UPDATE: California Passes Anti-Parent Bills Slammed as a ‘Transgender Inquisition’

CV NEWS FEED // In what critics are denouncing as a full-on assault on parental rights, California has passed a battery of bills that all take aim at families who disagree with gender ideology.

The schedule of pro-“trans” legislation includes AB 957, AB 665, AB 5, and AB 1078, all of which have passed in both houses of the state legislature. The related SB 407 passed in May in the State Senate by a landslide margin. It is currently being considered by the State Assembly. 

In a commentary piece for The Daily Signal, Tyler O’Neil called the series of bills a “transgender inquisition,” remarking, “‘We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children’ might as well become the new slogan of the Golden State.”

“What would the state need to launch a transgender inquisition?” he asked:

It would need inquisitors to identify and hunt down parents who dared to dissent from gender ideology. It would need an apparatus to induct kids into its cult while keeping parents in the dark. It would need institutions to screen potential foster parents to block heretics from fostering or adopting kids who might convert to the state religion.

“Most importantly,” he added. “It would need a legal way to pry kids from the arms of their apostate progenitors.”

AB 957

O’Neil singled out AB 957 as the “capstone to this entire system of mandated belief.”

In late July, CatholicVote wrote that the text of this now-passed bill

states that it “would include a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.” 

As the California Globe reported, the bill could cause a parent to “lose custody for not ‘affirming’ or agreeing to a child’s claims about gender identity.” This would apply in custody disputes in which one parent wants to “affirm” the child’s confusion about gender, and the other does not.

…

The legislation’s sponsor Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, D-CA, stated: “Affirming a child’s identity about gender is in their best interest.” When parents do not “affirm,” she argued, they are “rejecting that child.”

O’Neil added:

Under this quintessentially Orwellian measure, if a boy tells his parents he thinks he might be a girl and that he might be considering a medicalized path toward cutting off his genitals, those parents will face a loss of custody and perhaps child abuse charges if they tell him that he is actually male and should keep his body intact. Meanwhile, if the parents encourage a delusion that leads to self-harm, they will remain in the state’s good graces and get to keep custody of their son.

AB 665

AB 665 is a complementary piece of legislation that goes hand-in-hand with AB 957. According to CatholicVote’s previous reporting, it allows “a minor as young as 12 to be emancipated from his or her parents and transferred into state custody without a court order.”

The bill also deals with minors’ so-called “consent to mental health services.”

Again, from O’Neil:

AB-655 states that “mental health treatment” shall involve a minor’s parent or guardian “unless the professional person who is treating or counseling the minor, after consultation with the minor, determines that the involvement would be inappropriate.” In doing so, the legislation intentionally carves out an exception to hide “gender-affirming counseling” from parents on the suspicion that parents who want to save their kids from later experimental interventions actually pose a threat to their own children.

>> READ MORE ON AB 957 AND AB 665 <<

AB 5

AB 5, nicknamed the “The Safe and Supportive Schools Act,” passed in the California Senate last Thursday by a near-unanimous margin of 32-3. It passed in the State Assembly several months ago by a 64-4 vote. 

According to the bill’s text, AB 5 creates an “online training delivery platform and an online training curriculum to support LGBTQ cultural competency training for teachers and other certificated employees.”

It “would require, commencing with the 2025–26 school year,” “each local educational agency” that serves “pupils in grades 7 to 12” to use a form of the “competency training.”

Critics such as O’Neil have observed that such a training would encourage teachers and school officials to target parents who disagree with California’s prevailing narrative on transgenderism.

“Make no mistake,” he noted. “This bill does involve training teachers to profile parents based on the likelihood that they may secretly harbor heresy against the transgender state religion.”

AB 1078

Under the guise of “inclusion,” AB 1078 explicitly seeks to protect the controversial “pride” books in California’s school libraries. Many of the books in question contain graphic pornographic material, and some, such as Gender Queer, depict sexual acts between minors and adults.

The bill’s text states that “Restricting access to classroom and library materials because they feature LGBTQ people or were written by LGBTQ authors discriminates against LGBTQ people and constitutes censorship in violation of California law and policy.”

O’Neil posed that by “preventing school boards from removing certain books from curricula or school libraries, HB-1078 would tie the hands of concerned moms and dads who object to sexual materials, books proselytizing transgender ideology, and books expounding critical race theory.”

>> READ ABOUT CATHOLICVOTE’S ‘HIDE THE PRIDE’ CAMPAIGN IN CALIFORNIA <<

SB 407

Unlike the other four bills, SB 407 has yet to be passed in the State Assembly, although it advanced through a committee there last month.

The bill targets prospective foster parents and, if passed, will mandate that they must “demonstrate an ability and willingness to meet the needs of a child, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, as specified.”

Read more on the fight for parents’ rights in California:

Another California School District Overwhelmingly Passes Pro-Parent Policy
Judge Sides With California AG, Temporarily Stops School’s Pro-Parent Policy
Victory: CA School Awards Settlement to Mom After ‘Transitioning’ Daughter
CA School Districts Not Giving Up on Pro-Parent Policies Despite Dem AG’s Lawsuit
California AG Files Lawsuit Against Pro-Parent Policy