California Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined a coalition of 16 attorneys general from blue states to oppose Florida’s so-called don’t say gay law that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
The coalition asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida to allow the plaintiffs’ challenge to the law to move forward.
Mixed Messages
Carl DeMaio, chairman of a government watchdog group called Reform California and an openly gay Republican, told The Epoch Times that the label “don’t say gay” law is “misleading.”“It’s designed to serve a political agenda, not inform the public,” DeMaio said.
Bonta’s agenda is to distract California voters and deflect criticism from failing policies in their own state, according to DeMaio.
“It is a political stunt financed by taxpayers, and it needs to stop,” he said.
In the statement, Bonta said the Florida law “serves to stigmatize and harm LGBTQ+ youth in Florida and across the country.” He said California has numerous protections in place to promote inclusivity in schools, including the Fair Education Act, the California Healthy Youth Act, and the School Success and Opportunity Act.
He said studies show that failing to provide LGBT-inclusive classroom instruction adversely affects students’ mental health and learning outcomes and results in more anti-LGBT bias.
Eric Early, a Republican and former candidate for California attorney general, told The Epoch Times on Aug. 4 that he fully supports Florida’s parental rights law.
“There is no doubt that LGBTQ kids should be protected. Nobody disputes that. The problem here is that the vast majority of the kids who are not LGBTQ are being indoctrinated,” said Early, an attorney and managing partner at a law firm.
Telling children that “it doesn’t matter if you’re born a boy or a girl, you can be anything you want to be” is indoctrination, according to Early.
“This includes teaching kids that there are far more than just the two sexes of male and female,” he said.
The amicus brief was filed by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia, New Jersey, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, and Oregon.