Boots & Sabers

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Owen

Everything but tech support.
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0628, 16 Jul 24

California Bans Schools from Telling Parents About Their Kids

When the government refuses to tell you information about your own minor children, they are not acting in the interests of the children or the parents. The government is acting in the interests of someone else. Do not endanger your children by trusting these people with their care.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California became the first U.S. state to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change under a law signed Monday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

 

The law bans school rules requiring teachers and other staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission. Proponents of the legislation say it will help protect LGBTQ+ students who live in unwelcoming households. But opponents say it will hinder schools’ ability to be more transparent with parents.

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0628, 16 July 2024

20 Comments

  1. jonnyv

    There is spin and then there are lies. And Owen just flat out lies now. This law does nothing of the sort. It stops schools and districts from making rules that force teachers to communicate that. Teachers still have the right to do so, but are not obligated. Or, they can NOT do it.

    If you are that out of touch with your kid, or if your kid has more faith in confiding in a teacher than a parent, then you probably suck as a parent. It is NOT the teacher’s job to keep parents up to date on kids social and personal lives. If my kid is causing a problem, if they are failing scholastically, if they think they are a danger to themselves or others… that is what I want to know. If somehow a kid’s gender identity is causing an issue with other students in class then tell me. But I doubt that happens.

    Should teachers notify me if my kids is practicing Satanism? Hindu? Christianity? What if those are not my given religion? What if my kid wants to be called Steve, or Jane, but his name is Joe? Should I be notified if he is caught kissing his boyfriend or girlfriend outside on the school sidewalk?

    Focus on teaching my kid and providing a safe and open environment for all students regardless of who they are.

  2. dad29

    There will NEVER be an intersection of Common Sense and JonnyV

  3. MjM

    If you are that out of touch with your kid…

    … and you take your kid to pervert parades…

    … then you [obviously] suck as a parent.

  4. Tuerqas

    >Focus on teaching my kid and providing a safe and open environment for all students regardless of who they are.

    Umm, safe and open? Don’t you mean secretive and closed, at least to the public? And since when have public schools had “teaching” on the agenda? Anyone who can say THAT can’t support today’s public school indoctrination, and not be considered imbalanced. Wait, you do also support public schools. So you support encouraging students to experiment with gender (what schools are busy ‘teaching’ instead of education), and you support lying, at least by omission, to the people liable in every legal way for the child. Libs have a truly fucked up view of education today…

  5. jonnyv

    T, I have 2 kids in public schools. And neither of them is being encouraged to experiment with gender. I have friends kids all over MIL going to different public and private high schools and none of them are either. So whatever made up BS you are trying to sell, it isn’t being bought here. Keeps being scared in the shadows and swinging at windmills.

    The difference between your side and my side is that you try to hide the world from kids. “Oh, don’t have any books with LGBTQ people in them!” “Oh, don’t talk about alternative lifestyles!” “Don’t teach my kid about condoms because then they will want to screw safely”. I want my schools to be open and a place of information and curiosity. Learn about the human body like I did as a kid, sneaking the Encyclopedia Britanica to look at the naked lady. Not outlaw those books. There are lines and appropriate books for different levels of schooling, and by HS most literature is ok. Teachers are not teaching kids to be a specific gender, but they also are not hiding what is out there. But I also know that hiding things and making them taboo is a great way to pique a kid’s interest.

    It’s none of the teacher’s business what is happening with my kid. And also we shouldn’t be putting teachers in the position to be forcing them to put themselves there. ITS NOT THEIR JOB. Just like it isn’t the bus driver’s job. The football coach’s job. The police liaison’s job.

    For a bunch of people who say they want the government to stay out of their lives, you guys SURE want the gov’t to interfere with your lives.

  6. Jason

    Wait. You want a safe and open environment from public schools?

    Then you do oppose the California Law…

    ” first U.S. state to bar school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change”

    You keep saying I have a comprehension issue – without proof -and yet even I know that law is the opposite of OPEN.

  7. jonnyv

    No Jason, the law prevents govt from forcing their employees to do something. Isn’t that the rights dream? Isn’t this what you screamed about with COVID??? Forcing employees to do something they don’t want to? Freedom?

    Our definitions of “Open” are clearly different.

  8. Jason

    >the law prevents govt from forcing their employees to do something.

    You meant “the law prevents govt from forcing their employees to SAY something. Right?

