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School board members from five Virginia localities and Richmond’s schools superintendent have signed onto an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of Virginia opposing a former teacher’s claim that he was unlawfully fired for violating his district’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

School board members who joined the brief include those from Arlington, Fairfax and Stafford counties, and the cities of Charlottesville and Falls Church.

The brief, which was submitted by LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Virginia and more than 35 signatories, asks the Supreme Court of Virginia to uphold the King William Circuit Court’s dismissal of former teacher Peter Vlaming’s lawsuit against the West Point School Board.

“Without clear protections, such as the commonwealth’s model policies for the treatment of transgender students in Virginia’s public schools and West Point’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, transgender children risk mental, emotional, physical, and sexual harm when they attend school,” the brief states. “Without these protections, transgender students suffer isolation and stigma when they are differentiated from their peers.” 

Vlaming, a former high school French teacher with West Point, refused to use male pronouns to refer to a student who had recently undergone a gender transition and legal name change, according to a January 2019 letter from the school board. The school board then fired him on the grounds that he had violated the division’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies. 

Some West Point students staged a protest against the board’s decision.

Vlaming subsequently sued the West Point School Board for $1 million. 

Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization focused on protecting religious freedoms, which is representing Vlaming, said Vlaming consistently accommodated the student by using the student’s preferred name instead of his given name.

“Peter wasn’t fired for something he said; he was fired for something he couldn’t say,” said ADF Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel in a statement in March. 

“As a teacher, Peter was passionate about the subject he taught, he was well-liked by his students, and he did his best to accommodate their needs and requests,” he said. “But Peter could not in good conscience speak messages that he does not believe to be true.”

In 2020, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law requiring local school divisions to adopt model policies extending rights to transgender students. Despite the option for school divisions to adopt their own version of the state model, many school divisions still haven’t complied with the directive.

Last July, Equality Virginia and law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll filed a separate brief in support of Virginia’s model policies to make schools safer and more inclusive for transgender students.

The two said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the West Point School Board must treat its transgender students equally, including by ensuring that staff address transgender students with the names and pronouns that reflect their gender identity. 

The groups pointed to the negative and harmful experiences of transgender and non-binary students and their families in Virginia schools as reasons for anti-discrimination policies and practices, such as using a student’s correct pronouns.

“Transgender and non-binary students, when compared to their cisgender peers, face physical abuse, bullying, and extreme emotional harm at higher rates, which impact their well-being and education,” said Narissa S. Rahaman, executive director at Equality Virginia. 

The most recent National School Climate Survey conducted by GLSEN, a group formerly known as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network that advocates for LGBTQ+ students, found that most LGBTQ+ secondary school students said they felt unsafe in school in 2019, largely because of their sexual orientation and how they expressed their gender. 

The survey also found that many LGBTQ+ students in Virginia did not have access to resources, such as an LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum, and were not protected by supportive and inclusive school policies.

“The harm of differentiating transgender students from their peers and failing to affirm their identities is well-established in the courts,” said S. Douglas Bunch, an attorney with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, in a statement. 

“Sadly, this effect is magnified when the hostile actor is a teacher,” he said. “School policies, such as one of using pronouns that reflect a transgender student’s identity, are there to mitigate these harms and allow all students to thrive in school.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

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According to a recent morning consult poll (among several others), the republican party is now favored on the issue of education over democrats. This compares to a 16-point advantage democrats had on this issue in 2020. The polls make no attribution as to causes for loss in support but covid related school closures, school mask mandates, and the insertion of elements of CRT and radical gender ideology into public school classrooms loom large as candidate causes.

The willingness of republicans such as America's greatest governor Ron DeSantis to stand up to these leftists initiatives has earned the party at large some good will. Coincident with all this, the democrat party is losing support among Asian Americans and has been hemorrhaging support with Hispanics (see Glenn Youngkin wining the VA Hispanic vote based upon exit polls).

The democrat party has chosen to weaponize mental disorders (among a host of other matters, e.g., race) and turn that upon children. They will deserve every bit of punishment they receive at the ballot box for this vile behavior.

Seriously, what kind of jerk pushes their agenda on a teenager who is going through a tough time developing their identity?

Liberals like to live in make believe land. A person who is born a certain sex cannot change that sex. Science is science. But hey, Biden says we aren't in a recession and that the border is secure LOL. See a pattern here?

