Sep 06, 2006Articles: Schwarzenegger Vetoes Bias-Free School Bill
By VZ
(Sacramento, USA) California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation on Wednesday that would prohibit any negative portrayal of gays in textbooks and other instructional material. The bill was an amended version of an earlier one that would have mandated the teaching of LGBT history in state schools that Schwarzenegger warned he would veto. The weakened version passed the Senate last week.
(Sacramento, USA) California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation on Wednesday that would prohibit any negative portrayal of gays in textbooks and other instructional material. The bill was an amended version of an earlier one that would have mandated the teaching of LGBT history in state schools that Schwarzenegger warned he would veto. The weakened version passed the Senate last week.
Conservative Republicans and anti-gay political action groups have been pressuring the governor to reject even the new version.
365gay.com reports that in a statement from his office Schwarzenegger said the bill was vague and potentially confusing and was redundant because California's education code already prohibits discrimination in schools.
The statement also said that everyone is entitled to ''equal rights and opportunities in our state educational institutions, regardless of their sex, ethnic group, race, national origin, religion, disability and sexual orientation.''
''I and this administration are firmly committed to the vigorous enforcement of these protections,'' the governor's statement said.
The bill's author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, called the veto ''inexplicable.''
''I an extremely disappointed that the governor chose to respond to a small, shrill group of right-wing extremists rather than a fair-minded majority of Californians who support this reasonable measure,'' she said in a statement.
"Yet again, this governor has shown that he will play politics with our lives when a few extremists yell loud enough,” said Geoff Kors, Equality California’s executive director.
"The governor’s veto message states that the underlying laws the bill amends are too vague. Such reasoning is completely nonsensical. The truth remains that the governor vetoed adding LGBT people to an existing law protecting every other group but us.”
The bill was among eight pieces of LGBT legislation passed by the legislature and awaiting Schwarzenegger's action. In all 14 pieces of gay legislation were passed in the session that ended late last week.
Schwarzenegger signed four of the 14 bills. One bans discrimination in state programs, another removes loopholes in the California Civil Rights Act, a third expands domestic partner death benefit rights and the fourth bards discrimination in insurance.
But in addition to vetoing the school bill the governor also angered the state's LGBT community by vetoing one that would have allowed same-sex marriage.
Among the seven bills still on Schwarzenegger's desk is another piece of legislation affecting LGBT students - the Safe Place to Learn Act which toughens the state's existing laws on discrimination in the state's public schools.
Schwarzenegger also has not indicated if he will sign the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act. The bill would limit the use of the so-called gay panic defense and is named after the transgendered teen who was brutally murdered in Hayward, California in 2002.
The Older Californians Equality and Protection Act is also awaiting action by the governor. It would require the state deliver programs and services targeted to LGBT senior citizens and forces the California Department of Aging to account for the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender seniors in all of its programs and services.
A bill that would allow same-sex couples to file joint California tax returns, a housing act that bars discrimination, a domestic abuse bill and a Code of Fair Campaign Practices passed the Legislature also are being considered by the governor.
The passage of 14 LGBT pieces of legislation is a record for a single session of the California legislature.
