Rick Zbur spent years at the helm of an activist group that inspired lecturers to lie to mother and father
Susannah Luthi • January 5, 2023 4:59 am
For years, Rick Chavez Zbur led a radical group that labored to make California a haven for teenagers who needed to get intercourse change operations with out parental consent. Now he’s pushing those self same insurance policies from inside the statehouse.
Zbur, who from 2014 by means of 2021 led the LGBTQ rights group Equality California, was elected to the California state meeting in November. A month later, he launched the “Safe and Supportive Schools Act,” a invoice that may mandate faculties topic lecturers to taxpayer-funded “LGBTQ+ cultural competency” coaching, which Equality California lobbied to have included in the 2021 state budget. Course supplies instruct lecturers to cling satisfaction flags of their lecture rooms and conceal college students’ “gender identities” and plans to “transition” from mother and father, except knowledgeable in any other case by a pupil. The legislature has additionally mentioned the coaching ought to instruct lecturers on how to join college students with medical doctors who can “support” their transition.
Equality California, which below Zbur’s management grew into certainly one of the state’s strongest lobbying teams, is certainly one of the driving forces behind California legal guidelines geared toward boosting LGBTQ “equity” in schools. State Democrats are forcing faculties to embrace progressive views on intercourse and race at the same time as college students languish academically. In 2022, solely 7 % of black eighth-graders met tutorial proficiency, according to the latest NAEP report card.
Zbur’s invoice would mandate the California Department of Education roll out the fairness coaching throughout all districts and constitution faculties. The laws is obscure on whether or not the coaching will likely be obligatory for all lecturers and workers for all grade ranges. An aide for Zbur instructed the Washington Free Beacon these particulars will likely be labored out as the invoice strikes by means of the legislature.
The invoice takes its title from Equality California’s “Safe and Supportive Schools” program, which grades faculty districts on their LGBTQ-friendly insurance policies. Criteria for fulfillment embody letting college students change their names or intercourse on faculty information and use locker rooms and bogs primarily based on their chosen “gender identity.”
The program’s impact on public faculties has sparked parental outrage. Leaked audio from a 2021 California Teachers Association convention revealed teachers boasting about how they recruit center faculty youngsters for LGBTQ golf equipment with out mother and father’ information, investigative reporter Abigail Shrier discovered. The story has spurred a lawsuit from one mom whose sixth-grade daughter was inspired to grow to be transgender with out telling her.
Zbur, who was a companion with the legislation agency Latham & Watkins earlier than shifting to Equality California, is a longtime Democratic activist who ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1996.
Equality California spent more than $200,000 to assist Zbur’s marketing campaign for State Assembly.
