A popular Virginia teacher sued the school for firing him after he refused to use male pronouns to address a female student who identified as transgender.
Peter Vlaming, a former French teacher at West Point High School, filed a lawsuit against the West Point School Board after the school fired him in December 2018. West Point had issued him an ultimatum: Use the male pronoun for a female student or lose his job. Vlaming referred to the student by her chosen, though traditionally male, name and avoided using any pronouns to address pupils to accommodate the transgender student. Unsatisfied, school officials demanded that he speak specific words—the pronouns “he” and “him.”
Vlaming, a Christian, said the school board tried to force him to communicate a message he doesn’t believe: That “gender identity, rather than biological reality, fundamentally shapes and defines who we are as humans,” according to his lawsuit. To refer to a female student by male pronouns would require him to lie intentionally.
“Peter went out of his way to accommodate this student as he does all his students; his school fired him because he wouldn’t contradict his core beliefs,” said Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Caleb Dalton, who represents Vlaming. “The school board didn’t care how well Peter treated this student. It was on a crusade to compel conformity.”
Dalton told me that cases like Vlaming’s have become more common. In May 2016, the U.S. departments of Justice and Education under President Barack Obama issued a guidance letter equating gender identity discrimination with sex discrimination. The Trump administration withdrew the guidance in February 2017. The school gave Vlaming a copy of the letter, as well as a document from political advocacy organization the National Center for Transgender Equality, as justification for the pronoun command.
Other teachers have run afoul of the pronoun police. Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Ohio’s Shawnee State University, filed a federal lawsuit in November 2018 after university officials disciplined him because he declined to use feminine courtesy titles and pronouns to refer to a male student who identified as a female. He said to do so contradicted his Christian convictions. Last month, a federal magistrate judge recommended Meriwether’s complaint be dismissed. Meriwether plans on filing objections to the recommendation, and a district court judge must consider his arguments before a final ruling.
University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson ignited perhaps the most notorious pronoun storm when he took to YouTube to object to a proposed change in Canadian law adding gender identity and gender expression to its anti-discrimination rules. Peterson also opposed the university making anti-bias and anti-discrimination training mandatory for its staff—a move he described as a harbinger of a totalitarian state. “I don’t recognize another person’s right to determine what pronouns I use to address them,” the author of the best-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos told Toronto Life.
Vlaming has not written a book, recorded a YouTube rant, or taken on all the confusion surrounding gender dysphoria. He just wants to teach French. After learning of his firing, a large group of students staged a walkout to protest the school board’s decision, The Christian Post reported. Dalton said Vlaming has been unable to find work as a teacher since then. He had to take a non-education job to support his family—all over pronouns.
“I love French. It’s fascinating and beautiful,” Vlaming said. “I’m saddened that West Point Public Schools wouldn’t work with me to reach a happy situation for everyone on this matter so that we could all continue on with learning in mutual respect.”
Comments
NEWS2ME
Posted: Wed, 10/09/2019 05:02 pmGod is VERY explicit about SAME SEX stuff.
Having someone who doesn't believe in God's laws teaching in a Christian school would be like hiring a white supremacist to work in the ACLU.
Would parents want a homosexual teaching their children? I would NOT.
I'll go farther than that. I would NOT want a Democrat teaching my children.
NEWS2ME
Posted: Wed, 10/09/2019 05:12 pmObama made a BIG MESS of things writing his own laws for homosexuals and abortion.
phillipW
Posted: Tue, 10/15/2019 09:57 pmSo the World and Everything In It aired a Billy Graham sermon from Los Angeles in 1949, and one of the first things he did was call out LA as the most immoral cesspool on the planet earth, worse than Sodom or Gomorrha. My how far we've come in 70 years, where preachers I so afraid of offending a congregation of sinners with the obvious. Now preachers are entertainers, and cater to the least common denominator in hopes that the church offering and weekly count for attendance is up from the previous week, month or year.
We've not only lost the ability to call out sin, and the immoral cesspool that is America, that we've devolved into what you see written in this article and so many others. It's because preachers have become feminists with their "preaching" and we not only don't call out sin, but embrace it within the church. Look at the number of denominations that cater to gays and lesbians by not only supporting their lifestyle, but promoting it to leadership within the church.
So before you comment her in moral outrage, ask yourself why the church in America itself is going to hell. Frankly, it makes the church at Laodicea seem proud by comparison.
Such a disgusting state the American church is in. And to be totally honest, I've lost the desire to even attend a church service, because instead of embracing the Gospel and preaching the truth boldly, we're too busy counting the minutes until your hour of guilt each week is over, before you return to your drug induced coma of stupidity and ignorance, where you search out the next party, and drink yourself into oblivion. Don't worry, you'll still have plenty of time to tailgate and watch the game.
Yeah, I'm [angry]. I'm [angry], because the church in America is dead, and no one truly cares. There's no anger, no emotion, and no outrage, while everyone just sits idly by and watches crap like we are reading in this article become the norm. So disgusted with your false outrage.
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My Two Cents
Posted: Tue, 06/16/2020 10:25 amThis article (and the accompanying one) does not express that the transgender person was FIRED by the funeral home. What I see is: 1) the Christian owners of the funeral home (ahem) HIRED a transgender person. Whether they knew of the person's sexual orientation or not is unclear, but regardless, it didn't matter. They hired him/her/it based on their qualifications for the job. Isn't that what they want? Equal rights? 2) The dispute seems to be the employee did not want to conform to the dress code. If so, then the employer has every right to reward a defiant employee with a letter of dismissal. This is a typical work dispute. If the employee is chronically late or displays consistent breech of contract, then why should they be allowed to continue just because they identify as a woman? 3) Now that the Supreme Court has sided with the disgruntled employee, does that mean the funeral home is stuck with him/her/it for the length of time he/she/it wishes? 4) I never thought Supreme Court justices should be labeled liberal or conservative. Justice is blind (supposedly.) The justices are supposed to interpret the law, not redefine the law. With that being said, two "conservative" justices sided with the "liberals." Does that mean our Supreme Court is no longer supreme but tainted?