We recently discussed a meeting of the Loudoun County school board in which a teacher launched into a diatribe against classic works like To Kill A Mockingbird as racist. Now another teacher is the focus of a national debate after he spoke to the school board. However, teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross has been suspended for speaking against gender policies.
At issue was Policy 8040, which requires Loudoun staff to use preferred pronouns.
“LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their 18 chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent educational record. School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity.”
The line of tension is not in the first part of the policy in allowing students to use their chosen pronoun but requiring others to use them. That has triggered religious and political objections around the country.
Notably, the rule extends to other students who can be punished for failing to use the required pronouns:
“The use of gender-neutral pronouns are appropriate. Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy.”
The punishment of a student for failing to use the pronouns could create the most difficult constitutional challenges under the First Amendment. That could be deemed as compelled speech in contravention of their religious and political views.
Cross is an elementary school physical education teacher and appeared before the board to express the view of some parents that the policy forces people to be adopt speech that they reject on religious or political grounds. Cross was adamant and strident in his opposition in first expressing sympathy for those with gender dysphoria but also denouncing the policy.
He makes reference to a chilling “60 Minutes” program interviewing people who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria as young children and quickly put through gender changing procedures with little time or serious review. Those interviewed describes how they were harmed by the transitioning procedures and felt that little was done to protect them.
Cross began by stating “My name is Tanner Cross and I am speaking out of love for those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.” He goes on to reference that he is a teacher but would not follow the policies:
“It’s not my intention to hurt anyone, but there are certain truths that we must face when ready. We condemn school policies [that] would damage children, defile the holy image of God. I love all of my students but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion. It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
Principal Shawn Lacey sent out an email to students stating:
“I’m contacting you to let you know that one of our physical education teachers, Tanner Cross, is on leave beginning this morning. In his absence, his duties will be covered by substitute staff already working in our building. I wanted you to know this because it may affect your student’s school routine. Because this involves a personnel matter, I can offer no further information.”
The action raises a difficult issue for free speech. First, as a parent and teacher, Cross has every right to state his opposition to the policy. There was not a call to fire Loudoun County teacher Andrea Weiskopf when she called for book bans and attacked those supporting classics like To Kill A Mocking Bird as advocating harmful “White Saviorism.”
However, Weiskopf did not say that she would not follow any contrary decision of the board. Cross appears to state that he will not comply with the gender policy. If Cross merely appeared at the meeting to oppose the policy, he would have an extremely strong constitutional case in opposing any suspension or termination. Instead, he appears to pledge that he will not comply as a teacher in the county.
There may be a little wriggle room. Cross specifically declares “I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion.” It is not clear if that means that he would refuse to use a required pronoun. He could argue that he was saying that he would not expressly endorse the underlying conclusion on gender or the basis for the policy. However, it certainly sounded like he was saying that he would not comply with Policy 8040.
As noted above, the strongest challenge could be effort to sanction students who refuse to use such pronouns. Cross is a teacher who is expected to follow these policies and most courts would likely support the school in mandating such compliance. However, his case could force a challenge on the two opposing views. The school views this as supporting an anti-discrimination policy while the teacher views this as curtailing his free speech and religious rights.
The tragedy is that both sides clearly care deeply for students. Cross comes across as someone who genuinely loves his students, but holds religious views that others believe are harmful to some students.
There may be room for compromise. A court could ask if there is any “give” in this language. It could come down to the language allowing punishment of “staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun.”
The rule does state that “School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity.” Yet, this is “when using a name or pronounce to address the student.” What if a teacher simply does not use a pronoun? If Cross refers to such students by their last name and avoids any pronoun, would that be considered compliance? If so, the board should clearly lay out such options in writing. Indeed, if Cross is fired, such questions could be soon before a court.
I graduated from high school 45 years ago. Our English class diagrammed sentences on the blackboard for weeks. A much simpler time.
“You knew who you were then…girls were girls and men were men…”
My pronouns are someone/anyone/nowhere man (depending on my day)
School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity.
Wow! These school administrators are MORONS! There are no gendered pronouns that can be used in addressing anyone. There is only “YOU”!!!
Emperor’s new clothes.
Compelled speech is a violation of basic human rights.
The entire premise of the forced use of transgender pronouns is that anyone has the right to force everyone else to view them how they see themselves. Someone suffering from gender dysphoria will not accept their biology. Rules such as these compel everyone else to agree with them. This forces their own dysphoria on the rest of the world. Punishing anyone who defines gender genetically, because of science, religion, or any other reason, is anathema to freedom.
