A Canadian high school student, Josh Alexander, 16, is at the center of a free speech fight in Ontario after he was arrested and criminally charged for attempting to attend class in violation of an exclusion order. Alexander was suspended from St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario after expressing his religious views on transgender status and rights.
Alexander is a born-again Christian who has been active in politics, including supporting last year’s trucker protests. He was suspended in November after organizing protests at his school against biological males in girls’ bathrooms and arguing in class that God created only two unchangeable genders. He insists that his “offense is obviously defined by the offended.”
He is quoted as further saying that “I expressed my religious beliefs in class and it spiraled out of control…That doesn’t make me a bully. It doesn’t mean I’m harassing anybody. They express their beliefs and I express mine. Mine obviously don’t fit the narrative.”
Alexander was reportedly told by his principal that he could return to school only if he stopped using the “dead name,” or given name, of transgender students and agreed to drop classes with two transgender students who objected to his religious views about gender.
I disagree with people who refuse to use the chosen name of transgender people. However, if transgender issues are discussed in class (particularly at a religious school), the school should expect a diversity of opinions. There is also a right to protest so long as it is not disruptive of classes or school functions.
Alexander is suspended or “excluded” for the rest of the school year and is challenging the action in court. At issue will likely be what constitutes “bullying” in such contexts. My concern is that the school may have included his statements outside of school on social media and in class as part of relevant discussions.
I agree with the school that the transgender students face great prejudice and hatred. Suicide rates and suicidal ideation are much higher for such students. It is important to monitor and maintain a supportive environment for these students.
However, it is also important to maintain the free speech rights of the student body as a whole. This should be possible by employing rules of decorum and decency in how students treat one another without preventing discussion of these underlying political, legal, and social issues.
High school students are close to emerging into society as adults where this debate is raging. They should be prepared to voice their views on both sides. Conversely, we should not be raising a generation of young censors who believe that free speech is inherently harmful or must be sharply controlled for the safety of others.
These are difficult cases for educators, but free speech rights are often jettisoned as a first response to such conflicts. Anderson and his classmates should be able to protest and speak freely. Transgender students and their classmates should have the same rights. Neither side has a right to bully or badger those with opposing views. There are legitimate questions about whether the school swept too broadly in curtailing the expression of opposing views and values, particularly in speech made outside of school.
what sort of Catholic school is this?
Have you seen their Pope?
The Popes a commie.
True he’s rather far Left with socialist tendencies. However, even the Pope has publicly condemned the transgender movement, and declared that there are only two genders.
How can a Catholic school retain its Catholic affiliation if it expelled a student for following the Pope’s direction on gender?
We might like to see our neighbors to the north to have the same free speech rights as we (used to) have. We might even like to see them agitate for change to enable them to enjoy these same rights; however, we must acknowledge that Canadians have a different set of priorities than do US citizens. Their constitution is different, and so are their laws when it comes to being able to exercise any manner of civil liberties.
When Canadians get good and tired of being told HOW to think and what they must accept, perhaps their laws will change — not before.
jajuan62:
Good point. There is no cultural tradition of the individual right to free speech in Canada.
I am very concerned at how the far Left has made a sweep of nearly all of Western civilization, with a few holdouts, like Hungary, on certain matters. The West is imploding.
So, two people didn’t like his religious views, so HE had to drop those classes or be arrested?
Stalinesque.
Transgenderism isn’t about tolerance or inclusivity. It’s one of the most intolerant, hostile movements today.
A guy wearing construction boots, and a beard, could stand before you and claim he’s a woman, with a peni$. Unless you not only tolerate his gender dysphoria, but actually voice approval of it, refer to him as female, use female pronouns, and his new female name, then you will be punished. In the US, activists will try to impoverish you for having a different opinion. In Canada, it can get you arrested.
Women are getting harassed, fired, kicked off sports teams, and lose scholarships if they publicly voice an opinion about their gender based on biology.
If gender is a social construct, then there can be no homosexuality.
If there are no differences between men and women, then the entire MeToo movement is flawed. Men cannot have a physical advantage over women if there are no differences between the $exes. There can be no toxic masculinity if being male or female is just a social construct anyway.
Are we to believe all women unless said women say that a man cannot become a woman?
Women’s athletes are getting pilloried for speaking out on the obvious unfairness of biological males competing in women’s sports, sweeping meets, scooping up scholarships and breaking records.
