When I was at law school, there were five guys named Peter in our year. Since there were five different courses in 1st year they were normally divided, but by the scheduling gods’ work, there was one class where they were all in attendance.
It confused the prof. She had trouble keeping them all straight. Naturally, they gradually realised this and one day all five sat front and centre in front of her podium, and they all raised their hand when she asked questions during her lecture, which confused her further.
Finally, she said, “I’m sorry I’m having trouble keeping you straight today. I’ve never seen so many Peters in a row.”
That was pretty much the end of that class that day.
It seems that the courts may be leaning to say a teacher cannot be forced to used preferred pronouns in violation of religious belief. Here is the story on a similar case in a college setting.
There are some tricky balances here. On the one hand, addressing someone by a name, word, or phrase that E doesn’t want to be addressed by might be harrassing or some other kind of damaging behavior. On the other hand, the government should not force an individual to speak words that the individual doesn’t want to say. Some kind of compromise would seem to be the only solution.
If the professor can’t be punished for disrespecting a student, surely it would be equally illegal for a student to be punished for disrespecting a professor.
So, if a student elected to respond to every question from this professor with, “Go fuck yourself,” it should now be illegal to reduce their grade as a result.
See, I think we’ll have a problem when there’s a transgender teacher and the student - who must attend school and must follow school rules - is forced to call her “Mrs. X”.
If a student thinks that a male teacher is effeminate, may they call them by female pronouns and titles? If they think that a female teacher is masculine, may they call them be male pronouns and titles?
Is calling Mrs. Campbell “Mr. Campbell” acceptable since she’s got a faint bit of hair on her upper lip? If not, then I don’t see where you think we’ll have a problem.
The state can’t compel children to salute the flag, so I can’t say how it would go if they tried to force children to address a transgender woman as a woman.
But as far as I can tell the state can force its own employees to say or do anything rationally related to their duties.
But this is a government employee whose speech they can control when it is during work hours.
I disagree. Students and teachers are not social peers.
I agree. If part of your job duties are to teach students and the district has determined that: 1) students are to be treated with respect, and 2) that we support transgender students’ rights to be called by preferred pronouns, then that just became part of the job description.
But it is undisputed that the state can punish the children for being disrespectful or calling the teacher a motherfucker. The flag salute question brings up an interesting one that courts don’t want to wade into which is how we define religious beliefs and what level of granularity that we allow.
The flag case was easier because you have a major religion that does not believe in saluting the flag. But other case law says I can essentially be a religion of one and testing my sincerity can be difficult.
I think so, yes. If the State of Florida says no discussion of LGBTQ issues in K-3, then that is IMHO well within the power of a state to prescribe the curriculum and conduct within the schools.
AFAICT the verbiage does not specify LGBT or anything like that, but rather sexual orientation and gender identity. Straight and cis are off limits to discuss, apparently. No more talking about mommy and daddy, then.