California Family Council
November 3, 2025
In accordance with a law passed in 2023 that has now gone into effect, the California school system requires all 7th–12th-grade teachers and certificated school employees to undergo annual LGBTQ “cultural competency” training and testing. Developed by activist organizations, the training labels those with traditional Christian beliefs about sexuality and biological sex as “homophobic” or “transphobic.” It instructs employees to protect students’ “privacy” from their own parents and to use so-called “preferred pronouns” such as they/them or ze/zem. The training also tests school employees to ensure they can parrot back the state-approved beliefs about sexual orientation and gender ideology.
An alarmed former elementary school principal, Brett Loring, and current Director of Student Services at a TK–8 district in Northern California, is one of several concerned Christian educators who have reached out to the California Family Council. “It’s not training; it’s programming,” Loring said. “It’s telling teachers what to think and how to respond to students, no matter what their own beliefs or the parents’ beliefs are.”
The curriculum, mandated by the California Safe and Supportive Schools Act, AB 5 and AB 130, was funded with $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars. These funds support free online courses designed by LGBTQ advocacy groups in partnership with the California Department of Education and the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Organizations such as the ACLU, Equality California, the Trevor Project, OUT for Safe Schools, the California Teachers Association, and the California State PTA helped craft the training outline—called PRISM—but school board members and parents have struggled to access the full material.
CFC has spoken with several school board members who have been denied access to PRISM training in their districts. One Southern California school board member was even told by his superintendent that the Department of Education will not allow school board members to view the material.
Recently, however, CFC got accessto two versions of the LGBTQ “cultural competency” training and final exam from several whistleblowers. While the PRISM website allows districts to create their own “substantially similar” version of the course, the content must still meet the same ideological standards. (read the ED code for details) Yet since the official PRISM online training is free to school districts, it is assumed most school boards will opt for the no-cost version.
PRISM training from its website has six different hour-long courses to choose from. CFC was able to record course 3 titled: Preventing Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination for LGBTQ+ Students, which you can watch here…
Another version of the LGBTQ “cultural competency training CFC received was provided to school districts in Northern California by Tuolumne JPA.
Watch the Tuolumne JPA LGBTQ Cultural Competency Training Video
Curriculum Themes
- Using Preferred Pronouns: Teachers are told they must “promote safety and well-being” by using each child’s chosen pronouns.
- Heterosexism is Bigotry: The training claims that believing male female relationships are “normal” is a form of discrimination called “heteronormativity.”
- Keeping Secrets from Parents: The curriculum insists that teachers cannot disclose a student’s gender identity or orientation to parents, asserting that children have “a reasonable expectation of privacy” from their families.
Washington, D.C. 3/2/2026 – In a historic and groundbreaking ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Thomas More Society’s emergency application in Mirabelli v. Bonta, holding that secret gender transition policies in schools violate the religious liberty and due process rights of parents. The ruling restores the class action injunction that Thomas More Society had secured against the State of California for parents across the state who object to the state’s directives requiring schools to conceal children’s gender transitions from their own parents, facilitate those transitions without parental knowledge or consent, and compel teachers to actively deceive families.
The ruling reinstates U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez’s December 2025 decision on behalf of statewide class of parents, finding California’s secret gender transition regime unconstitutional.
- Requiring Gender Affirmation: Employees are told to affirm a child’s chosen identity, including social, legal, and medical “gender affirmation,” despite global pushback against such policies and the growing number of detransitioners warning of regret.
At the end of the training, teachers must take a test reinforcing these messages.
As Brett Loring explained, the implications are chilling. “They’re pushing this idea that gender is a social construct and that biology doesn’t matter. That’s what they’re teaching,” he said. “If you believe there are only two genders, they call you transphobic. That’s offensive, and it shuts down real discussion.”
Loring continued, “Middle schoolers are the most impressionable. They’re still figuring out who they are, and this kind of messaging feeds confusion. We’re telling kids who don’t even know what college they want to go to that they can pick their gender. That’s dangerous.”
He also warned of the long-term damage: “I’ve seen students transition, and not one of them has gone on to become a healthy, well-adjusted young adult. We’re going to see the fallout from this in ten years—confusion, regret, depression. It’s coming.”
Perhaps most concerning to Loring was how the training instructs teachers to withhold information from parents. “The training actually teaches that students have privacy rights from their parents,” he said. “It assumes parents are unsafe or will mistreat their children, so the school has to step in and keep secrets. That’s not our job.”
He added, “As a principal, I was always taught in loco parentis—we act in place of the parent while the student is in our care. This completely flips that on its head. If my son was holding hands with another boy at school, I’d want to know. Not to punish him, but to talk to him. That’s what good parents do.”
Finally, Loring emphasized his calling as a believer: “I am called as a Christian to expose darkness and to defend the poor and the weak. Right now, there are a lot of weak kids out there—not physically, but mentally, spiritually, and emotionally—and they’re going to be taken advantage of if this continues.”
California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt said the PRISM curriculum represents a dangerous escalation in government-led indoctrination:
“Parents, pastors, and Christian teachers need to sound the alarm. This so-called ‘training’ isn’t about inclusion—it’s about indoctrination. It’s designed to shame anyone who holds biblical beliefs about sex, marriage, and what it means to be male or female. The state is funding a worldview that breeds hostility toward Christianity and undermines the moral foundation of our schools and families.”
Burt urged parents to get informed and involved in their local districts:
“Silence is not an option. California’s Christian community must stand up for truth and the rights of parents to raise their children without government interference.”
The California Family Council is currently preparing a follow-up article outlining how teachers can formally request opt-outs from this offensive training and how the PRISM curriculum violates federal directives prohibiting the teaching of transgender ideology in public schools.
