One of the laws, the Gender Nondiscrimination Act, “takes existing protections based on gender identity and expression and enumerates them as protected categories in nondiscrimination laws,” explained the bill’s sponsor, California Assemblywoman Toni Atkins. “In addition, the bill clarifies that gender identity and expression are included in the definition of gender and sex in all California codes.”
What that all boils down to, explained Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, is that “employers have to allow men to dress like women at work, if that’s their means of ‘gender expression.’” The pro-family group explained that six governmental departments — civil, education, government, insurance, labor, and penal — will be affected by the new law.
In early October OneNewsNow demonstrated how the law will likely play out when it reported: “Phyllis Fernandez was shocked when her two young daughters returned from school one day and asked why a man dressed like a woman was in their school cafeteria. The mother contacted [California’s] Sierra Sands Unified School District and got confirmation that what her girls told her was true. But apparently, the school district says it could do nothing about the worker’s appearance” because of California’s increasingly liberal stand on homosexual and transgender behavior — which has now been re-enforced by the new Gender Nondiscrimination Act.
The other law, the Vital Statistics Modernization Act, “changes the laws regulating the way transgender people get new IDs and updated birth certificates,” explained CitizenLink. “Previously, applications for an ID reflecting a gender change had to be accompanied by a doctor’s note saying sex-reassignment surgery had been performed; it also included room for third parties to file objections.” However, the new law “deletes the provisions for objections, and makes the doctor’s note ‘conclusive proof of gender change.’”
Masen Davis of California’s Transgender Law Center called it “a big day for transgender folks in California. Our victory is a testament that California is at its best when we work together to realize the ideal that everyone should be treated fairly and equally.”
But Ron Prentice, executive director of the California Family Council, warned that the new law “could be a problem for law enforcement. In some ways, it could erase previous existence for people who change their birth certificate and their name. It continues to chip away at the concept of gender being biological.”
In addition to signing the two transgender bills into law, Governor Brown vetoed a third piece of legislation, the Survey Data Inclusion Act, which would have required the state to include questions about such issues as sexual identity, sexual orientation, and domestic partnership status on state surveys. The Catholic news site Catholic.org noted that Brown thought “those questions should not be asked by the legislature and governor, but should instead be rigorously and thoughtfully handled by a different process. It is unclear what process he was referring to.”
The online Catholic site reflected that the new laws “mark the latest in a round of increasingly government sponsored changes to the culture in California. As the state steadily moves away from the two parent, heterosexual marriage — and the family and society founded upon it — it is apparently trying to stand out as a leader in promoting the homosexual equivalency movement and a cultural revolution. While few will argue against equality and legal protection for all citizens, critics say the new laws are much more than that. They reflect a fundamental re-making of the social order and an erosion of the marriage bound, heterosexual, two parent family as the foundation for civil society in America.”
Photo: California Gov. Jerry Brown
