California school district adopts textbook it rejected for covering LGBTQ+ figures after Newsom threat

July 23 (UPI) -- A school district in southern California has adopted a social studies textbook the school board previously rejected for including the history of LGBTQ+ figures like Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California who was assassinated in 1978.

The Temecula Valley Unified School District had described the vote to approve the project in a board meeting agenda packet as a "short-term solution" to comply with requirements of the state's 2011 Fair Education Act, after threats from Gov. Gavin Newsom of a $1.5 million fine.

The school board approved the curriculum at a Friday meeting, which was streamed on YouTube, but said it may replace the paragraphs referencing Milk with the biography of another gay rights leader, accusing the dead gay rights icon of being a pedophile.

The claim Milk was a pedophile stems from a biography by Randy Shilts that said the gay rights icon was in his early 30s when he met Jack Galen McKinley in New York in 1964. McKinley was 16 years old when they began their relationship. UPI could not find what the age of consent was in New York and California in 1964 by press time.

However, Shilts wrote that Milk once dismissed claims that members of the LGBTQ+ community were largely pedophiles by shooting back that children needed protection from "incest and child beatings pandemic in the heterosexual family."

Before the vote to approve the curriculum, the board members first voted on whether to keep the district's textbooks from 2006.

"Fortunately, now Temecula's students will receive the basic materials needed to learn," Newsom's office said in a statement.

"This vote lays bare the school board majority's true motives. This has never been about parents' rights. This is about extremists' desire to control information."