Tell your Assemblymembers: No on AB 89
Call ONE of the Assemblymembers. Note: only one of these Assemblymembers represents you. Find out which one here.
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
I urge the Assemblymember to vote NO on AB 89, which excludes trans youth from playing sports in school. It will endanger girls both cis and trans, and harms our most vulnerable children.
Background
The right wing loves to pick targets to try and divide the rest of us against them. Immigrants, gay people, transgender people—it often seems like they rotate through several groups to appoint a villain of the week.
These attacks are meant to get us to sacrifice each other. They offer “reasonable”-sounding arguments for why these people should be detained and those people should be excluded from public life. But there can be no reasonable argument for taking away people’s rights. Either we all have these rights or none of us do.
Recently, our own Governor has chosen to aid and abet right-wing culture warriors like Charlie Kirk, inviting them on his new podcast to agree with their attacks on transgender girls who want to play in school sports. While we have already asked our members to call him and demand he apologize, his actions are having real-world effects.
AB 89 has been introduced in the California Assembly as a bill to exclude trans youth from girls’ sports. Trans girls are girls, and every girl should have the opportunity to participate in her school’s sports teams. Every child, trans or not, has the right to equal participation. We cannot accept proposals to take that right away.
Excluding trans youth from sports is dangerous for many reasons. Here are some important ones:
It makes trans children and their parents feel excluded and targeted. This is bullying, and it is wrong.
It exposes all children—including cisgender children!—to accusations of being the “wrong” gender. Children so accused would have to prove their gender via invasive methods, such as genital inspection. Do you want your child to have to do a blood test or be strip-searched to be allowed to play their favorite sport?
It sacrifices a vulnerable minority to fascist culture warriors. They will never be appeased; appeasement only encourages them to attack more and more people. We must close ranks and protect our children, our school peers, our neighbors. Never give anybody up to fascism.
For more on our reasoning, and why it’s important to care about this issue, read Julia Serano’s fantastic blog post on the issue.
We must stop this movement to sacrifice our most vulnerable community members to fascist-imposed culture wars.