One of the nation’s most controversial school districts is abandoning one of its most controversial policies, in what parental rights advocates are hailing as a significant victory. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) announced on Friday that Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Virginia has officially adjusted the terms of Policy 8040. Adopted in 2021, the policy required LCPS teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, even if inconsistent with the student’s biological sex and regardless of the teacher’s sincerely-held religious or conscientious convictions regarding biological sex and gender identity. However, LCPS changed the terms of its policy when ADF filed a lawsuit on behalf of history teacher Monica Gill.
According to a Loudoun County Circuit Court order in the case, the revised policy “does not require teachers or other staff to use a pronoun to refer to a person that a teacher believes is inconsistent with the person’s sex. Instead, Policy 8040 permits staff to refrain from using any pronouns.” ADF senior counsel and director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom Tyson Langhofer said in a statement, “That’s good news for every teacher in Loudoun County.” He explained, “Teachers should never be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that they believe are false.” Langhofer added, “We’re pleased Loudoun County Public Schools reversed course on its harmful policy and respects Monica’s, and other teachers’, fundamental right to speak according to their beliefs.”
Gill, who has been teaching in Loudoun County for 25 years, recounted, “When Policy 8040 was enacted, the school district threatened to force me to lie to students about the fundamental truth of biological reality, which I could never do.” She continued, “I treat all my students, including those who identify as the opposite sex, with dignity and respect, and I’m pleased the school district has honored my constitutionally protected freedom to speak to my students in love and truth.”
LCPS’s Policy 8040 has been the center of controversy for years. Shortly before the policy was approved, a biologically male student who identified as “gender fluid” raped and sodomized a 12-year-old girl in a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School (SBHS), part of the LCPS system. As LCPS board members prepared to vote on Policy 8040 and a host of other LGBT-centered policies, the rape victim’s father, Scott Smith, confronted the school board, who lied and said that “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” However, emails LCPS administrators sent to each other on the day of the rape expressed concern that the assault may hamstring the board’s chances of passing Policy 8040. One administrator even wrote, “The incident at SBHS is related to policy 8040.”
The rape was covered up, Policy 8040 was approved, and the “gender fluid” 15-year-old student was transferred to Broad Run High School (BRHS) in the LCPS system. There, he proceeded to sexually assault another teenage girl, this time in an empty classroom.
Stacy Langton, founder of the Virginia-based Mama Grizzly parental rights organization, said in comments to The Washington Stand, “This is a positive step in the right direction. No teacher should be held to a kind of ‘Orwellian groupthink’ as a condition of their employment with the county.”
Despite the victory in Loudoun County, conservatives and Christians are still being persecuted for adhering to biological and biblical reality. Just last week, Louisiana pastor Luke Ash, lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, was fired from his weekday job at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library when he refused to address a biologically female coworker using male pronouns.
“There were several things that were happening at the library to make me know that this was not a place that was necessarily hospitable for a Christian or even a conservatively-minded person, but I just kind of kept my mouth shut and just tried to do a good job and respect everybody that came my way,” Ash recounted of his time at the library. He explained that “there’s a difference between telling me what I can’t say and then telling me what I have to say, and so that was the line for me at that point.” The pastor said that he simply could not bring himself to use the other librarian’s “preferred” pronouns, saying, “I’m not going to lie. I cannot do it. I will not do it.”
Earlier this month, Jocelyn Boden, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), citing workplace discrimination due to her religious beliefs. According to Boden, she was “chastised and alienated” by co-workers and fired from her job as a manager at a Bath & Body Works after refusing to use a transgender-identifying colleague’s “preferred” pronouns.
In April, Spencer Wimmer was reportedly fired from his job at Wisconsin-based Generac Power Systems after similarly refusing to use a transgender-identifying co-worker’s “preferred” pronouns. According to the complaint he filed with the EEOC, Wimmer sought a religious exemption from the company’s transgender-accommodating policy but was repeatedly denied any exemption. “I was asked to choose between my livelihood and my love for God and my beliefs,” the Wisconsin man said in a subsequent interview.
Read more here…