A Bay Area assemblyman reversed course and eliminated bill language blacklisting Christians, Jews, and Muslims from being police officers.
Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s stated goal of AB 655 was to eliminate police officers belonging to “hate groups” or those who have used hate speech in the past.
But the bill’s definition of “hate group” was so broad it included police officers expressing religious or political views on abortion, marriage, and gender, or even those who belonged to a conservative church, synagogue, mosque or political party.
“We thank Assemblyman Kalra for listening to our concerns and revising AB 655 to respect the constitutional rights of peace officers,” Jonathan Keller, president of the California Family Council said Friday.
Kalra initially doubled-down on the problematic language in an interview with KCRA NBC News, even smearing those who disagreed.
“You have a constitutional right to have racist and bigoted views,” Karla said. “You don’t have a constitutional right to be a police officer.”
But after push back from the California Family Council and Pacific Justice Institute, the bill gained national attention.
Over the last week the California Peace Officers’ Association, the Sacramento Bee, and other national organizations also expressed concerns.
In response, Kalra finally acknowledged controversy and amended the bill Thursday.
“We have put in amendments to remove the specificity regarding denial of constitutional rights. Because, you do have the First Amendment right to be part of groups that may differ in opinion,” Kalra told KPIX CBS News.
Full story at Press California.
See previous CalCatholic story, No Christian Cops in California
how could kalra exclude hindus from the list of potential haters? sikhs and muslims have noticed less than loving actions against them. kalra is a long standing family name in punjab. this bill definitely will win points with any hindus in his constituency, but surely that never crossed his mind.
A case of temporary sanity here in the Bay Area.
Well, God bless him for this one. As I said before, there is not a person on the planet that has not said or written something offensive to someone, somewhere, sometime, whether they meant to or not. Myself included. Sometimes we need to just forgive and forget, especially if the person apologized if they were at fault. Otherwise God does not forgive any of us.
Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s stated goal of AB 655 is itself hate speech against Christians, Jews and Muslims.
I’m disgusted, but not offended. Why? Because we need to be on the offense, not just defense.
There is a problem with the Catholic community. Too many of us just want to forget these attacks on our faith, “We need to just forgive and forget” Er, NO!! Going to sleep here will result in our Faith being restricted, even made unlawful. We could easily wake up and find that lawmakers like Ash have passed laws making it illegal to criticize abortion, or gay marriage. Priests may even be coerced to perform gay marriages, and parochial schools to teach unChristian ethics and unEthical morality to children. That means our lawful Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, will be gone! Next, we will be threatened, lose our jobs, doxed, or even face imprisonment for our basic Catholic beliefs. Sorry Anne, but we cannot just forgive and then ignore this. These politicians only understand loud, strong vocal and written opposition, when they threaten our Catholic right to freedom of speech and religion. We cannot go back to sleep here…keep alert! There will be more attacks.