RIVERSIDE COUNTY, California (LifeSiteNews) – A California school district is backing down after Democrat governor and potential presidential candidate Gavin Newsom announced the state would be intervening over the district’s rejection of a supplemental textbook promoting late LGBT icon Harvey Milk.
On July 17, LifeSiteNews reported that in May the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) Board of Education voted to reject a state-recommended social studies curriculum over its inclusion of supplemental material intended for fourth graders concerning Milk, the former San Francisco supervisor and California’s first openly homosexual elected official who was killed in 1978 by a disgruntled ex-colleague.
Milk’s death made him a martyr for LGBT activists under a prevailing narrative suggesting he was murdered for his sexuality, when in fact his killer, Dan White, who also killed Mayor George Moscone the same day, was a former friend of Milk with mixed positions on “gay rights” issues, and actually shot both men because he blamed them for keeping him off the city’s Board of Supervisors.
TVUSD board members objected to the material’s favorable depiction of Milk due to his alleged history of illicit relations with underage boys. In response, Newsom announced that the state would be purchasing copies of the book and sending them to the district, threatening that “If these extremist school board members won’t do their job, we will — and fine them for their incompetence.”
On July 24, Fox News reported that TVUSD has since voted unanimously to approve the curriculum, after Newsom threatened to impose a $1.5 million fine on the district, although Board President Joseph Komrosky denied the governor’s threat was a factor.
“Gov. Newsom, I act independently and authoritatively from you. I am a sovereign citizen in the United States of America,” Komrosky said. “If we do not provide curriculum – I want everybody to hear this – we will literally be sued.” Without the curriculum, the district would have to rely on a 2006 textbook that does not conform to a 2011 state law mandating the teaching of historical contributions by LGBT individuals.
While acquiescing to the new curriculum, the board also directed the interim superintendent to review a portion of its language and look into “substituting age appropriate curriculum” that conforms to the law but “is also consistent with the board’s commitment to exclude sexualized topics of instruction from elementary school grade levels.”
“This vote lays bare the true motives of those who opposed this curriculum,” Newsom declared. “This has never been about parents’ rights. It’s not even about Harvey Milk – who appears nowhere in the textbook students receive. This is about extremists’ desire to control information and censor the materials used to teach our children.”
“Demagogues who whitewash history, censor books, and perpetuate prejudice never succeed,” the governor said. “Hate doesn’t belong in our classrooms and because of the board majority’s antics, Temecula has a civil rights investigation to answer for.”
Across the nation, controversy has exploded in recent years over schools adopting classroom materials and library books that seek to expose children to sexual themes and instill in them left-wing values on topics such as homosexuality, gender, race, and economics. The trend has fueled a parent backlash that has been credited with Republican gains in states like Florida and Virginia, whose current respective governors, Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin, have taken leading roles in fighting back.
The 55-year-old Newsom, who survived a recall election in 2021 and was reelected in 2022, is widely speculated to be Democrats’ top pick to replace 80-year-old Joe Biden on the presidential ballot next year to compensate for Biden’s underwater job approval and pervasive fears about his mental health, and take advantage of polls indicating strong dissatisfaction with both Biden and former President Donald Trump as their parties’ respective White House nominees.
Newsom has recently held events in red states ostensibly promoting Biden’s reelection, which observers have suggested serve a secondary function of building his own name recognition outside of California for a candidacy of his own.