    >Isn’t this what you screamed about with COVID??? Forcing employees to do something they don’t want to? Freedom?

    Forcing every private employer to force every private citizen to get a foreign substance injected into their bodies if they wanted to continue to get a pay check and survive?

    Our definitions of everything are clearly different. And your equivocation on this is disgusting.

  9. Tuerqas

    Um, sure JV. The top 6 most challenged books of 2023:

    Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. Number of challenges: 106. …
    All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. …
    This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson. Number of challenges: 71. …
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. …
    Flamer by Mike Curato. …
    The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

    No, no, they aren’t teaching gender in schools at all!. To be clear, i believe no books should be banned from public libraries, just high school and earlier libraries need some standards in what they carry on their shelves. For any parent that wants their kid to read Gender Queer, buy it or check it out from the public library, no worries. It just should not be on teacher’s preferred reading lists or books that the whole class gets to read out loud and do book reports and speeches on.

    All of this is also very regional as well. Overboard liberalism always starts at the coasts. If your children and their friends never read “This Book is Gay” it would not surprise me at all. I doubt you will find too many copies of any of the above books in midwest student libraries, but they will be on the middle and high school book lists all along the west coast and the east coast will follow if it hasn’t already. You can believe it is perfectly desirable to have those books read to your kids or have them read them for themselves, but to say it isn’t happening is just your normal head in the sand, point to the yard, yell ‘Squirrel!!!’ and blame the ‘other side’ for it all.

    You got close for just a millisecond, and almost seemed to realize that child indoctrination is wrong when you said things like:
    >Focus on teaching my kid and providing a safe and open environment for all students regardless of who they are.
    and
    >It’s none of the teacher’s business what is happening with my kid.
    These things are exactly what conservatives fight for, and liberals do not.
    And then you say it is ridiculous to want your child to have any other upbringing than your idea of liberalism. You obviously don’t want other people’s kids to be raised by their conservative parents (mores, beliefs, personal honor and responsibility, etc.), you want liberal indoctrination for all and ban any other beliefs so that the next generation of parents will be bred to the same beliefs as you. You say this even after you just said your second quote. No teacher interference is supposedly desirable, yet you want them to interfere between the child and the responsible parent through silence and obfuscation. No, the dissociative beliefs are all yours.

    >The difference between your side and my side is that you try to hide the world from kids.
    Heh, indoctrination hides whole swaths of the world from kids. Public education, liberal social media and the entertainment industry are constantly changing history to their molds by the hour. Public education has ceased teaching many topics and subjects with the explicit intent of dumbing people down and the social engineering in schools has taken over as the top subject in public schools. Kids can’t read well or do math, but they all know what every letter of LGBTQ means. The greatest hiding of children’s minds from the world was taking away critical thinking skills which is gone from virtually all public schools.
    Have you served marijuana, peyote, cocaine to your kids yet? Did you get them a prostitute, get them really drunk, buy them a gun yet? Are you okay if the teacher does and then doesn’t tell you about it? No? Be more open, sir!

    This is the real difference between your side and mine on education:
    It is fine in your world to tell the teachers to shut up and teach, but not even look at WHAT they are teaching.
    We also want them to shut up and teach…teach the skills and knowledge that were once called the basics. We don’t want our children socially engineered, we want them to read, have math skills and be able to write coherently and perhaps even knowledgably speak on a multitude of topics. You want them to know liberal hot buttons and so to you, public education is doing pretty well.

    >It’s none of the teacher’s business what is happening with my kid. And also we shouldn’t be putting teachers in the position to be forcing them to put themselves there. ITS NOT THEIR JOB.
    That is what we say. You want teachers to teach ideology because it is yours. That is not educating, that is implanting values rather than teaching them how to make their own values or leaving it to the parents. You are supporting teachers inserting their interference, you want their interference so your statement is provably false.

    >For a bunch of people who say they want the government to stay out of their lives, you guys SURE want the gov’t to interfere with your lives.
    Umm, public schools are an arm of Government so your above statement makes no sense at all. We don’t want Government programming our kids in schools, we want them to teach our children the building blocks to become the person they were meant to be. Need proof? Look at the still climbing numbers of kids not sent to public schools anymore. Those aren’t Guv lovin’ liberal parents doing that. Those are specifically parents who do not want the Government raising their children.
    Lastly, laws giving Government employees the right to hide truths about children from their parents as opposed to a law forcing them to give important information to the parents about a minor (for which they are lawfully responsible in virtually every respect) does exactly what Owen said, it is not a lie in the least. If teachers/Government were giving pertinent information about children to their parents (as seems proper to me), there would be no need of either type of law. This law was put in place specifically so teachers COULD hide information from the parents. The purpose of the law is to be able to hide the truth from parents and that is all Owen even implied, much less said. The Government made it legal for their employees to not tell parents truths about their child. The fact that they have the choice to lie or stay silent now is irrelevant, as the teachers who do feel it is right to tell parents still will. The law gives Government the right to refuse information. Are we supposed to be impressed that the law did not require silence?