Why did the Republicans do Veterans dirty recently?

John Dutko, you should read the proposed bill. Democrats loaded a bunch of funding to the tune of $400M to it which had nothing to do with veterans whatsoever. Furthermore, it was mandatory to spend the $400. Of course unless you research this individually, we will never get it from the "news".

The science deniers do not give up easily.

"There is only the fight"

If the student in question had arrived at school wearing a crown and silk robe and insisting that everyone refer to her as 'your royal highness', is the teacher obligated to use that term? NOTE: I write 'her' because she is a female.

Also, is the teacher obligated to report this mentally disturbed behavior to the student's parents? And if it turns out the parents are encouraging the insanity, should the teacher then report the parents to Child Protective Services?

Earlier this month the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center could not define what a woman was while giving testimony during a Senate hearing. This of course begs multiple questions about what she believes her job to be, the mission of the organization she works for, and the reasons democrats would call such an unqualified person to testify on matters impacting women.

Hopefully we can all agree that individuals deserve to be treated with respect. Acknowledging that, no one should be obligated to indulge the transparently insane behavior of another. In the spirit of live and let live, adults who choose to pursue sex change therapies to treat their mental illness may be extreme but that is their choice. Enabling the bodily mutilation of a minor through hormonal and surgical therapies is child abuse and it should be criminal.

Genitals are like extension chords they go one way.

If you have a cock and balls you are male. If you have a vagina, you are female. Anything else is democrat liberal made up nonsense.

French is not agender/genderqueer/bigender-friendly.

Technically, French has no masculine. It has a neutral, and a feminine. So anything that is neutral, or a mix of masculine and feminine, gets the "neutral" form. In effect, though, people treat that "neutral" as a masculine. If you use it for a single person, people will assume that person is male.

French also has no gender-neutral singular pronoun like English does (either by using "they" with a singular, or with some more recent gender-neutral pronoun). There is "on" but it cannot be used for a specific person the way "they" or gender-neutral pronouns can in English.

It goes beyond that. Saying things like "my friend" will be gendered (as both "my" and "friend" changed based on gender, although "friend" will be pronounced the same). Same with "my partner". Meaning that even when English can use gender-neutral term to accommodate for various orientation or hide you own, French doesn't offer the same liberty.

The flipside to that is that French people are used to people being referred by a gender their not. If you use the word "person", then everything about that person is feminine, because "person" is feminine, even if everyone involved knows said person is male. And the same thing for other words that are masculine but can be used for someone everyone knows is female.

So it can, for some people, become less of a big deal, having gendered-words used for them, because it happens constantly, and both masculine (well, "neutral") and feminine words can be used for anyone.

Still, I would agree it's a problem with French. It's not unique to French, either. English is extremely versatile and allows for gender-neutral speech more than most languages. I can only think of Japanese as a (potentially) more gender-neutral language, although it has very gendered speech as well, mostly in word choice, females aren't supposed to speak in the same way males are. But because all those choices are made in regard to the speaker, and not anyone else, it's still more friendly to non-traditional genders.

I agree that a person should not have to address another by their not birthed sex.

But there was also this, "LGBTQ+ students in Virginia did not have access to resources, such as an LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum". Transgender Ideology is not part or the three R's which the tax payers fund. If you want that out of scope information go ask mommy & daddy to buy it for you along with your hormone blockers that is costing them hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

This teacher really should have moved on. Instead, he sued the school, but for what? He obviously didn't value his job, if he took an ideological stance that was directly opposed to his benefactors. Now, since he foolishly brought this into court, the LGBTQ Group gets to set legal precedents that will further "protect" the rights of the mentally handicapped. Again: treatments for minor children exhibiting symptoms of gender dysphoria may undergo hormonal replacement therapy and genital reconstructive surgery, with the consent of the parents. This is prescribed by doctors and taught in college. Not everyone questions what they're told. Does this sound like proper mental health? Good luck, public school teachers. You'll need it for your next job

“The harm of differentiating transgender students from their peers and failing to affirm their identities is well-established in the courts,” But they are different, and no matter how hard they "feel", they will never be a sex they were not born as. And they actually do not, and should not, have the right to force anyone to bend and kowtow to their mental illness. Life is full of disappointment, Life is unfair, That's Life.

Its amazing they do not care about the "harm" unemployment brings to a person and their family.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.

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