HomoQuotable - Sheila Kuehl

"When society tells a young person ---- in subtle or, often, not so subtle, ways ---- that they are less valuable, perhaps because of the color of their skin, their religious practices or the gender of the person they want to take to the prom, the whole society suffers.

"When we mandate that every young person must go to school, we must also provide the safety and dignity of an education free from harassment, discrimination and violence. That is why, over the last several years, I have authored several laws that strengthen civil rights protections for students and improve school safety. This year, as a simple cleanup measure, I authored SB 777 to include civil rights protections that have already been required for the last eight years by law to be more clearly spelled out in California's Education Code.

"Seeing an opportunity to confuse their supporters by pretending the bill added protections to the code, the opposition has invented a number of inflammatory and false claims about the operation of SB 777. A bit of clarity, not to say truth-telling, is in order." - California State Senator Sheila Kuehl, in the North County Times, a San Diego area newspaper. Kuehl is the author of SB 777, the bill which provides protections for LGBT students. Kuehl follows the above quote with a dissection of the Christianist lies being spread about SB 777.