Calif. Governor Signs Pro-Homosexual Bill, Outrages Family Advocates
by Fred Jackson and Jenni Parker
August 29, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Shock and dismay -- that's how pro-family groups in California are reacting to news this morning that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that gives homosexuals new and far-reaching powers.
The bill, SB 1441, adds sexual orientation to already existing provisions in the state's law that prohibit discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race, national origin, ethnic group identification, religion, age, sex, color, or disability. The measure was promoted by a lesbian member of the California legislature and is now the law in that state, a fact that has filled many family advocates with outrage.
Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute (CRI), described the measure as not "even a veiled attempt at subtly advancing the radical homosexual agenda," but "an outright, blatant assault on religious freedom." She calls the bill "yet another attempt to prevent citizens with moral and religious principles from expressing their beliefs and educating their children according to those beliefs."
This legislation, a CRI press release points out, could potentially prevent parochial schools such as private, Christian, Catholic, Mormon, or other faith-based educational institutions from receiving student financial assistance if they also maintain a code of conduct that prohibits homosexual behavior as immoral based on their religious beliefs.
It is CRI's position that forcing acceptance of students engaged in behavior offensive to a religious school's moral code is a serious infringement of the institution's constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and free speech. Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for CRI, feels it is bad public policy to add sexual behavior to the state code's list of protected classes. As a California citizen and a person of faith, she says, "I am terribly disappointed in Governor Schwarzenegger."
As some pro-family opponents are interpreting the newly signed legislation, it requires any program or activity that receives any financial assistance from the state to support homosexuality, bisexuality, and trans-sexuality in effect or else lose that funding. The law allows no exemptions for faith-based colleges, university, or child-care centers that receive any amount of state money.
Activist Calls Governator Traitor to California Families
California activist Randy Thomasson, head of the group Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), charges Arnold Schwarzenegger with betraying the state's pro-family citizens.
In signing SB 1441 into law, the governor has "trampled religious freedom to satisfy hyperactive sexual activists," Thomasson contends. He says Schwarzenegger apparently "has two faces. He speaks at churches and says he believes in religious freedom and family values, yet he's stabbing pro-family Californians in the back."
Thomasson and CCF alerted thousands of the state's voters to SB 1441, which resulted in the governor's office being bombarded with thousands of phone calls, faxes, and e-mails voicing opposition to the measure. Multitudes of pro-family citizens, as well as representatives from several of the state's religious schools, sent urgent messages pleading with Governor Schwarzenegger to veto the legislation.
In ignoring those appeals, Thomasson asserts, the current governor is doing just as his predecessor, the recalled Governor Gray Davis, did -- that is, "trample religious freedom at the bidding of liberal activists from San Francisco and West Hollywood."
The president of CCF says members of California's religious community "are suffering under Arnold Schwarzenegger." And now that he has signed SB 1441, which the activist calls "an intolerant bill" that rides roughshod over the religious values of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and other religious institutions, the religious community will undoubtedly suffer more.
"By importing these controversial sexual lifestyle definitions" into state law, Thomasson contends, this newly enacted legislation could easily harm the religious freedom of dozens of the state's faith-based institutions that accept financial aid for their students. "People of conscience are appalled," he says, at the governor's decision to sign this anti-family legislation.
Thomasson says this new state law will, among its other ill effects, force religious schools to either abandon their religious standards on sexuality or reject students who have been awarded state financial aid. Other kinds of faith-based organizations will be affected as well, he notes, including non-profits and community service organizations that contract with the state or receive any kind of state funding of their programs or activities.
More Sexual Indoctrination Bills to Come from California Legislature
And unfortunately for California families, a CCF action alert points out, a number of other radical, pro-homosexual bills are heading toward Governor Schwarzenegger's desk. One of these, a bill known as SB 1437, prohibits textbooks, instructional materials, and school-sponsored activities from "reflecting adversely" on homosexuality, trans-sexuality, or bisexuality.
Another bill, AB 606, authorizes the California Superintendent of Public Instruction to withhold state funds arbitrarily from any district deemed to be inadequately promoting homosexuality, trans-sexuality, and bisexuality in its school policies. This measure, CCF asserts, clears the way for curricula promoting these "alternative" sexual lifestyles to be forced on all the state's public schools.
And then, CCF notes, there is AB 1056. This bill, now on the California Senate floor, would spend $250,000 in taxpayer dollars to promote trans-sexual, bisexual, and homosexual lifestyles under the banner of "tolerance training" in ten school districts, thereby creating a model "pilot program" for the rest of the state.
