Your
Help Needed for One Last Push in California’s Senate Bill 777 Referendum
By Susan Markham, Family Leader
California Director
Family Leader California volunteers
and friends have circulated more than 7,200 petitions throughout
the state of California
as part of the Referendum effort to stop Senate Bill 777, which
amends sections of the Education Code and in part, prohibits “any
teaching or school activity that ‘promotes a discriminatory bias’
against persons possessing specified protected characteristics.”
These protected characteristics include
sexual orientation, gender identity or behavior, and association
with persons who have any protected characteristic.
Take Action
THERE ARE PETITION
CENTERS AROUND THE STATE. Please click here
to find a petition center near you. You can drop off petitions
at these centers or go by to sign one if you haven’t yet had a
chance.
IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA:
Save
Our Kids is planning a drive-by signing this Monday, January 7th,
from 4 to 7 pm at three different locations. Karen England
will fly down from Sacramento
to host one.
If you live in the LA area and
know of an easy access location, or you would be willing to volunteer
to help at a location, please call Susan Markham at 714/883-5323.
If you are in Southern
California, please call or email susanmarkham@verizon.net
and we will do all we can to get a petition to you to sign.
IN
THE SACRAMENTO AREA: If
you are able to volunteer for a few hours on Monday, Tuesday or
Wed am, please call: 916/498-1940, ext. 10 or email signthepetition@gmail.com
Thank
you for each of your individual and group efforts.
Background
Governor Schwarzenegger caught many
residents off-guard by signing Senate Bill 777 into law last October,
which profoundly affects what our children will be taught in school
regarding sexuality and family.
The title and summary of the petition
as prepared by the Attorney General states: “The challenged amendments,
would, in part, prohibit any teaching or school activity
that ‘promotes a discriminatory bias’ against persons possessing
specified protected characteristics. These protected characteristics
include sexual orientation, gender identity or behavior, and association
with persons who have any protected characteristic.”
The Referendum stops SB 777 from
taking effect as a law until January 10th (instead
of January 1st). If there are enough signatures to
qualify it for the June ballot, then it will be decided by the
voters at that time whether or not this controversial bill will
become the law.
If it does not qualify January 10th
with the necessary 434,000 signatures, it will then be the law.
Even if stopped, the legislature could come back and present the
same type of legislation in the upcoming term, but they will have
a vast audience after this Referendum experience.
The radar bar has been lowered.
The awareness and understanding level of one of the busiest segments
of the population, those in the middle of raising families, has
been raised. It will be harder to slip legislation like this
past the general public in the future.
Family Leader California is working
with Capital Resource group, a family issues advocacy group based
in Sacramento on the Save Our Kids petition
drive, supported by a wide coalition of pro-family groups and
churches around California.
There are well over 400,000 petitions
that have been distributed by the Save Our Kids organization.
Family Leader California volunteers and friends of Family Leader
Network have distributed about 7200 petitions.
If this referendum qualifies for
the ballot, it will be the first ever in California to qualify through a volunteer-only
signature gathering. Typically, in a campaign like this, most
signatures are gathered by paid signature gatherers, at a cost
of between two to five dollars per signature. This campaign is
an example of people mobilizing other people, of many citizens
becoming involved in a way that they had never pictured being
involved.
While planning Thanksgiving dinner,
shopping for Christmas presents and attending soccer games, thousands
of California citizens
included talking to others about Senate Bill 777. For many it
was their first experience in being part of a legal process in
this way.
I believe that the reason there has
been such an overwhelming reaction to this bill is that this bill
went too far. Its purpose, as stated by Equality California,
the gay rights advocacy group that drafted and supported this
bill, was to streamline legislation. Interestingly enough, the
word curriculum had purposely been amended from the bill
that was passed and signed by the governor, yet in the Equality
California Legislative Scorecard for 2007, it describes what SB
777 does: “prohibits curriculum that is discriminatorily
biased against LGBT people and other protected groups.”
All laws necessary to protect all
classifications of people are already in place as well as laws
to monitor how those laws are being enforced.
Right now there are more than 200,000
signatures counted. With more than 400,000 petitions in circulation,
the important task now is for people to sign and return their
petitions. Even if only one person signs a petition and the petition
is signed by a circulator, with the county name on the back, it
is a valid petition and very much appreciated.
