FAIR Act Would Require Homosexuality Representation in Textbooks

Senate Bill 48—the Fair, Accountable, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act (FAIR Act)—is making its way through legislation, and the Traditional Values Coalition is doing everything in its power to strike down the bill.

The FAIR Act, written by self-admitted homosexual state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, will force all California schools to use textbooks and instructional materials that include homosexual, bisexual and transgender teachings. Despite its name, the Traditional Values Coalition says there is nothing fair, accountable, inclusive or respectful about it.

“The state of California is on the verge of financial collapse,” Benjamin Lopez, legislative advocate for Traditional Values Coalition, told Charisma News. “The last thing we need is to make an unnecessary expenditure to promote the gay lifestyle in California’s schools.”

If the bill passes, homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders must be included in textbooks and instructional materials in a manner that does not “reflect adversely” upon them, according to the Traditional Values Coalition. This means that textbooks and materials—for students in kindergarten through 12th grade—must present lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, groups and lifestyles in a positive manner. Nothing negative or perceived to be negative about them can be presented.

According to Lopez, the bill also classifies the gay lifestyle as a civil right and gives it minority status, which the Supreme Court has ruled against in the past. This means that if a family with a mother and father is mentioned, the textbook will also have to discuss a family with a set of homosexual parents. In addition, when referencing the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s or the discrimination against Asian people in America after World War II, the textbook will also need to mention the gay rights movement.

Lopez explains that it is important the bill doesn’t pass because California is the No. 1 supplier of textbooks in the nation. “If the other 49 states do not want pro-gay textbooks in their classroom, then they’ve got to help us stop SB 48 here in California,” heurges.

Senate Bill 48 passed the California State Senate on April 14, and is set to go through committee hearings and a final vote in the State Assembly. There will be a hearing before the Assembly Education Committee on June 22 at 1:30 p.m. If the bill passes, it wil go on to the State Assembly at a later date. Visit the Traditional Values Coalition website for information regarding the bill.

“The victory and the nail in the coffin for the gay agenda” would be if there was a ” a groundswell across the country demanding textbook companies say no to gay teachings in textbooks,” Lopez explains.

Lopez and the Traditional Values Coalition urge everyone to help stop the law from passing before it gets voted on at the State Assembly. “If they’re California residents, we want them to absolutely bombard the state assembly with phone calls, letters, emails and faxes, demanding that legislators reject SB 48,” Lopez pleads.

“For people across the country—for everyone outside of California looking in—they’ve got to think, ‘As California goes, so goes the nation.’ We need people outside of California to write their local legislators saying, ‘Don’t even consider doing what they’re doing in California.’

“My very stern plea is for people … to take action. [Lawmakers are] messing with the minds and the innocence of children for their own twisted benefit. If that doesn’t bug you, I don’t know what will,” Lopez says.

“The time to say no is now. Abraham Lincoln’s words are prophetic to say that ‘the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next generation.'”