A revived legal dispute over a Christian music teacher’s refusal to use students’ preferred names and pronouns will offer an early test of the US Supreme Court’s new standard for religious accommodations in the workplace.
A revived legal dispute over a Christian music teacher’s refusal to use students’ preferred names and pronouns will offer an early test of the US Supreme Court’s new standard for religious accommodations in the workplace.
Of important note, Brownsburg Community School Corp is a public school district.
Refusing to call people what they want to be called is willful disrespect, in the case on the basis of the person’s gender identity. I have the perfect solution: Call this teacher, “Joni” John Kluge, by names and pronouns she doesn’t want to be called by.
They should refer to the teacher as “it/that.”
That’s not entirely accurate, though. You can easily imagine trolls demanding absurd nicknames. I’m not accusing anyone in this case of doing that, but it’s unreasonable to let children get any label they ask for. They may ask for genuinely horrific shit.
Given that Kluge is asking to call these students the same thing any news article would, their self-professed last name, and that they want to do it without singling out anyone on any basis, gender identity or otherwise, I would be inclined to agree with the courts that this case has more nuance to it than these cases usually do.
But Kluge is doing it for transphobic reasons, and should therefore be opposed and made to stop it.
Even if last names reads as reasonable, the teacher is doing it specifically to dispute the validity of their student’s genders.
Every time this teacher spits a gender-diverse student’s surname at them, they will hear the disrespect and poison it is dripping with and each time will bleed them baleful in the belly.
A person should not be permitted to harm a vulnerable person like that, especially if they are in a position of power and especially if they are a state employee.
Students have a right to their person and identity; no religion supersedes that right.
I don’t think you even need a transphobia argument; there’s a pretty clear case for basic discrimination by sex, which is much legally tighter. We all know that this teacher would have zero issues calling a James by Jimmy, or an Elizabeth by Liz. The teacher is refusing to allow a child to use a name of a given gender association purely because of the child’s sex.
And conveniently, this is the exact argument that Gorsuch used in banning workplace discrimination against queer people: it’s discrimination on the basis of sex to mistreat someone for dating or marrying a man solely because he is also a man.
I think I do need the transphobia argument, because transphobia is bad and it is good to argue against it. The fact “it could be fought with simple contract law if it had to be” not withstanding.
I’d amend your stance as well to “perceived sex”.
Oh for sure, and I’m not meaning to downplay the impact there. I’m speaking very strictly on the tightness of the legal argument.
“I have shown that this person is transphobic” may not necessarily convince a judge, whereas “I have shown that this person is discriminating on the basis of sex in blatant violation of Title IX” is a legal slam dunk.
Excellent points, and thank you for pointing them all out.
I think that a solution to the “troll problem” is to call their bluff, and call them what they want to be called (provided it’s not obscene or racist or otherwise improper for the school in question). Just as school kids can be excellent trolls to authority, they can be excellent trolls to each other, and I’d bet that other students referring to “Bob Smith” as “Meow-meow FuzzKitty” would get real old real fast. It might even demonstrate to Meow-meow what it feels like to be called something you don’t actually identify with. Or serving to normalize calling people what they want to be called.
Usually by little shitheads with MAGA parents. I occasionally inspect the containment instances and have seen more than a few people with neopronouns made out of slurs. People who underestimate the depravity of children are in for a rude awakening when a chinless doughball with a name like Brantlee Klansmyn Tyler insists he’s transracial and must be called “nigself” or his mom will sue the school board.
Ugh, exactly.