Considering it has the worst homeless crisis in the nation and soaring crime, one would think that Los Angeles leaders are in no position to judge others. But that is exactly what the out of touch L.A. County Supervisors are doing. They voted unanimously to ban travel to Florida and Texas for what they see as anti-LGBT policies.
They oppose Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law, which states, “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3.” Sponsors of the travel ban call the law “egregious” and “designed to encourage harassment and suffering” among young LGBT children. But it is clear that the law simply prohibits classroom instruction on the subject, so how can this cause harassment and suffering? The law does not restrict counselors in any way.
Opponents call it the “don’t say gay” law, but they might as well call it the “don’t say straight” law since it does not ban discussion of same sex attraction, but of all sexual orientation. The truth is LGBT activists do not oppose the ban because of “don’t say gay,” but because of what the law is really about, “don’t say trans.”
Sexual orientation is about to which sex one is sexually attracted. Kindergarten through third grade children are too young to have sexual attractions. But what they are being taught is about gender identity. I have heard from many parents of children who report that it is being taught in many schools as early as kindergarten. There is no way to teach about gender identity without teaching what the activists want, i.e., that you can identify as a different gender than you were born with. And it is taught that it is perfectly normal and natural to be a boy but feel like a girl, or to be a girl born in a boy’s body.
Less than one percent of the population is transgender, and studies show the vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria naturally grow out of it. So, this is not about supporting children. It is far more likely to confuse them than support them. This is about LGBT activists wanting children indoctrinated at the earliest age possible to accept transgender people as normal. This is of course an absurd objective for children eight years old and younger. They have plenty of time to learn at the appropriate age about this subject and to be loving and accepting of such types of people.
The supervisors say, “Schools should be spaces that foster open discussion, critical thinking, meaningful engagement and the safe exploration of ideas.” This is a laudable goal for our universities, and one I wish the left supported more. But K-3rd grade should only be a safe space to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Incredibly, New York Mayor Eric Adams says the law is an affront to free speech. So it is a free speech issue when teachers cannot teach young children about sexual attraction, but not when medical professionals attempt to share their opinions about COVID-19 and vaccines.
They also oppose the Texas Governor’s directive to the Department of Family and Protective Services to open child abuse investigations into parents or doctors who give hormone treatments or surgeries to children aimed at changing their gender. The Los Angeles supervisors say the directive “flies in the face of all that we know about best practices when it comes to supporting children and young adults to discover who they are and feel secure in their sense of self.”
The science shows that no one is born transgender. The human genome has been mapped and no transgender gene was found, and identical twin studies show that when one twin is transgender, the majority of the time the other is not.
Transgenderism is the result of gender dysphoria, which is a long recognized psychiatric condition which requires psychiatric treatment. But California has made such treatment illegal. The only treatment allowed in California for children suffering from gender dysphoria is what LGBT activists call “gender affirming” care. What is that? It is the blocking of human hormones, the replacement of such hormones with those from opposite sex, and the surgical removal or addition of genitalia and breasts. Only in George Orwell’s’ 1984 would this be called “gender affirming.” In real life it is “gender rejecting.”
The Los Angeles supervisors say the Texas directive “contravenes everything that we have done in L.A. County and in California.” It certainly does. Perhaps it is Florida and Texas which should banning travel to California. But with Californians moving to Florida and Texas in droves to escape the lunacy, there is no need.
