Rating: Transneutral, KQED, September 2, 2023 (PDF archive) (HTML archive) (Take Action)
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Content Summary
LGBTQ+ Groups Fight Proposals That Strip Protections From Transgender Kids
A new political campaign is attempting to disrupt and even dismantle key protections for transgender youth in California.
Protect Kids California, a recently formed group of mostly conservative state lawmakers and activists, filed paperwork this week to try to add three statewide initiatives to the November 2024 ballot that would ask voters to weigh in on hot-button issues like access to gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.
The measures are aimed at “returning to traditional social norms,” said Jonathan Zachreson, a Roseville City School District board member and president of Students First California, a separate group that’s bankrolling the new effort.
“The United States is going in the wrong direction,” added Zachreson, whose group drew attention for protesting pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
All three ballot measure submissions will now be reviewed by the state Attorney General’s Office, which has until late October of this year to prepare a title and summary. At that point, the backers of the measures can begin circulating petitions for signatures. Each measure must collect nearly 550,000 signatures (PDF) to qualify for the 2024 ballot.
Transgender advocates say the effort is putting LGBTQ+ youth directly in harm’s way. According to a 2023 national survey from The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide-prevention group, almost a third of LGBTQ+ youth said they suffered from mental health issues due to discriminatory policies and legislation. The survey also found that 41% of LGBTQ+ youth have seriously considered committing suicide within the last year.
“The actions of these extremists and elected officials are dangerous and they have consequences — with anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes increasing significantly in California over the past couple of years,” said Jorge Reyes Salinas, a spokesperson for LGTBQ+ advocacy group Equality California, and has pledged to organize to quash these efforts.
The first initiative would require that collegiate sports teams and facilities be segregated by biological sex. Zachreson says the measure is intended to prevent transgender girls from competing in female competitions and, in his words, “unfairly winning.” He points to the instance of a transgender skier who won a California-Nevada high school race earlier this year.
“It’s important that we bring integrity back to women’s sports and we protect their spaces,” Zachreson said.
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