If there are teachers that want to groom children with highly perverse sexual content but want to get away with it, Ms. Betty Bowers has a suggestion
One of my favorite jokes when I hear the preferred name/pronoun question is I’ll answer this way: “Our name is Legion. For we are many. Our pronouns are they/them.” Not everyone will get it, but it is a pretty savage response to the pronoun question.
Anyone who would speak of words and describe them as “forcing a viewpoint”, is a person who does not believe in free speech at a fundamental level. Words expressing a viewpoint are not force. Force would be laws and government enforcement of laws that shutdown one viewpoint, and force people to verbally adhere to the opposing viewpoint against their will.
If that's the standard though, it's free speech for a teacher to give students her viewpoint about gay marriage or gay sex or whatever viewpoint the teacher happens to have about anything. That seems to be inconsistent with the Florida legislation regulating what teachers are allowed to talk about.
When laws are passed that force a teacher to refer to a biological male by the pronouns her/hers that is precisely what you are doing. You are forcing a teacher under the barrel of government consequence to adhere to a contrary viewpoint against their will and personal beliefs. The category error you are making here is you think a teacher calling a biological male her/hers is different than a teacher stating their opinion on whether they are for or against gay marriage. It is the same thing. The teacher is verbalizing a stance on a controversial issue when they choose to do that. Except in this case the controversial stance is mandated by government force against the teacher’s will and conscience.
If there is a policy against calling a student "bozo" or insulting them, is that forcing a teacher "under the barrel of consequence" to adhere to a contrary view point? What if the student is actually a stupid bozo afterall? If a racist teacher is bound by not being able to use racial slurs in class are they being forced to adhere to a contrary viewpoint?
Are you opposed to the "Don't Say Gay" bill since it precludes/regulates what teachers can say to their students? My thought has been that people seem to pick and choose who gets to make these decisions and when deference should be afforded to teachers, students, parents, the legislature, certain government officials, etc. I'm trying to explore that issue here and you seem to be saying that teachers should be allowed to say or not say almost anything they want.
Not in the same category. Forcing a teacher to lie through their teeth to be a teacher and telling a teacher they cannot insult a student are two separate categories. You know it, and I know it. A government that can use government force to mandate lying is terribly unjust and wields the type of power over the individual that the Constitution was designed to prevent.
If you can’t insult a student you are being ‘forced’ to withhold your opinion by the government right? If the student or administration thinks it’s an insult what’s the difference? You are making up the distinctions!
Keeping an opinion to yourself, and being forced to continually repeat a lie by the government are two completely different things. They do not belong in the same category. You know it, and I know it.
It’s not lying to call a student his/her or whatever the kid wants to be called. It’s an act of kindness. If a teacher can’t be kind to the teacher’s students, the teacher should find a different job. I have been around a few kids who fall within this situation. It’s very tough for them. It’s pretty easy to accommodate them at least with respect to calling them what they prefer to be called.
Flattery is often mistaken for kindness. You might gain the approval of a student if you tell them a lie that they love, one that tickles their ears and makes them feel good about themselves, but it is still a lie. Some of the worst and most destructive lies make us feel good about ourselves. And that is why it is important to tell the truth even when a person won't like you for it. A person's soul and life are far too valuable to tell them a destructive lie that will gain temporary favor. If you tell someone a destructive lie in exchange for temporary favor, then you are not a kind person. And we are talking about a lie that ultimately could make the person lose their reproductive organs and lose their future as a mother or a father. We are talking about a lie that could destroy a person's prospects of being a husband or a wife after the shroud of their gender dysphoria falls. This is a lie that destroys lives. It destroys family. It destroys a person's future. If you know all of that, and you still lie to a person about their fundamental identity then you are not being a loving and kind person to them.
The suicide statistics are staggering for people who go through with surgery. What will you do with yourself when you know you told a lie that led a person to a state of misery and they killed themselves? For me, I will know that I tried to dissuade them from going to that place of misery, and that I did not tell a lie that encouraged them in the slightest to go down that path. I will have a clean conscience.
To be clear, K-12 teachers don't have much, if anything, in the way of First Amendment rights when in the classroom instructing their students. Now, if we're talking college professors, I'd say that a college professor has the right not to use a student's preferred pronouns, but they also have the right not to be forced by the state to only teach viewpoints the state likes. (Do they have the right to insult students? Probably not.)
Mental health benefits associated with gender-affirming surgery | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health You’re wrong.
