Vishal P. Singh
On Thursday, the Murrieta Valley School Board voted 3-2 to approve almost exactly the same policy passed in Chino Valley Unified School District: the forced outing of transgender and non-binary students to bigoted family members. The meeting was, yet again, filled with Leave Our Kids Alone supporters— who publicly tell LGBTQ+ youth activists that they should hang themselves and die in the closet.
This policy is illegal and violates the civil rights of LGBTQ+ students, already prompting a civil rights investigation by California Attorney General Rob Bonta against Chino Valley Unified. In a statement denouncing the identical Murrieta Valley policy, Bonta said, "I am deeply disturbed to learn another school district has put at risk the safety and privacy of transgender and gender nonconforming students by adopting a forced outing policy. My office remains committed to ensuring school policies do not target or seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities. California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights.”
Murrieta Valley School Board member Nancy Young condemned the policy. “It’s not like these kids are not telling their parents that they’re LGBTQ, they are. If they don’t, they have a very good reason,” Young said.
"I had another male student about five or six years ago who was openly gay. His parents told him to kill himself, and he had an older brother who did kill himself for exactly the same reason. So, these laws are there for a reason.”
The meeting was attended by anti-LGBTQ+ activist Chloe Brockman, also known as Chloe Cole. In March of this year, Brockman shared a CPAC stage with The Daily Wire host Michael J. Knowles and Donald Trump himself. Knowles infamously called for the eradication of all transgender and non-binary people. Six days later, at an anti-LGBTQ+ rally hosted by Brockman in Sacramento— far-right extremists affiliated with the Proud Boys were filmed drawing a handgun on LGBTQ+ counter protesters and aiming it at their heads. No arrests were made. These are the dangerous and violent extremists that Southern California school boards are collaborating with in order to harm LGBTQ+ students.