Gender dysphoria is on a spectrum of dysphoria. There are people who feel like they are supposed to have healthy limbs amputated. There are people who experience severe psychological distress at aging. There have been well documented cases of adults who demand to be treated and dressed like toddlers. There is an entire niche market to adult cloth diapers and baby clothing that cater to those with dysphoria or fetishes. There are people who feel like are a black person trapped in a white person’s body. There are people who think they are dogs, horses, cats, dragons, vampires, or mermaids stuck in a human body. Clinical lycanthropy is a psychiatric illness in which the person has the delusion that they can transform into an animal like a wolf. This psychiatric disorder has been documented for over a thousand years. There are people who sincerely believe they are in a romantic, physical relationship with a ghost. Tragically, feeling like your body isn’t right is not that rare.
Someone suffering from such a mental illness should not be given a special right to punish anyone who refuses to play along.
Imagine if people could lose their job unless they refer to a 65-year-old coworker as a 24-year old beautiful woman. Should people be impoverished by losing their jobs or having their businesses boycotted unless they acknowledge publicly that people with clinical lycanthropy have turned into an actual wolf when they crawl on all fours and howl? All of this is on the same spectrum, where someone feels like their body is wrong. Activists have plucked gender dysphoria out of all the variety of this spectrum, normalized the illness, and seek to create a protected class with special rights to punish anyone who will not comply with their delusion.
This illness is sad. No amount of surgery is ever going to make their outside align with their mental picture. The approximation that vaginoplasty surgery creates is essentially a permanent wound. It is created from skin grafts that cannot grow secretions, cannot clean itself like a female’s reproductive tract, and that will require special care forever. Infections are quite common because those skin grafts cannot receive air flow like other parts of the human body. That skin was never supposed to line a cavity like that, and the recipient is stuck with this high maintenance forever. If they survive the astronomically high suicide rate, these poor people are going to require very specialized care in old age with specific nursing requirements. The male bottom surgery is castration. It is a craze for eunuchs.
There needs to be serious discussion about the child abuse aspects of encouraging boys to become eunuchs and girls to sterilize themselves and permanently change their bodies. It is acknowledged that young children’s brains and capacity keep evolving into their twenties, yet society is forcing people to accept that a child should make such an irreversible decision. There have been too many cases of parents pushing their children to be transgender, especially those which are coming out of divorce cases.
History looks with horror upon the castration of boys to make operas castratti. Future generations will likely be appalled at the transgender craze that castrates boys and sterilizes girls. It is going to look like Dr Mengele.
Karen…………Your last paragraph is powerful!
A very thoughtful analysis, Karen! Thank you!
Oh how the left has come full circle. 20-30 years ago there was outrage at the genital mutilation of children occurring in parts of Africa and the Middle East by certain religious groups. Now the left has embraced it and attacks anyone who opposes it in children who are being subjected to it by woke parents willing to permanently scar (both physically and emotionally) them because of a temporary psychological disorder which is not uncommon at the onset of puberty.
You should educate yourself about the difference between genital mutilation, carried out without the child’s consent, generally for sexual control and/or religious reasons, and gender reassignment surgery, done with the child’s consent to address gender dysphoria.
You can disagree with both without dishonestly pretending that they’re equivalent.
There is no difference. Only the excuses used to justify the mutilation has changed.
Anonymous, please explain why any adult should allow a children to make a permanent, life altering decision that will render them sterile, forever.
The child can’t consent.
When I see ‘woke’ people on Zoom calls with their (she/her) and (he/him) pronouns in parens next to their name, it absolutely bugs me.
Like, duh. We can see you are a woman and would normally call you ‘she/her’ and we can see you are a man who we would refer to as ‘he/him’ ….so the reason you do this is to be inclusive of the people who prefer other pronouns like ‘they/them’?
They/them? So we are supposed to accept and normalize a child or an adult co-worker asking to be referred to in the “3rd person and thing, Plural”?
I mean come on, man. Y’all crazy now.
How about if I want to be referred to as “Thing No. 1”? My partner is “Thing No. 2”.
We can be fired for the microaggression of mis-gendering someone, or mis-pronouning?
We are supposed to just treat all this like it is normal?
Where did all this come from?
I remember a situation where a teacher called the parents who sent their kindergartner to school with a can of sardines for lunch.
The teacher found that odd and concerning and called the parents just to be sure it was what they wanted their kid to have for lunch. They did.
The kid went home that day and asked his parents, “I like sardines. Am I weird?”
That kid was not weird.
But a kid asking to be called a 3rd person pronoun? The answer would be, “yeah kid, you are weird.”
I don’t have a religion. What all of this is ‘against’ is sanity. This issue in particular absolutely boggles the mind and shows precisely how cowardly/reticent/and or delusional we have become in this country. As things are stayed in the presented verbiage, this should not even be a debate among sane and educated people. Time to stop the coddling.
