During the legislative cycle, the author and sponsors of SB 48 asserted that by passing this bill, bullying would be reduced significantly. In fact, Senator Mark Leno, cited what he first called a 'study' as the basis for passing this bill. As his testimony wore on and after misleading the committee members and the audience, Senator Leno began calling the 'study' a survey.
SB 48 will teach children as young as five to not only accept but also endorse transgenderism, bisexuality, and homosexuality through our social sciences curriculum including history, history books and instructional materials. The media and others call SB 48 the "Gay History Bill," however, SB 48 goes even further. The bill casts a wide-reaching net that includes all social sciences like economics, government, and cultural and social anthropology.
SB 48 was passed with the idea that the bill would reduce, if not, eliminate bullying. However, Stop SB 48 has analyzed the 'study' the Senator used to justify his arguments and found it to be extremely unreliable.
Stop SB 48 opposes bullying, but does not believe that there is any evidence that forcing classroom instruction on all students about LGBT people will diminish bullying. Proponents of SB 48 attempt to draw a connection between such instruction and decreased bullying by citing a survey developed by the California Safe Schools Coalition, an organization whose steering committee includes numerous activist groups such as the Transgender Law Center, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center LGBT Early Childhood Education Initiative.
Here are some facts about this survey that explain why we do not accept it as evidence that SB 48 will curb bullying:
1. The survey did not include the control factors that would be necessary to support any claims of a cause-and-effect relationship between students learning about LGBT people in schools and students reporting less bullying in schools.
2. The survey was administered by the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, presumably to a group of students in friendly contact with this activist organization.
3. The Gay-Straight Alliance Network reports that data was collected from over 2,400 students, but that only the responses of about 600 students were used in supporting the claim that schools are safer when LGBT issues are part of the curriculum.
4. The data was collected over three administrations of the survey in 2003, 2004, and 2005. It is to be expected that many respondents were surveyed multiple times over this period, but there is no way to identify duplicate responses because the survey is anonymous. The 2,400 responses that the Gay-Straight Alliance Network collected almost certainly reflect the experiences of far less than 2,400 out of the 6.25 million public school students in California.
5. The Gay-Straight Alliance Network did not attempt to ensure that this data came from a representative sample of students, but encouraged respondents to print copies of the survey off the web for their friends.
6. This survey was made available on the internet and could be printed, filled out, and returned by anyone without any verification that responses were from students.
To connect SB 48 with bullying, proponents of the bill ask us to assume a cause-and-effect relationship for which they provide no evidence. They ask us to accept the claims of 25% of a survey's respondents as an adequate basis for law even when these respondents were contacted through a network of activists who made no attempt at obtaining a representative sample of respondents. They ask us to accept that the assertions of a little over 600 people making an unverified claim to be students should determine what constitutes true history for all public school children in the state. SB 48 is not about bullying. It is about revising history and promoting a political agenda.
