Dear Governor Brown: SB 48

Re: SB 48
Dear Governor Brown,

Over the next two weeks, you will decide whether to sign or to veto Senate Bill 48, which addresses Social Science curricula in California schools. I urge you to veto this bill. Parts of the bill are unnecessary. Other parts are discriminatory and promote a special interest agenda that is politically driven.

As a retired teacher familiar with state-adopted elementary school Social Science text adoptions, I find no evidence to suggest that existing adoptions contain material that reflects adversely upon people because of their sexual orientation. In today's environment, it is almost impossible that any publisher would include adverse material in the future. The portions of the bill that prohibit discrimination in instructon and textual materials, however are not the parts of SB 48 that I object to. By themselves, they may be harmless.

I do object to the portions of the bill that mandate inclusion of instruction and materials about people selected by virtue of their sexual orientaton. Significant contributions to our community and our history may be addressed without highlighting people's sexual preference. While appearing to be a further protection of a historically persecuted group, SB 48 threatens the First Amendment rights of conscientious teachers who maintain a posture of neutrality with respect to sexual orientation, by forcing them to instruct material that compromises their sense of moral conviction.

People by law are currently represented in the California Social Science Curriculum with defference to race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and nationality. These words describe classes of people based upon physical appearance or other inalterable conditions. Only religion, the last protected descriptor, is defined by individual behavior, actual and presumed. Usually people of religion are included in the curriculum for their actions within the purview of their callings, such as Junipero Serra's building of missions, or the arrival of the Mormon Battalion in San Diego. The curriculum does not address the intimate religiosity per se of people of religion, though one can presume what that involves. SB 48 proposes the inclusion of a new group of people whose uniqueness is tied to the behavior of its members; in this case, sexual behavior. I do not consider that to be a responsible rationale for insisting that a person be included or excluded in the curriculum. A person's contributions should be evaluated on their own merits. It is an unnecessary and politicized effort to mandate the identificaiton of people with respect to their intimate and private sexual behavior. We do not point out that Father Serra practiced celibacy as part of the curriculum. It is not the role of schools to point out anyone's sexual preference. Some may want it to be so, but I think their motivation has more to do with politics than civil rights.

In grade school, I was educated here in California from an admittedly ethnocentric point of view. Straight healthy white males dominated the pages of school Social Science textbooks. This was, of course, an inaccurate portrayal of history. When I started teaching in the 1980s, the pendulum had swung. Leafing through the fourth grade California History text, for example, the majority of illustrations and marginalia was devoted to members of so-called minority groups. This also was inaccurate, in a well-intended, but faulty way. Today, texts are more moderate, and hopefully more accurate and fair.

I do not believe that a person's sexual orientation should determine her or his inclusion in, or exclusion from, a textbook. Neither do I believe that sexual orientation should be a mandated topic of discussion in public school Social Science classes. There may be a place for incidental discussion of the topic during Family Life instructon in the Health and Science curriculum, but it should not be mandated there either. Please veto SB 48.

Very respectfully,
Bradley L. Hill