Parent Notification: Parsing the Endless Lies

The dishonest framing over the battle in California regarding parent notification is that right-wing extremists are trying to hurt LGBT children. This narrative line is uniform in the garbage news coverage: the anti-gay far-right vs. state government officials who are fighting desperately to keep children safe: “Under California’s local control system, school boards have wide latitude to enact their own policies — a freedom that’s now being tested as a handful of districts move to expand parental rights by limiting the rights of LGBTQ students.” It’s the culture wars, the conservatives against the trans kids:

The hateful right is maneuvering to “out” children to their parents, who will then hurt them, so the hateful right is trying to inflict physical harm on gay and transgender children:

But yet again, look at the thing itself. Here is the Chino Valley Unified School District’s parent notification policy, which bears absolutely no resemblance at all to the cartoon image of the thing being depicted by a shallow and lazy “mainstream” news media and California’s scumbag politicians:

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Note how it ends:

For purposes of this Board policy, Family Code Section 6924, Health and Safety Code Section 124260, and Education Code Section 49602(C), inclusion of parent(s)/guardian(s) is appropriate unless specifically prohibited by law. Nothing in this policy affects the obligations of the District’s employees, administrators, and certificated staff as mandated reporters under Article 2.5 of the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act Sections 11164-11174.3 of the Penal Code, and the District Policy 5141 and Administrative Regulations 5141.4(a)).

So Wiener, in a piece of framing echoed by news media, the attorney general’s office, and now a judge who only read half the briefs in the parent notification lawsuit before him, says that Chino Valley and other school districts will notify parents that their children are identifying as transgender “even if it puts the kid at risk of harm.” But the policy he’s describing explicitly reminds school staff of their legal responsibility as mandated reporters, which means that they must report child abuse or the threat of child abuse to police and/or the local child protection agency.

You can watch a short video of the Chino Valley Unified School District’s lawyer describing that requirement for the protection of children here, or watch a longer and more detailed video here. You can see for yourself the policy and the way the school district’s legal advisor describes the practical effects of the policy. It requires the protection of children.

So the much-repeated claim is that “conservative school board policies” require parent notification even if a child will be hurt, reflecting the cruel indifference of the political right to the possibility that trans children will be abused.

The actual policy that this claim is pretending to describe — which you can see with your own eyes — requires school officials to report child abuse or the potential for child abuse in the matter of a transgender student, so that police and child protection agencies can protect the children covered by the policy.

Scott Wiener is a repulsive scumbag. He lies constantly. The same goes for Rob Bonta and a bunch of other California politicians. And the news media takes their staggeringly obvious lies and types them up at face value. We live through lazy, sleazy, pathetic lying, all day and every day, in most of the media product we consume. We live in a thicket of idiotic propaganda, promoted by sociopathic people-shaped human garbage who have no capacity for shame or the fear of being caught. Disgusting.