Rainbow Textbooks Adopted in California

[Geee]

American Spectator

Late last year, the California board of education brought to an end a aecades-long campaign to emphasize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender historical figures in state social-studies / history textbooks, approving K-8 volumes that make identity politics of all kinds the core of the subject.
California has had enormous influence on the nation’s history textbooks in the past, and single-interest groups have long flocked to Sacramento to try to gain expanded, favorable inclusion. The LGBT lobby has been notably assertive. At 1990 hearings an early textbook activist waved a huge rainbow flag, shouting Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, Alexander Hamilton, and Eleanor Roosevelt were all gay. Based on correspondence between Gen. George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette, he declared: “The father of our country may have been its first queen.”
Pressure in the state capital has persisted. In 2006, Sen. Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica — the state’s first openly gay legislator — introduced a bill that would require textbooks to include LGBT contributions to state and national history. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, calling it redundant and unnecessary, citing previous anti-discrimination laws and state guidelines for recognized groups, including LGBT. Five years later, a second bill, widely known as FAIR — for Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful — similarly required texts to highlight LGBT issues. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the FAIR bill into law.