  10. jonnyv

    What is the teacher’s obligation? If the kid formally requests a name change on their record? Sure most record changes should be approved by parents. If the student asks to be called something else in class? How about if the teacher hears other students call the student a different name? My best friend in middle school was a girl named Miranda, she went by Randee. Then one year and then decided she liked Miranda better. Some called her Dee. As I said, this isn’t the teacher’s job to track down or keep track of students’ lives. How far should the teacher go?

    If a student isn’t comfortable at home and they know a teacher is going to out them, they just will stop telling teachers too.

    T. I am not super familiar with all those books. I kinda know The Bluest Eye. I have heard of This Book is Gay. I don’t have an issue with teachers recommending books about different gender identity or making it part of a wider curriculum option. No more than I do books about racism or sexism. My kid generally gets to pick from a range of books for assignments. Most of us read To Kill a Mockingbird in school. And that was banned in many areas. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was banned because it depicted a molestation and was considered “anti-white” by some.

    High School is a TOTALLY appropriate place to be discussing these things. Racism, Sexism, Bigotry, Homophobia, or religions. Teaching kids these exist and showing them someone’s perspective is fine. I also think it is ok for parents to request their kid NOT be part of a curriculum they don’t approve of. But heaven forbid that require the parent to actually pay attention to what their kids is learning in school and be proactive.

    I did just look quickly at a few of the reasons why those books are banned.
    Gender Queer. The images are a little explicit. Not sure if it would be appropriate for even high school. But it is borderline.
    Boys Aren’t Blue: No issues IMO
    This Book is Gay: Probably not appropriate for anything under HS. But I wouldn’t have an issue with it available in a high school library.
    Wallflower: No issues based on a wiki search.
    Flamer: Can’t find anything other than LGBTQ and “sexually explicit”. But not sure what the extent of that is. Probably would find it OK for HS.

    Generally if kids are seeking out these books, they are already curious. Hiding the information from them doesn’t really solve anything. All of these should be available in public libraries.

    And any lack of critical thinking can be traced partly to the No Child Left Behind act that started forcing teachers to teach to a test.

  11. Tuerqas

    >High School is a TOTALLY appropriate place to be discussing these things. Racism, Sexism, Bigotry, Homophobia, or religions.

    Fully agree! However, I have taught in schools as a sub within the last 10 years and they are not being discussed, information (disinformation?) is being drilled. The less than 1 week spent on the Crusades, for example, taught only that basically the Catholic church sent Europeans there for loot. A little more bad-mouthing on how evil the Templars were (fully true) and it all boiled down to religion is bad. Christianity the worst, then Judaism somehow, and the poor abused Muslims. I did not ‘teach’ that lesson plan, needless to say, and it was one of the last times I subbed, as a matter of fact. And that was about the only time I ever mentioned a religion or even heard it in school with the exception of one positive experience on Martin Luther. Except to bad mouth religion, it is pretty taboo in public school. And sub-consciously it is teaching that religion is more evil (taboo) than racism, sexism, bigotry, etc. which are being taught as attributes of the right. It is both extreme and subtle. The intentional shapers of thought in US schools are reprehensible, insidious and brilliant, no doubt.

    I have no problem with the ‘curious’ or those that actually need the information for their development, but that should not be show-cased in mainstream public classrooms, imo. Pre-teens and teenagers are very curious and easily influenced. Give a teen cocaine and most will try it. The only ones who won’t are the children of those tight-assed conservatives you think so little of. Tell a teen it is cool to be LGBTQ and over half of those who start to identify that way, do it to find a place in school and in the world. It is the Goth trend of the day. I am the God-father of a girl identifying as boy dating a boy identifying as a girl. Sorry, but that is just kids being kids under the influence of liberalism, not gay or any of the other letters.

