Gay History Law

As of Jan 1, Senate Bill 48 (SB48) is officially in effect in California and amends California's current education code to include lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender (LGBT), as well as disabled contributions in social studies curriculum for California schools. 

The law would also prohibit discriminatory content and activities toward the LGBT community to occur in public schools. 

However, with the current financial situation in California, most of the changes proposed by the bill, which include new textbooks and changes in curriculum, won't likely happen until 2015-2016. 

Even then, it's mostly up to the schools and school districts to decide on how to implement the changes.

Wendy Hornsby, LBCC history professor, said, "There's a great deal of academic freedom.  It's up to the faculty members and schools to teach it."

Even though the state will create new standards for teaching, the challenges are up to the teachers to decide on how to reach standards.

SB48 doesn't actually include colleges, but that doesn't mean that LBCC won't be affected by the changing standards.

"Students will come in with greater sensitivity to LGBT persons because of this new education," Hornsby said.

A little sensitivity wouldn't hurt, considering experts said anti-gay crimes account for 19.3 percent of all hate crimes in America, an 18.5 percent increase from 2009, according to the FBI.

LBCC student coordinator Miles Friesen said, "The single most likely factor for being bullied… is if you identify yourself as being LGBT.  Because of that, it's our responsibility to protect students and this bill is one of the ways you can do that."

Anita Gibbins, director of the Women and Men's Resource Center and PCC Student Life, said, "This bill is protecting vulnerable groups of students and gives them a support system.  It's a moral issue."

However, not everyone is for SB48.

Julian Del Gaudio, professor of history at LBCC, said, "There's always objections to curriculum change . . . they think we're going to be eliminating previous heroes. They want to know what else gets lost in the shuffle.  But that's the nature of change."

William Goldner, a history teacher at Stanford Middle School in Long Beach, said he worries about how the changes are going to be funded.  "They tell us to act like a business, but we can't because there's no funding.  It would be different if the government funded it.  We're already not able to teach everything.  How are we going to fit this in?"

LBCC student Bryan Delgado said, "I think it might make things worse because we might be seen as a country that classifies people and their behavior by being gay."

Brett Bruhanski, a Political Science major, said, "I firmly believe that AB 9 will have a significant impact at LBCC. The requirement to include LGBT history in our curricula will paint a picture that is more inclusive and remove a substantial amount of censorship from our textbooks and courses of study."

Already, a movement is underway which allows people to vote to change the law.  On the website, stopsb48.com, supporters said it would cost valuable taxpayer money, as well as serve as an indoctrination of LGBT values.