A boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl. And if the leftist school marms in Loudoun County, Virginia, don’t like that fact, gym teacher Byron “Tanner” Cross told them, tough luck.
Cross will not, he told the school board, address misguided “transgender” kids with bogus names and pronouns. Period.
And so the board suspended the deviationist until it can reckon what to do about him.
“Gender” Madness In Grade Schools
The trouble began, as usual, with leftist politicians trying to jam the latest cultural revolution down the throats of normal people.
At a school board meeting on Tuesday, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported, Cross attacked the the school board’s draft of Policy 8040, “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students.”
The schools are adopting “transgender” ideology to comply with directives from the hard-left Virginia board of education.
Among other things, the policy announces that “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence.”
And “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.”
As well, the policy offers this ominous warning:
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.
Uh-oh.
Cross, who teaches at Leesburg Elementary, stepped to the podium at Tuesday’s school-board meeting to oppose the lunacy.
“I’m speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria,” Cross said.
60 minutes this past Sunday interviewed over 30 young people who transitioned, but they felt not led astray because of lack of pushback, or how easy it was to make physical changes to their bodies in just three months. They are now detransitioning. It’s not my intention to hurt anyone. But there are certain truths that we must face when ready.
We condemn school policies like 8040 and 8035 because it would damage children, [and] 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.
The 60 Minutes broadcast Cross discussed came under heavy fire from the alphabet community.
Reaction
Of course, the school board couldn’t accept that deviationism. It placed Cross on paid administrative leave two days later, the newspaper reported:
“I’m contacting you to let you know that one of our physical education teachers, Tanner Cross, is on leave beginning this morning,” LES Principal Shawn Lacy said in a Thursday email to parents.
The email continued, “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.”
Given that Cross said he would not address students by the wrong name and pronoun because of his Christian faith, there remains a question. Does the board’s action trespass the First Amendment to the Constitution.
If the Constitution forbids schools to require prayer, as leftists claim, does it permit schools to force Christians to reject their faith or face punishment?
