoners to be assigned housing based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex. Employer-provided health plans are required to include coverage for transgender-related care. The list goes on.
In reality, these policies don’t align with the worldviews of most Californians. A November 2023 survey conducted by Spry Strategies polled 1,000 likely California voters and found that 62% affirm the scientific fact that sex is binary, while only 22% hold the view that sex is not binary. Over 70% of respondents indicated that they defined a woman as someone “biologically born female.” Furthermore, 72% said that parents should be informed if their child identifies as transgender while in school, and 63% opposed all “gender-affirming care.” It’s no surprise that Protect Kids California’s initiative has been so successful.
California State Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office has named the petition the “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative. Zachreson said his group is considering suing over the name even before the initiative makes it on the ballot, emphasizing that the initiative will not be restricting rights but, instead, “protecting them.”
“It’s protecting parental rights to know what’s going on with their kids at school,” Zachreson told the New York Sun. “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,” he added, “it’s going to completely change the direction and conversation on this issue across the country and probably internationally.”
Zachreson is right. In order to protect children from dangerous transitioning surgeries and drugs, and protect critical parental rights, California legislation needs to be repealed.