Teenage girls are getting punished for saying they feel unsafe, scared, or humiliated having to undress in front of a biological male who claims to be female in their locker rooms. There have been claims that the biological males stare at them as they are forced to undress in front of them, or else lose their spots on sports teams.
Battered women in shelters are getting punished for not wanting to share a room with a biological male.
Women in prison are getting impregnated by biological males who claimed to be female.
Biological males convicted of pedophilia are getting housed in women’s prisons, and allowed access to the ward with mothers and babies, just by claiming to be women.
Girls are getting raped in bathrooms by biological males.
At my son’s soccer field here in CA a few years ago, a man, dressed as a man, with a camera gained entry to the girls’ bathroom, telling outraged parents they couldn’t stop him because he’s allowed to use any bathroom he identifies with. By the time the mothers fetched the soccer dads, the man had left. Police found him an hour and a half later, but the memory card in his camera was gone. They couldn’t do anything about him entering the girls bathroom, nor could they stop him next time. Park staff said there’s nothing they can do to stop men from entering women’s restrooms.
Then there was the Wi Spa scandal, again in CA. A black woman complained to staff that there was a man exposing himself, fully erect, to little girls in the changing area. Staff said there was nothing they could do about it, because he said he was a woman. A crowd gathered, and a few people called the woman transphobic. There were violent protests in front of the spa supporting trans access to women’s private spaces. It later turned out that the man, Darren Merager, was a registered sex offender with a long history of exposing himself to an elderly lady. He also was charged with exposing himself at a gas pump, wearing a see-through fishnet clothing, no underwear, and lifting his leg up to fully expose his genitals to passersby. He had been asked to leave the Wi spa before for getting an erection while watching women and little girls change clothes.
There were violent protests to defend a man’s right to disrobe and expose his genitals to women and children, against their will, in the women’s changing area. A man who turned out to be a sex offender. Allowing men into women’s private spaces is dangerous and humiliating.
This is the war on women today.
Karen, well said.
I am not sure if this link to “American Thought Leaders” will open for you. It is an interview with a veteran psychiatrist who has worked with young women and children for decades. She has a lot of experience in this area and tells the interviewer about what this is really doing to kids.
It is not good. It is not normal.
Dr. Miriam Grossman: How One Doctor’s Lies Built the Gender Industry | PART 1
https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/dr-miriam-grossman-how-one-doctors-lies-built-the-gender-industry-part-1_4852600.html
Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out.
Jesuit Francis is proud of this so-called Catholic school ignoring what the Catholic Church has always taught – and what this student believes as a matter of his religion. Shame on those people and institutions who claim to be Catholics.
In addition to runaway-wokism, Canada now has a problem with Chinese interference in their elections. It is alledged that since 2019, the CCP has, directly and indirectly, funneled money to Liberal Party candidates. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64813182 At a Parliamentary hearing last week, a witness testifed that the CCP helped favored Liberal candidates in nomination contests by busing-in supporters from outside ridings, who would then demonstrate in favor or against favored candidates. (An old Obama trick.) /Toronto%20bound%20buses%20forced%20to%20vote%20for%20Trudeaus%20team%20or% 20ELSE%20%23Canada %20%23 trudeau%20%23pierrepoilievre%20-%20YouTube.pdf
As unsympathetic as I am to the school policy of bullying its students into accepting a point of view that violates their deeply held beliefs, the student had no right to violate an exclusion order.
the student had no right to violate an exclusion order.
Hmm. Perhaps you have more facts to support that position, but what should the response have been by the student for having his rights violated?
A school can support trans students without imposing the fallacy of gender ideology on the rest of the population. Stick to biology, and offer counseling to those with gender dysphoria (which seems to be a product of social contagion these days). But the Catholic Church is going down a very dangerous path with the embrace — by some bishops — of the fraudulent gender ideology that claims gender and sex are two different things, and that gender is “fluid” — ideas cooked up in gender studies departments, notorious for their ignorance of scientific method or theory. The German Catholic Church recently openly embraced gender ideology, which I’m sure makes them feel all warm and fuzzy. It will be too late when they realize they’ve been played by the trans mob whose real goal is to destroy western culture, with the Catholic Church at the top of their list. This is a schism playing out in real time because even the leftist Francis can’t accept gender ideology.
Catholic school? His parents need to demand their money back!
High school kids are emerging into society as adults? They may have a diploma but their 17, 18, 19 year old minds are still composed of mush. “Science” tells us that the adolescent brain doesn’t come to usefulness until it’s in the mid-twenties, if even then. You’re facing an infantile brain in a adolescent body in which a slew of hormones slosh about. Great mix. What could possibly go wrong?