Antonio Egas Moniz received the 1949 Nobel prize in Medicine for the frontal lobotomy, a once fashionable procedure that irreversibly mutilated the brains of the most vulnerable, largely women. Today, the intellectual heirs to Dr. Moniz chemically and surgically mutilate young children in the name of scientific and social progress. Progress indeed.
Yes. There are myriad examples of scientists confidently proclaiming they are right and to be contradicted is anti-science, only to be proven horribly wrong by time, including eugenics and the lobotomy, of which Rosemary Kennedy is perhaps the most famous victim.
Intentionally using the wrong pronouns is an insult to the students and should not be tolerated any more then any other direct insult to students.
Molly………..Who is dictating to us that a pronoun is “wrong”? Therein lies the rub.
It is not the place for the teacher to decide if gender dysphoria is real or not. And it is real and recognized as a medical condition.
.It’s real and recognized as a “medical condition”??
Well, Dr. Molly, by any chance was throwing salt over your shoulder and sacrificing a rooster part of your “medical research”?
Ah yes, a diagnostically assessed diagnosis is akin to a superstition and theoretical rooster sacrifice.
Your condescension knows no bounds. You’re so self-absorbed that you think your views and opinions are the only things that should be expressed. You dismiss everything that doesn’t align with your world views. What a sad, sheltered existence.
Metal Woke Frog,,,, It’s called having an opinion in a free society, if we can keep it. Sorry it’s too nuanced for you.
If you use a biological definition of gender, then the 18 different pronouns are wrong.
Compelled speech is contradicted by the First Amendment.
Is it wrong to call someone who suffers from clinical lycanthropy a human, even though they sincerely believe they have turned into a wolf, even crawling on all fours and howling? They feel quite strongly that they are an animal. Their outside does not match how they feel on the inside. They wish others to confirm their delusion. Should people lose their jobs if they call those people humans?
Gender was chosen among all the myriad dysphoria and delusions and normalized. But there was no reason given why someone can actually be a different gender if they don’t feel like their outside matches there inside. There are people who feel like they are supposed to have amputations of healthy limbs. People who think they are dogs, vampires, dragons, or mermaids. People who think they are famous figures. Adults who claim to be toddlers, and demand that they be dressed, fed, and addressed as such. There is a nice market for furries, who have a fetish for dressing up as stuffed animals.
This takes healthy cosplay to a very unhealthy level, to the point of punishing those who do not play along.
People have the right to their performative identity. They can speak, dress, and act however they choose. But everyone else has the right to digest what they see and have their own opinions.
If you need to put someone down because their appearance doesn’t match what your image of them is in your head, that’s your problem, not theirs.
MetalFrog – please show me exactly where I put anyone down because of their appearance?
This is about compelled speech and persecuting those who define gender biologically.
I have no problem with people dancing to their own tune, or their performative behavior. I learned how to tango from a drag queen who danced in platform stilettos. On grass. I have compassion for anyone who suffers a dysphoria of any kind.
What I do have a problem with is persecuting those who won’t conform to defining gender in an ambiguous, confusing way, and forced speech. According to my research, the far Left does not define male or female by genetics, genitalia, masculine or feminine speech patterns, or dress, or behavior. It’s just “how you feel”, but there are no more definitions for male or female. It’s je ne sais quoi.
Adults can do what they want, but nothing so permanent should be done to children. Nothing that would sterilize them forever, amputate their healthy genitals, chemically interfere with puberty, or other permanent consequences. Most kids who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria grow out of it, which renders transitioning children to be incredibly harmful.
A lot of people are tormented by a variety of mental illnesses and challenges. They deserve compassion. It is ironic that the loudest part of the transgender community, demand to be treated with tolerance, yet they wish the special right to persecute anyone who doesn’t agree with them, for instance those who define gender biologically.
People have the right to refer to someone either by their biology, or the persona they are projecting. It should be their choice, just as it is the choice of the person how they dress, speak, and behave.
Let’s use Ru Paul as an example. He is not transgender, but rather a drag queen. He is a gay man. When he’s in drag, I usually refer to him as “she”. But no matter what pronoun I think of him as, I also know he’s a man. If anyone asked me his gender, it would be male. Were he to suddenly experience gender dysphoria, he would still be a biological man. His chromosomes wouldn’t change. If he dressed feminine all the time, I’d probably refer to him as “her”, but it would be my choice. I certainly wouldn’t use any of 75 and counting possible gender pronouns. Of course, Ru Paul makes it easy, because he’s publicly said, “I don’t care what pronoun you call me, just call me.”
People are making this too complicated. Everyone has the right to interpret what they see in front of them. Speech must not be compelled. Tolerance works both ways. The transgender community needs to stop weaponizing their movement, making it so hostile. Accept that there are people who prefer to use a biological or religious definition of male and female, as well as people who are perfectly happy to try to memorize 75 different gender pronouns. Tolerate these differences and move on.
