Stop Telling Me What To Say!
Our public schools are establishing a very dangerous precedent. They are elevating the wants of kids, no matter how destructive to their health and well-being, above the rational decision-making of adults. On behalf of every parent, teachers, and public school administrator, stop forcing grown adults to lie to young kids and mislead them into making life-altering decisions with serious consequences!
Last week, just before the Memorial Day weekend in which we celebrate brave men and women who have given their lives to protect our freedoms, a public school teacher in Loudoun County was placed on administrative leave because he exercised his freedom of speech to express his disagreement with policy 8040, which requires teachers to speak untruths by using a student’s preferred pronouns.
Tanner Cross bravely stood before the Loudoun County School Board and made the following statement: “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.”
Think about this: a teacher, who stated in his public comments at a school board meeting that he respects and loves all of his students and cannot lie to them, is now being disciplined. That’s the world we live in today — what’s right is wrong, and what’s wrong is right. (Isaiah 5:20)
In Loudoun, eight school board members are causing havoc by passing radical “nondiscrimination” policies and anti-free speech policies that are destroying the learning environment and undermining parental authority. Only one courageous school board member, John Beatty, is standing up to this out-of-control governance.
The Loudoun teacher, Tanner Cross, is just another casualty in the “anti-free speech” school policies that are being implemented by school boards. In 2018, Peter Vlaming, a respected former high school French teacher at West Point High School, was fired from his teachingjob and had his livelihood upended because he simply refused to use the male pronouns “he,” “him,” and “his” to describe a female student (who decided to begin identifying as a boy) in his class.
Neither Peter Vlaming nor Tanner Cross verbally attacked a student or demeaned a student in any way; they simply chose to refrain from using certain speech that conflicted with their personal convictions. Former generations would have considered this “having manners” by not speaking in order to avoid creating conflict.
Maybe the Loudoun County School Board needs to be reminded, if they at all care, that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [Emphasis added.]
And that Virginia’s Bill of Rights provides the same protections:
That the freedoms of speech and of the press are among the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained except by despotic governments; that any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; that the General Assembly shall not pass any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, nor the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances. [Emphasis added.]
Just because Tanner Cross is a public school teacher does not mean he has to check his fundamental and constitutional rights as a citizen at the door, or that he foregoes his constitutional right to freely “petition the government for the redress of grievances.” The fact that a school principal, most certainly at the direction of the school superintendent and Loudoun School Board, has relieved Mr. Cross of his teaching duties for the year is further proof that local governments are now tools of LGBTQAI+ groups to crush any opposition to “trans-ideology.”
But this is just the beginning. If the local school boards begin to adopt the Virginia Department of Education’s “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools,” not only will free speech continue to be threatened, so too will student privacy and parental authority. It is critical that every person stand up to these dangerous policies by joining The Family Foundation’s newest campaign, #ProtectEveryKid.
Every teacher, every school administrator, every parent of a public school student should buckle up for some very troubling times ahead, but never forget that we have the truth on our side.