Now the woke have a comfortable destination. Bailing out to Canada to dodge being drafted into the next armed conflict.
I have no problems addressing a transgender person by their new name. I would do so gleefully, maybe even make up some “nicknames”. Mainly because it would be courteous to do so. Us southerners are all about courtesy until you really get under our skin. However, gender dysphoria disorder consistently ran at a very low percentage in this country. There was a high suicide rate but interestingly enough, in well documented and well written studies, the suicide rate remains equally high even after surgery and conversion. Without surgery 80% of females and 95% of males will successfully grow out of it.. There is a major component of depression in this disorder and depression, whatever the cause, has a high mortality rate and children have had a high mortality rate long before this transgender craze came along because of depression. The question often is what came first depression or gender dysphoria. As most of you know there is now a whole industry being built to push this disorder on impressionable children by the medical profession (big money maker), and ill trained teachers who can’t teach, but certainly can push all sorts of doctrine’s not related to teaching, and adherents in psychology and psychiatry who are ready to “affirm” the need to transform at the drop of a hat. A great deal of this craze is opportunism by those who should know better.
Lastly Canada is not the US and their laws mirror Europe and the lack of a true commitment to free speech. They have a constitution but no where near the protections for speech that we have.
Lastly my experience tells me and many others that if you suspend payment for the surgery and prevent boys from playing girls sports, the craze will nearly disappear and near sanity will return, except in California.
I agree with the school that the transgender students face great prejudice and hatred. Suicide rates and suicidal ideation are much higher for such students.
Even granting, for argument’s sake, that such suicide rates are higher, I would think the reason is self evident, and it is not due to others refusing to use their chosen pronouns or new names.
Suppose I have a messianic complex and I actually believe I’m Jesus Christ (it happens). Is it more kind and loving for others to refer to me by my new name and pretend I’m the savior of the world – in other words, go along with my mental disorder – or to get me treatment so I’m no longer out of touch with reality?
in other words, go along with my mental disorder – or to get me treatment so I’m no longer out of touch with reality?
Good question.
This is exactly correct old man form Kansas. An NIH study done in 2010 under the Obama administration found 0.03 percent of the population identified as transgender. We are now see some surveys of prepubescent children where the rate is in the low single digits. Societal pressure is destroying the lives of untold thousands of children. Many will be permanently mutilated. The west is committing suicide by destroying our economies, our culture and now our children. Very sick indeed,
There are several concurrent things occuring.
First we have rapidly increasing cognative distortions in kids.
This is a direct consequence of education and social media that is teaching them that they live in a world going to hell – a cess pool of racism etc.
This leads to rising mental health problems in increasingly younger kids.
Then the same sources that gave them anxiety and depression in the first place persuade them that anxiety and depression are caused because they are in the wrong bodies.
Bfore the recent explosion in transexual identification in children, something like 95% of those claiming gener dysphoria as teens resolved their dysphoria when their mental health issues – anxeity and depression were treated.
and a significant portion of these just turned out to be gay.
Conversely most long term studies of transsexuals find that pills and surgery do not improve their mental health – that suicide rates AFTER transition are higher than before.
A tiny portion of people appear to be actually transsexual.
The most important issue here is NOT the actual number of “real” transsexuals.
But the fact that we are committing medical malpractice. We are conflating a symptom with a disease.
We are trying to treat anxiety and depression possibly coupled with homosexuality with sex hormones and sexual re-assignment surgery.
Seems like historical about 8-10% gen pop has been gay, for whatever the cause.
It’s long been known that neurotoxins such as mercury causes declines in cognitive functions. Ie: The Mad Hatter. People living/working around toxins such as coal mines, nuke plants, Alum. mfgs & refineries.
Then through in such things as plastics & other products that were know/engineered to cause hormone problems. :Dr Groups’ dad.
Throw in all the other pollutants, air, water, food, farm runoff, prescription pill runoff, etc.
Which can & do cause issues with, shorts out the body’s electrical system at the cellular level.
It’s of little wonder there’s so many kids f’d up & people walking around with brain fog. A bit like going to an indoor concert & the building is filled all kinds of dope smoke & you get a contact high.
And most of the medical community still refuses to even address those issues in public.
“Seems like historical about 8-10% gen pop has been gay..”
