As a delegate of the California Teachers Association (CTA) and teacher for 30 years, I see how laws, policies, and school resources endorsed by the union are placing students, especially those who identify as LGBTQ+, in harm’s way of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. There are unsafe online chat spaces, dangerous teen on-line advice, deceptive policies prohibiting parent involvement, erasure of student identities, high-risk instruction in library books, and laws that give sophisticated sexual predators the upper hand while naïve kids have no protections.
The California Teachers Association claims to be the “protectors” of LGBTQ kids, yet they support laws that remove their safeguards. For example, in 2017, CTA supported SB 239, which significantly decreased the penalty for intentionally infecting someone with HIV. It used to be a felony, but SB 239 reduced it to a misdemeanor, which means a maximum fine of $1000 or a maximum county jail time of one year. Four years later, in 2021, the same Senator (Weiner), who authored SB 239, authored SB 145, which says there can be a 10-year age difference for consensual oral or anal sex, which means a 14-year-old boy can consent to having sex with a 24-year-old man and it will not be classified as statutory rape. The combination of these two laws is very bad news for kids, who are easily manipulated. By supporting SB 239, the CTA has trivialized the penalty of an adult intentionally infecting a minor with HIV. After SB 145 passed, CTA made no attempts to adjust the implications of intentionally infecting minors with HIV.
Secondly, the CTA endorses LGBTQ books in our schools that teach kids how to use adult sex apps. The book tells them to upload their picture, and the app locates their location. The book is This Book Is Gay, and the app is Grindr. Boston Public Radio stated, “Grindr is one of many online sites where minors can be stalked. Boys and girls are victimized.”
Thirdly, our schools are giving kids who identify as LGBTQ resources, funded and promoted by the CTA, that recommend online chat spaces where random unvetted adults mix with minors to explore their genders and sexualities on an international virtual platform. It’s called Trevor Space. Gay parents, who checked it out, called it a Pedophile’s Paradise and were alarmed to see kids sharing their locations on these dangerous platforms.
There were chat clubs such as “Regressor Space,” meaning a person can age-identify as someone younger, and “Gay Men’s Club,” with the tagline “Let’s talk about boys!” The Teenline.org hotline (where teens counsel teens) tells callers they can share their cell number on Trevor Space once they “build trust” with their online friend.
The ages for Trevor Space are 13–24, so minors are already mixing with online young adults; however, anyone can actually get in by lying about their date of birth. My proof is that I did it myself. I’m in my 50s, but I was able to get into TrevorSpace.org in seconds simply by entering my DOB as a 13-year-old. That is how I wrote my article, including all the screen shots of some of the online chat clubs accessed through our school LGBT resources.
While students are exploring their gender and sexual identities at school through the use of recommended sex dating apps and online chat clubs, their birth identities, such as name, gender, and pronouns, can be changed on school records, unbeknownst to the child’s parents, based on a child’s request. The CTA supports deceiving parents about their children’s gender identity because they say “non-affirming parents” are harmful. However, if the child ends up missing due to these dangerous resources given through our schools, how will the parents find their child when the parent is not aware of the child’s changed identity at school? It would be most difficult, and maybe this is not coincidental.
It’s time to hold the California Teachers Association accountable for the reckless ways they are hurting the very kids they claim to protect.
Originally published at interfaith4kids.com.