    I want schools to concentrate on teaching the basics, of taking the constant thought of sex (of any type) out of children’s heads for a while, not focusing them on it in all its kinky possible forms. There is a definite place for basic sex education, but I think taking a stab at creating and erasing taboos should not be a public school endeavor, and that is what is happening now in our schools. Assuredly much more accelerated on the coasts, but the crusade experience happened in a Milwaukee suburb school. Are there Playboys in HS, kids would be all for it. You know, for the articles of course. You won’t find a better teacher of sex and girls(or boys) than porn.

    Btw, Wikipedia is all but opinion, it can be written by anyone and they can fudge things here and there all they want. They won’t enter the wrong dates, but they can certainly editorialize the negative impacts about one person and not about another. Google is also a huge disinformation tool. Try to find Trump failures on it and they are legion and detailed, complete with dozens of negative epithets and you can’t find Trump successes unless you dig deep as Google puts them up by most read and most wanted to be read by Google owners. Try to find failures of Obama or Biden and you have to go very deep there as well. I was looking for Biden’s yesterday and you know what came up first? Lists of Biden’s successes with #1 being how he REDUCED inflation. You can find good info in books, so libs have taken real history books out of school libraries and have introduced legions of books on what they want the messages to be. Schools are not a bastion of real learning, they are bastions of liberal thinking…and teaching.

    And since I know you won’t accept that basic truth, this is a dead stick, but I would ask you: Do you truly believe that all racism, sexism, and bigotry etc. are held by the right? If so, nuff said, dead argument and you are a truly well programmed liberal. Let’s assume not for a moment, name a few lefty organizations that YOU believe is any of those things. If you can name several, perhaps there is still kool-aid left in your fridge after all because most liberals can’t or won’t name one.

  12. jonnyv

    TBF, I think we would be better off without religion. While it is a guiding light for some, overall it is a divisive tool that drives war and murder. But that is here nor there.

    “Liberalism” didn’t convert your your god-daughter. No more than liberals created “goths”. I won’t speculate on their reasoning, but it wasn’t “liberalism”. Kids are easily influenced, by other kids, media, and pop culture. Some will wear the transgender as a costume, some will make it a life choice. It is much more popular now because it is actually accepted now.

  13. dad29

    …religion. While it is a guiding light for some, overall it is a divisive tool that drives war and murder…

    You might try reading actual history some day.

    Kings often fought wars “for religion”, but actually for expanding their kingdoms and for more revenue (loot or taxes.) IOW, their ‘religious’ motivation was……..ahhh……..a good cover, just as is the “preserve democracy in Ukraine” a cover for “loot the Hell out of this very fertile and resource-rich place which will certainly need financing from BlackRock, CitiCorp–not to mention a lot of infrastructure rebuilding by Bechtel, Fluor, Turner, Kiewit–with big assists from the US taxpayer who will “lend” money to the 4th-most-corrupt country on Earth to rebuild…..”

    Actual “religious wars” history is not all that different from the Ukraine bullshit-“history” you’re being fed, pal.

  14. jonnyv

    Dad29, I am familiar with history. And while the motivations at the TOP can be different than the motivations that the top uses to sell it to the masses as you said. Most people won’t kill another person to expand the land of a king… but when it is “a fight for our religion”… the masses tend to be a little more accepting of this. It’s a tool. I have ZERO doubts that we would be better off without religion, but that is a genie you don’t put back in a bottle.

    As far as Ukraine. Putin wants the land back that he feels is Russia’s. And it doesn’t hurt that Ukraine has oil production. And Putin is selling it to his people them fighting the “nazis” in Ukraine and a fight for their very existence. And I do believe that if Ukraine eventually falls to Russia, it won’t stop there. We will start to see skirmishes in places like Belarus (not currently NATO), possibly Estonia & Latvia.

  15. dad29

    I have ZERO doubts that we would be better off without religion,

    Napoleon firmly disagrees with you. So does Mahomet and the Dalai Lama. But you’re smarter than all those guys, I know. The only group who DOES agree with you is the Communists. See Jos. Stalin, e.g. That raises a questsion: are you a Communist?

    And Putin is selling it to his people them fighting the “nazis” in Ukraine and a fight for their very existence

    You know this exactly how? You read Russian newspapers? Internal Russian/Putin documents?

    Same question for your fears and sweats about Estonia, Latvia, and the RUSSIAN ALLY Belarus. Col. MacGregor firmly disagrees that Russia is interested in more land-grab aside from the Russian portion of Ukraine.

