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Comment by strangattractor | Hacker News Reader

Elon doesn't live with most of his kids - why would he even care? His reason for moving is the taxes are less in Texas for now and the laws will turn a blind eye to environmental damage his companies do. As the population continues to grow in Tx that will change. Elon should be required to get a trolling license.

Yes - I agree (I am a parent) that the law is stupid. If a kid doesn't want their parents to know something they should do it the old fashion way and lie as I did and my parents did before me etc:)

My favorite thing lately is that NYT dedicated and entire article [1] to Elon goal 1 million people on Mars in the next twenty years. Tesla has been working almost that long not getting self driving cars to work. Why on Earth would anyone bother to take seriously putting 1 million people on Mars in 20 years - something several orders of magnitude more difficult.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/technology/elon-musk-spac....

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> Yes - I agree (I am a parent) that the law is stupid. If a kid doesn't want their parents to know something they should do it the old fashion way and lie as I did and my parents did before me etc:)

The law seems to be about making it possible for kids to lie without the school snitching on them. You should be in favor of this law, no?

Exactly. The law is about preventing abuse from fundamentalists towards their children. If the school must snitch and the school must report then a person who believes their kid being gay will go to hell will abuse their child until they pretend to no be gay.

First the :) means I was somewhat joking. Second as much as I love CA the state has become increasingly interested in creating unenforcible and intrusive laws. Although I can see a case for protecting children from abusive parents (we have laws for that already) it seems to ignore other things. Like the following:

1. AFAIK - If a kid decides to change their pronoun around their friends the school is not required to report that now and would likely not even know or care. If they do no make an official request to Teachers or staff etc then who's to know. This reminds of when fundamentalist claimed prayer was banned in schools. That has never been the case. School lead or Staff lead prayer was banned. Any child that wished to pray before eating lunch was totally free to do so.

2. It assumes that knee jerk reaction on the part of all fundamentalist parents. (feels weird for an atheist to defend fundamentalist but here we are)

3. Where's the data to back this decision up?

4. There are likely situations where it might be important for the parent to know what their child is doing. What if they are in a cult and want to change their name to unintelligible gibberish - wait Musk is probably ok with that. What if someone is convincing them to get illegal surgery?

> First the :) means I was somewhat joking.

Sure, but about what? To me it came across as "I acknowledge my kids' right to privacy and chose to phrase this humorously". Now it sounds more like "I deny my kids' right to privacy and chose to phrase this humorously".

> 3. Where's the data to back this decision up?

As I understand it from other posters, individual schools had already ordered their teachers to snitch to parents. (How is that for government overreach?) The bill still allows teachers to snitch to parents, it just prevents the school from ordering them to snitch.

"The measure Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Monday, is the first to rebuke laws in a handful of other states that say educators must alert parents if a student requests to go by a different name or pronouns. At least 10 states say educators and classmates don’t have to use a student’s name or pronouns if it doesn’t align with a student’s sex assigned at birth." [1]

[1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/should-schools-tell-parent....

So the law was passed to fix a problem that does not exist in CA.

> So the law was passed to fix a problem that does not exist in CA.

No, it wasn't. The article is, at best, abusing "rebuke" to mean "buck the trend", but the law does not literally rebuke foreign state laws.

It addresses two related issues, both of which do, in fact, exist in California:

(1) It provides school-based support and resources for LGBTQ+ students and families thereof responsive to research on specific needs of that community, including the significant effect of family support on well-being,

(2) It prohibits local districts from forced-outing policies, which have been adopted by at least four districts (at least one of which has been forced to put enforcement on hold because of a temporary restraining order issued in a lawsuit brought against the policy), and are under discussion by more than a dozen more.

I understand what it does. I asked a different question - is it necessary? Please give your references. I am not able to find any data on school districts in CA doing what you said. It could very well be true - I would likely change my opinion with more info.

I do not disagree with the intent of the law. Previously I was pointed to a bunch of research on foster care LGBTQ+ youth in good knows what state being bullied or having problems with their foster care. None of which specifically pertained to CA. I do not see how we can continue to create laws to solve problems we do not understand. CA is a large state and can afford to do the home work. S

Found a pretty good article at the Guardian. Chino seems to be having the beef.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/gavi....

> 3. Where's the data to back this decision up?

LGBTQ kids report homelessness at much higher rates than their peers[1], are heavily over-represented in foster care[2], and report substantially higher rates of abuse[3].

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gay-and-transgender...

https://youth.gov/youth-topics/lgbtq-youth/child-welfare

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344346/

Side note but its kind of a funny question to ask when the literal text of the law includes citations to studies that back up the policy.

In what way will this law prevent or improve the situation?

This law seems to be in reaction to laws that were passed in other states requiring the reporting. We don't have that in CA. Having looked at your sources I would agree there are problems but pronoun protection seems to be the least useful solution and likely posturing by certain politicians with Presidential ambitions. IMHO

Some school districts in California already tried to implement forced outing policies. The policies were tied up in California courts so they weren't in practice but this law cuts them off completely. It also lays the groundwork and starts the process of fending off legal challenges that will hopefully make laws like this easier to pass in other states. Agreed that there are many related issues that CA and elsewhere should be tackling. But we aren't talking about the law because its proponents think its a complete solution, were talking about it because Elon and many others are apoplectic about this simple common-sense policy.

> Although I can see a case for protecting children from abusive parents (we have laws for that already)

There are laws preventing gross abuse, yes, but there’s still a great deal of harm which won’t get action or won’t get it in time. If you beat your gay/trans child, yes, the cops are in your future but you can ground them forever, surround them with people who tell them they’re going to burn in hell for expressing their identity, or ship them off to some kind of unregulated Bible camp/school and likely see no consequences.

Not LGBT but if you haven’t read Jesus Land, it’s brutal and a good reminder of what happens at these private “reform” schools – and I note that the decades of abuse finally being disclosed meant that a different church bought it and hired many of the staff:

https://archive.org/details/jesuslandmemoir0000sche

That’s a common problem with laws like this: they sound over the top - and will be the target for lazy jokes – because they’re focused on stopping the edge cases which most people aren’t really aware of.

So let me see if this is a rephrasing of your point: I don't need this sort of protection so no kid should be protected because I think that protection hasn't been proven effective and the school shouldn't need to be a safe space for kids if the circumstances of their birth affect that.

Totally missed the point I'm afraid so I don't feel bad or inhuman like you intended. I asked multiple questions

1. What data backs up the law? Answer a bunch of studies primarily on foster kids in some unidentified State. This could be a state like Louisiana for example. So it did not answer the quest whether CA had this problem and had nothing to do with districts policy.

2. What does the law accomplish? If it is intended to help foster kids it may do so tangentially but given we don't see studies on CA foster kids I guess we still don't know.

3. Is this a problem in CA? It was commented by several people that districts in CA were trying to make reporting mandatory. No references or data were supplied. I finally found my own reference and supplied it to the thread.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/gavi...

There is actually a district, Chino, was trying to to make it a policy. My mind has now changed about the law.

To paraphrase you - "So let me see if this is a rephrasing of your point: I am not going to put forth the mental effort necessary to take you points seriously so I will make a snide comment instead."

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