As California Goes … So Goes the Nation?

California is facing a slew of bills that “threaten the unborn, parental rights, freedom of speech and religion,” reports the California Family Council (CFC), a Focus on the Family ally. The organization also says the legislature is still considering bills that “encourage racism, drug abuse, sex trafficking, and assisted suicide.”

Sadly, CFC says, “The bills we supported this year to promote religious liberty, provide sex education transparency, and protect children from sex abusers are dead or pushed off until next year.”

Jonathan Keller, president and CEO of CFC, told The Daily Citizen, “California lawmakers seem oblivious to how their outrageous policies are affecting their constituents. Apparently, the sting of our state’s population shrinking for the first time in history is not enough to stop legislators from pushing dangerous anti-family policies.”

He added that the state needs a spiritual and governmental transformation, stating, “More than ever, Christians must engage our Capitol and our culture with boldness and point to Jesus.”

Since California often leads the way for other left-leaning states that want to push similar legislation, it’s important to keep an eye on what’s being considered that will affect families and people of faith. Here’s a brief rundown of some of the measures being contemplated by the state’s legislature.

AB 101: Mandatory Ethnic Studies Courses for High School Students.The measure requires high school students to take a course in “ethnic studies” in order to graduate from high school. While that’s not a bad thing, and could be challenging and interesting for many students, CFC reports that the curriculum, approved by the Board of Education in March of this year, is filled with tenets and ideology from Critical Race Theory. A review in The Wall Street Journal labeled the curriculum “critical ethnic studies” and said it “boils down to vulgar Marxism, identity politics and victimology.”
AB 1084: Gender-neutral section requirement for big-box stores. The legislation reads, “This bill would require a retail department store with 500 or more employees that sells childcare items, children’s clothing, or toys, to maintain a gender neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer, in which a reasonable selection of the items, articles, and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys.” Stores that fail to comply face fines.
AB 1184: Require Insurance companies to keep secrets from parents. CFC said, “This Planned Parenthood sponsored bill will force insurance companies to hide from parents ‘sensitive’ medical procedures given to their adult and minor children. These ‘sensitive’ services include abortion, sexual assault treatment, drug abuse and mental health treatment, and cross-sex hormones and sex-change operations. The bill prevents parents from finding out from an insurance statement that their child is receiving services from medical providers like Planned Parenthood.”
SB 70: Mandatory kindergarten. In an article about the measure, CFC wrote, “Currently, California law does not require children to report to school until the first grade, effectively making kindergarten optional.” This bill would make kindergarten compulsory for all children in the state. CFC said, “This bill violates parental rights and assumes parents don’t have the wisdom to decide if their child is ready for schooling or not.”
SB 17: Office of Racial Equity. CFC explained, “This bill will create an independent office of racial equity that would develop a Racial Equity Framework to create policies and practices to promote racial equity, and address individual, institutional, and structural racism. The bill assumes all inequity in the United States between racial, sexual orientation, or gender groups is the result of racism built into the system. Though vague in details, the bill implies that racial equity will not be achieved by supporting policies that judge someone based on individual character and merit, without concern for race, gender, or sexual orientation. Instead, equity will only be achieved with policies that give special preferences to individuals based on the racial, gender, or sexual orientation group they belong to.”
SB 57:Illegal drug injection sites. As previously reported in The Daily Citizen, the legislation authorizes the City and County of San Francisco, the County of Los Angeles and the City of Oakland to create “hygienic” spaces, “supervised by trained staff where people who use drugs can consume preobtained drugs.” The Heritage Foundation wrote that a study of supposedly “safe injection sites” in Canada “showed the sites did not reduce overall overdose deaths or opioid-related emergency calls” and “led to an increase in crime, discarded needles and social disorder in surrounding neighborhoods.”
SB 245:Forcing health insurance plans to pay for free abortions: CFC said, “This bill forces all private insurance policies to cover abortions with no co-pays and no deductibles, despite the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) determination that California was already breaking federal law by forcing private health insurance plans to include coverage for abortion.”

Other legislation being considered would lower penalties for drug dealers; eliminate “a law that gives police the ability to deal with obvious prostitution happening on neighborhood streets”; get rid of safeguards from the state’s assisted suicide law; and decriminalize the use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and other hallucinogenic drugs.

The California Family Council said, “40 members of the State Senate and the 80 members of the Assembly have to vote on these and hundreds of other bills before the June 4 deadline, if they are going to survive and make it to the other legislative house for consideration.”

The organization listed 17 measures opposed by the group, and encouraged Californians to educate themselves about the proposed legislation and reach out to their representatives to let them know where they stand on these harmful proposals.