    But then, you’re smarter than MacGregor, too.

  16. dad29

    Clarification: Stalin hated religion, but acknowledged its necessity with his “…..opiate of the people” remark.

  17. Tuerqas

    >Dad29, I am familiar with history. And while the motivations at the TOP can be different than the motivations that the top uses to sell it to the masses as you said. Most people won’t kill another person to expand the land of a king… but when it is “a fight for our religion”… the masses tend to be a little more accepting of this. It’s a tool.

    I am not sure how well you know history, though, because your statement above is absolutely false. Soldiers are trained to kill, not decide whether to kill.
    1) Divine right of Kings throughout Europe was the norm. A King’s land IS God’s land.
    2) Look at the virtual annihilation of many Native American tribes throughout the Americas. No religious motive was necessary there precisely because the people fighting very much had skin in the game to get land after the wars they fought, just as the nobles gained lands after a King’s war. If they couldn’t expand that way, the “need” for savages to convert would have been much more front and center.
    3) It is called ‘sphere of influence’ and regardless of religion it has driven war throughout history whether it has the cloak of religion or not. Land, resources and power are the things wars are fought over. If you try to peel the religious excuse away by banning religion, another excuse grows in its place (See Soviet history). You want to take away the opiate of the masses, what are you going to replace it with, or do you think the internet does a good enough job? That is possible…

    >“Liberalism” didn’t convert your your god-daughter. No more than liberals created “goths”.
    Again with ridiculous statements. Of course liberalism converted my God-daughter. She is with a boy who pretends to be a girl but is dating a girl that was the ‘boy’ in her prior relationship with a girl who also identified as the boy. That totally fucked up and tangled idea did not come from religion. You, as most liberals, believe that conservative sexuality is repressive primarily based on the religious beliefs those people hold, do you not? Then why would it be any sort of stretch, indeed anything but basic logic that many children listen to their liberal teachers and the very liberal social media sites and experiment with no religion and ‘free love’?
    The most common rebellion from teens is against parents, not friends or school. In my past, the rebellion took shape as Goth (note the word past), burnout, armed forces whether to punish parents who did not want their child in the army by joining, or not joining despite the father’s insistence to join. Liberals handed teens a new toy to rebel with, shined it up in schools and gave it to them. And kids listened. It was another great move towards an autocratic rule running a docile public. Are you denying it or just looking the other way on purpose?

  18. dad29

    I am not sure how well you know history, though, because your statement above is absolutely false.

    He’s only repeating what he’s been told by his teachers. Actually knowing a topic? Not so much.

    In another discussion, he asserted that no matter WHO was actually running the Government, he’s fine with re-electing Biden even though it was clear that Biden wasn’t making the decisions, oh well, who cares? (That’s long before the coup d’etat of last Sunday.)

    His understanding of governance is seriously flawed.

    “….The managerial theory is that the discontinued president may persist in office, fully vested with its prerogatives, by virtue of the nature of the office. This is of course totally fictitious: Joseph R. Biden at midafternoon Sunday lost the ability to do nearly every meaningful thing intrinsic to the presidency, including real cooperation with the legislative branch, persuading the nation to make war, and representation of the whole American people in government. What’s left is a headless apparatus, dominated but not led — ruled but not governed — by the thousands of functionaries of the administrative state. It is a Deist simulacrum of government, the clockmaker having wound the mechanism, which will then inexorably tick forward undirected….”

    He’s trying to apply what he learned in BizAd college to governing a country and cannot grok that it doesn’t work that way.

  19. jonnyv

    No Dad29, there is no evidence that Biden is not making the decisions behind the scenes. Any speculation on it is just that… speculation. I do look forward to the tell-all books that come out in the future on the administration. There is zero evidence that he doesn’t comprehend what is going on either. I am not going to sit here an say he is as sharp as he was 4 years ago, because age is clearly catching up with him, but that doesn’t mean that he is a vegetable either.

    Your long “understanding of governance” is just a word salad to say, “He is a Lame Duck president” now.

    Yes, I did say regardless of who is running the country behind the scenes, I quite like the things the Biden administration has been able to accomplish. I would have voted for Biden, and now I will vote for Harris. I am getting exactly what I wanted.

  20. dad29

    Produce evidence that Biden IS making the decisions. Otherwise, you are speculating.

    I hope that you don’t get what you want good and hard.

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