by WorldTribune Staff, April 29, 2018

Under the California Healthy Youth Act, parents of students in the state’s public schools reportedly can’t pull their children out of sex-education classes which discuss gender identity and sexual orientation.

In a letter to the Orange County Board of Education, General Counsel Ronald Wenkart noted that, under the California Healthy Youth Act, “parents who disagree with the instructional materials related to gender, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation may not excuse their children from this instruction.”

Wenkart added: “However, parents are free to advise their children that they disagree with some or all of the information presented in the instructional program and express their views of these subjects to their children.”

Among the instructional materials being pushed for grades K-5 is a book titled “I Am Jazz” which urges students to “Understand that gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and the we all express ourselves in many different ways along that spectrum.”

Observers noted that some other areas of discussion in the curriculum will include lubricants, sex toys and anal sex, as well as how to access local health services without parental notification.

Under existing law, parents can excuse their children from classes on human sexuality and HIV prevention.

In 2016, California shifted required sex-education from only HIV education to “comprehensive sexuality education.”

All public school students are required to take the sex-ed class at least once in grades 7-8 and at least once in grades 9-12.

“How do you opt out of a class that is required for graduation?” Dawn Urbanek asked in a report for the San Juan Capistrano Patch.

Under the California Healthy Youth Act, comprehensive Sex-Ed will be taught in all grades – K-12.

The curriculum “is an attempt by Planned Parenthood and an organization known as PFLAG formerly known as Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays to use our public education system to promote a political agenda,” Urbanek said.

Meanwhile, California lawmakers have also proposed legislation that would make it illegal for state residents to receive professional help “to resolve unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion,” radio host Michael Brown noted in an op-ed for the Christian Post.

The law “would apply to people of all ages. People of all religious and moral convictions. It is an absolute outrage, and it must be opposed vigorously,” Brown, who hosts the nationally syndicated Line of Fire program said.

Brown noted: “If an 8-year-old girl believed she was really a boy and wanted to receive professional help to affirm her female identity, that would be perfectly legal. A counselor could tell her parents to encourage her to dress and identify as a boy. That counselor could also recommend that, at age 10, she start taking hormone blockers, then prepares to ‘transition’ fully to male at age 16, then has sex-change surgery at 18, with hormones prescribed for life.

“That would be perfectly legal. But for that same 8-year-old girl to say, ‘I want to be at home in the body God gave me. I don’t want hormones and surgery. Can anyone help me?’ The answer would be, ‘No. Such help is illegal.’ ”

California “wants to take this one dangerous step farther, making it illegal for anyone of any age to receive such help,” Brown said. “This defies all logic and can only be seen for what it is: a frontal assault on our freedom to self-determination. A frontal assault on our freedom of religion. And a frontal assault on our freedom of conscience.”

  Opting out not an option for parents confronted by California’s sexual orientation curriculum, WorldTribune.com