By Jeff Culbreath 2/17/2024

As the Newsom administration aggressively moves to prevent the parents of gender-confused children from interfering with the state’s push to normalize transgenderism - or even having knowledge of their own children’s psychological struggles - a group of concerned Californians has decided to take action. Last August, Protect Kids California announced three ballot initiatives for November of 2024 that would:

• Require schools to notify parents regarding their children's mental health concerns identified in school settings, including gender identification issues.
• Require girls’ competitive sports and school spaces to be limited to biological girls only; and require sex-segregated school facilities to be segregated on the basis of biological sex.
• Prevent the sterilization and mutilation of children by prohibiting the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomies and genital surgeries for minors.

California’s Attorney General’s office has consolidated these three initiatives into one, perhaps out of concern that, if offered separately, one or two might pass on its own merits.

Taken as a whole, the sponsoring organization calls this the “Protect Kids of California Act of 2024”. The Attorney General, however, has officially re-named the proposal the “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative, and included a highly prejudicial ballot summary that will likely dissuade many voters. Protect Kids California filed a lawsuit against the State of California on February 13, alleging that the biased name and inaccurate summary impedes the group’s ability to collect signatures and will discourage voters.

On February 10, the state committee of the American Solidarity Party of California voted unanimously to endorse the Protect Kids of California Act of 2024. We encourage ASP members to sign the petition and, if possible, collect as many signatures as possible by May 28 in order to gain a place on the November ballot.

The past several years have seen increasing hostility towards parents and schools that want to protect children from transgender indoctrination, ideological experimentation, and sexually destructive medical procedures. Interestingly, the data shows greater incidence of transgender identification in the schools of conservative inland counties than it does in the progressive coastal cities. For example,1.5% of 11^th grade girls and 3.9% of 11^th grade boys identify as transgender in Glenn County, while only 0.7% of 11^th grade girls and 1.5% of 11^th grade boys in San Francisco County so identify.(1) It’s hard to know what to make of this data, but one may surmise that the children who live in poor, rural, and socially conservative inland counties are either more vulnerable to, or perhaps the unique focus of, the state’s aggressive push to normalize sexual confusion.

1. KidsData.org, Data by Topic, Demographics, Transgender Youth, by Gender and Grade Level.