That’s the new number because it was below 1% for a very long time, then the activists tried to creep it up to 2%.
At some point 10 and 11 percent was being pushed.
Now I’m supposed to believe 1 of 10 instead of 1 of 100.
I do not know, nor care much what portion of people are actually gay or Trans.
I am far more concerned because we are concurrently creating mental health problems and then telling those we have inflicted them on that the solution is hormones and surgery, and then we are hiding from the FACT that is not working.
With respect to chemicals etc – absolutely – but STILL do not forget we live in the least polluted time in history.
There is very little that shortens human life, causes cancer and myriads of other diseases more than cooking with wood, peat or dung With coal following closely.
“Native americans are presented as paragons of environmentalism – but the fact is they and their lifestyle was highly environmentally destructive. The FACT that primative peoples have lifestyles that prevent their own populations from becoming very large is all that saves them from environmental catastrophy.
Cooking is both an absolute necessity for a long healthy life and absolutely harmful too it – until we get to modern gas and electric cooking, or sealed and vented wood stoves – but that is just about toxins – carcinogens.
We cook to kill pathogens. Biological killers. Our handling of waste – especially that of primatives has been deadly to ourselves and most life arround us.
Absolutely we should worry about pesticides and other deadly toxins that humans produce – but we should not forget that the human environment is the safest it has ever been.
This is EXACTLY the same as what I was addressing regarding racism or sexism.
We teach our kids that they live in a hellscape – whether we inculcate them with fear of racism, sexism, or toxins.
At the same time as we make them the most fearful and anxious generation ever – they live in – not a perfect world, but the best world humans have ever had. And not merely humans – but most of nature.
There are more bears in the Northeast than have or could even possibly exist in nature. They live off our waste,
they and myriads of other animals have learned to thrive in relatively close proximity to humans.
They have learned to avoid being seen mostly.
I moved to the country in the mid 60’s. Growing up I never saw a deer, a fox, an owl, a hawk.
Today I live in 2 acres in the middle of a suburb. I see all of those all the time.
They are both far more numerous than 50 years ago, and some of them are far less fearful of humans.
We should continue to try to improve the world.
But we MUST stop teaching our children they live in a horrid hellscape.
We are harming them far more than any toxins in the environment.
Was his objection really just a matter of not wanting to refer to transgender people using the pronouns they prefer? I thought I heard there are girls at the school who have problems with biological males using their restrooms. Or am I wrong about that?
When I originally read about Josh Alexander, I believe it was back in November of 2022, it was because he started a protest at his school in support of girls he is friends with at school, who complained to him about boys being allowed to use the girls bathrooms per school policy. If I remember correctly, the girls objected to boys in their bathrooms but felt powerless to do anyhting about it, so Josh stood up for them and orgnized a protest.
Damn professor, you are all over the place. There’s this:
I disagree with people who
refuse to useexercise their free speech rights regarding the chosen name of transgender people.And then there’s this:
These are difficult cases for educators, but often free speech rights are jettisoned as a first response to such conflicts.
Sure. It’s also a great way to avoid the woke mob; especially if they can’t pin you down on the wrong side of the fence.
Alexander was reportedly told by his principal that he could return to school only if he . . . agreed to drop classes with two transgender students who objected to his religious views . . .
Who is being the “Taliban” here. On another thread an anonymous commenter said the federal judge who was prevented from speaking at Stanford got what he deserved because he was the equivalent of the Taliban. Why? Because he believed in religious liberty.
Cant practive your Catholic Faith in a Catholic School. Come on MAN
It is clear ‘transgender’ is a social contagion. Until the woke mob gives up on this, the mental illness only spreads.
Why is this 16 year old forced to affirm and support others weird sexual fetiish?
So I guess now exclusion is what we do to people we don’t want to include. The insanity continues.
As someone raised in Catholic schools, I never thought I’d see the day where expressing religious beliefs in line with Catholic doctrine would be an offense. But then again, I don’t know what has become of Catholic doctrine in the woke world of today. Skipped out on the Catholics about the time Francis came to power in the Vatican.
On the bright side, apparently the only HS kids on the planet being called names are trans kids, meaning derogatory name calling in HS must be down nearly 99.9%.
Love your “glass is half full” observation. Excellent point. Meanwhile in South America and the South China Sea…more important issues than pronouns, like survival and starvation, will be facing this generation like no generation since the 1860s has faced on North American soil.
Most of the bullying is done by the institutions, and the representatives of the state.
Progressive clowns are not funny.