California: Campaign to end teaching queer history fails

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI – Opponents of Senate Bill 48 (SB48), a law that requires California public schools to cover the contributions of queer people, have once again failed to gather enough signatures to put an initiative on the 2014 ballot aimed at striking down the legislation.

A lawyer for one of the groups behind Stop SB48 told media that the petition, focused mostly on churches, fell about 50,000 signatures short of the 504,760 required to bring forward a ballot initiative.

Mercurynews.com says an earlier attempt to put SB48 to a popular vote also failed.

Senate Bill 48 took effect in January, but most school districts have yet to implement it, the report says.

“What our opponents have shown is that they will seize any opportunity, however small, to launch large-scale attacks on LGBT people,” says Equality California board president Clarissa Filgioun in the San Diego Gay & Lesbian News. “The FAIR Education Act was created from a basic concept: that California schools should teach accurate history that is inclusive of the roles of all people.”

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

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