A woman accused of threatening members of a California school board who voted to inform parents if their children wish to be transgender was arrested last week.
According to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, “Berkeley resident Rebecca Morgan, 52, was arrested Tuesday, Aug. 1, on suspicion of threatening a public official after an investigation identified her as one of those who made threats against members of the Chino Valley Unified School District [CVUSD] board, a city of Chino news release states.”
On July 20, the CVUSD board, by a 4-1 vote, enacted a new policy requiring school officials to notify parents within three days if their child requests “to be identified or treated” as a member of a gender not corresponding to his biological sex, including asking to be addressed by a different name or pronouns; uses a bathroom or locker room not corresponding to his biological sex; attempts to participate in sex-segregated sports with the opposite sex; or asks for any other changes to his school records.
“Coming into being on the board, we had a policy that was quite the opposite. That was to keep the secret,” school-board president Sonja Shaw, a mother of two CVUSD students who was elected to the board in November, told Washington Watch With Tony Perkins the day after the vote.
“Sacramento has waged a war on parental rights, and a lot of it has to do with the perversion of our children,” she said. “It only made sense to put some safeguards back in place.”
Those interested in perverting children, however, were vocally opposed to the new policy. California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond showed up at the board meeting where the policy was being considered only to be escorted out by police when he refused to relinquish the microphone after his speaking time ran out. Shaw called Thurmond’s appearance a “political stunt” designed to “scare us.”
Some opponents went further, issuing death threats against the board members who had voted for the policy. At least one threatened to dismember Shaw.
The Chino Police Department was alerted to the first threat the day after the vote. That “threat was linked to an out-of-state resident and Chino police worked with local authorities on the case,” reported the Daily Bulletin.
After police notified Shaw of the threat, wrote the Daily Signal,
Shaw looked at her district email account, where she said she saw messages stating, “You’re going to die,” with a series of profane epithets. “Your children are going to die, and your animals are going to die.” For a “point of reference, they would name what kind of animals I had,” Shaw added.
“I also got notification that people who identify as being in the terrorist organization Antifa posted on their website, ‘We declare war on Sonja Shaw,’” Shaw told Perkins, adding that the group posted her address. “They said, ‘We know where you sleep,’” the same message an angry mob screamed outside the home of then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2018. “They said things like, ‘Use all force possible to stop her.’”
It didn’t end there. “Over the week,” said the Chino Police Department’s press release, “several other threatening messages, emails, and social media posts have been sent to members of the CVUSD Board.”
Morgan, who had not been charged as of Thursday, may not be the last person arrested in connection with the case. “Police continue to investigate the threats, Sgt. Ted Olden said,” reported the Daily Bulletin.
In the meantime, the school district and the police have provided Shaw and her family with extra security.
Shaw told Washington Watch that although she had been “hesitant” to go public with her story, “God reminded me that these are the people that are after our children.”
Those people aren’t going to give up, either. If they can’t intimidate the school board into changing its policy back to one of keeping kids’ gender decisions from their parents, they’ll use the power of the state to force the board to comply.
Besides Thurmond’s in-person attempt to prevent the board from enacting the new policy, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent the board a letter in advance of the vote warning that the state education department has suggested that such a policy “may violate California’s antidiscrimination law by increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment and may violate the student’s right to privacy.”
“In addition to infringing upon student privacy,” he wrote, “forced ‘outing’ of students to their parents is very likely to result in significant emotional, mental, and even physical harm” — to which Shaw could only respond, “Why are you assuming that parents are dangerous?”
On Friday, Bonta announced an investigation into the CVUSD policy, saying, “Students should never fear going to school for simply being who they are” — as if a child with Y chromosomes is “simply being who” he is when he asks to be called Olivia.
“This is a ploy to try to scare all the other boards across California from adopting the policy,” Shaw said in a statement to the Daily Bulletin. “We have united all over California and people from all over the nation are linking up to protect our kids and ensure parental rights. They did us a favor and just revealed more of their agenda and exposed their intentions. I won’t back down and will stand in the gap to protect our kids from big government bullies.”