“People have the right to refer to someone either by their biology, or the persona they are projecting. It should be their choice, just as it is the choice of the person how they dress, speak, and behave.”
Yes.
If you can be fired for calling a kid who looks like a boy “he or him” because the kid wants to be called “she or her” or “them or they”….then that’s a problem.
Molly, there are essentially two genders. Which pronoun to be used is something that those involved have to figure you. Until that problem is satisfied, no pronoun need be applied. The name of the person can be used instead. Alternatively, a non-pronoun identification can also be used. You cannot dictate what I think or believe. If you want absolute propriety, then the registered name is a good alternative.
SM
“The tragedy is that both sides clearly care deeply for students.”
Professor, with all due respect……are you kidding!!? Loudon ISD cares deeply about those students?! That’s laughable, IMO. They care deeply about being obedient little wokepedes.
Embracing psychotic “sociology” and calling it education is too bizarre for me, as a retired public school teacher, to think about.
To read about children being used as gender experiments for the sake of stroking the liberal woke movement should sicken and disgust any intelligent human being!
Really, there are 18 chosen names and gender pronouns. How could anyone remember which student had what declared gender and which pronouns to apply. The next requirement will be a computer in every classroom with a database of each students preferred gender and any improper pronoun reference would initiate a loud blast from a bull horn like mechanism. Every classroom must have such a device. The sound could be something like BLAH BLAH BLAH emitted anytime that a rule is broken. It would not matter that the resulting continual din interfered with the students ability to think as long as the god of woke was appeased.
I would think if one child out of thirty in your classroom came you and said, “please identify me with ‘he/him’ as opposed to ‘she/her'” it might stick out.
Teachers are able to remember 30+ faces and nick names for the school year, but expecting them to remember one person’s preference on pronouns is a stretch? Please.
It’s this very topic that brought the great Jordan Peterson to prominence.
True!
Good to see you, Nicholas. it’s been awhile.
Thanks, Cindy. I follow JT on Twitter more than here. I need to spend more time here, Twitter is a jungle.
Cindy, That was me..this website doesn’t retain my name like it used to.
Nicholas…..thanks! yes, twitter is out of control now. I remember my first time on this blog, a few years ago,(July 20??) and Professor Turley was writing about his disastrous hike out West, where he had become dehydrated and ill, and had to call EMS.
I remember that you and Paul C. Schulte and mespo, etc had enjoyable posts that day.
What ever happened to Paul C. Schulte?
Paul was having too many technical problems, I believe, with signing on and off of the blog. I miss his voice!
Nick…I also miss Teaching spastics to Dance/Art Deco………..He was edgy, but very sharp and unique. He has been banned (temporaily?) I heard.
Cindy, What I always remember about you is that you have a good heart.
Nick………oh, how kind of you! Thank you…… I try, but unfortunately fail at times.
Although Virginia is a conservative state, the close proximity of Washington, DC has attracted the most left-wing characters in the country and they’ve taken over the state. The best thing that could happen to Loudon County would be a wildfire that destroys everything in sight.
If kids can pick their pronouns, why should they not be able to pick their titles?
I favor being addressed as: Your Grace.
I think I should be able to require anyone I interact with to address me as such.
Okay, and what’s the harm in requesting that?
Why don’t they teach the brats to not smoke?
“What if a teacher simply does not use a pronoun? If Cross refers to such students by their last name and avoids any pronoun, would that be considered compliance?”
That is what happened to Jordan Peterson in Canada. He refused to use the preferred pronoun and used the individual’s name. Here is a quick video of Peterson containing several different interview moments.
https://youtu.be/SHuYR1GaPY8
Allan….thanks for the video.
Good to hear from you Cindy. He has loads of videos. A lot of people should open their minds, and listen to what he has to say.
Probably one of the the most chilling parts of the 60 Minutes interview was the doctor saying that a physician can have his/her license revoked for not following “affirmation” policy. The rabbit hole is wide, yawning, and swallowing whole parts of the country.
I think too many people are taking confused kids and disfiguring them. An investigation should ensure the money earned is earned for doing a medical service, not just affirming a potential transient desire. In the end, I think some doctors should lose their licenses and probably be jailed.
It’s not like a kid goes into a therapist’s office on Monday, and has life altering surgery on Tuesday.
It’s the same as with every other DSM diagnosis: there is an extended evaluation where a threshold of criteria needs to be met, and then a course of therapy is put into place.
MF….It’s the “extended evaluation” part that alarms many of us….. Some people doing the evaluation are many times unethical in the name of progress……….and don’t have the specific training needed.
Name tag for each student:
John Doe or whatever their name is
Dong or No Dong
Be a none noun. Or a nun.
“O brave new world that has such people in it.”
― Aldous Huxley
“What fresh hell is this?”
—-Dorothy Parker