Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Proving, once again, that LGBTQ rights and the First Amendment cannot co-exist, an Oregon education service district bans children’s books that affirm biological gender. Two of the three banned children’s books on gender identity were authored by my amazing wife, Bethany, and me: He Is He and She Is She. (Bethany was a public and private school teacher for 13 years and a homeschooling educator for another 18 years.) The third, Johnny the Walrus, was penned by a relatively obscure author who goes by the name Matt Walsh. You might have heard of him.
Together, our books incited hundreds of hours of travel, meetings, investigations, and writing appeals due to unconstitutional free speech and religious discrimination from a government entity – the InterMountain Education Service District (IMESD) in Oregon. The district targeted a licensed clinical social worker, Rod Theis, an employee who simply decorated his office with three books that positively affirm how great it is to be a girl or a boy. Initially he was instructed to remove only our books because they included – wait for it – Bible verses! He’s now being threatened with termination if he displays those books or similar content again.
If only he had showcased books that peddle rainbow or Black Lives Matter propaganda (masquerading as “diversity”) he would’ve been praised for being so “inclusive”. But alas, he was so boringly biological in his approach. Such mundane, yet grossly offensive, stuff truth can be!
Here comes the lawsuit.
Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is defending Theis’ freedom of speech and his ability to exercise his religious liberty, neither of which disappear when he enters school property. A federal lawsuit was filed to challenge this senseless censorship. In Theis vs. InterMountain Education Service District Board of Directors, ADF exposes the hypocrisy of the district that clearly restricts Theis’ viewpoint while allowing others’ deeply political viewpoints seemingly without limitation. Only views affirming gender subjectivity are allowed.
“He is he. He is not she. He is not we. He is he.” Those words, from He Is He, are just dripping with hostility, right? But apparently, biology is now bigotry. So, these teaching treacherous books addressing the beauty of biological gender were branded “transphobic” and “hostile expressions of animus toward another person.” It seems obvious that what’s actually going on here is factophobia.
We live in a Babylon Bee world. How are books that present basic biology and speak to the wonder of girlhood, womanhood, boyhood and manhood a form of hatred? Well, according to the district’s district’s board, Mr. Theis violated school policy by displaying books that “present a point of view that not everyone is going to agree with.”
Well, that’s an impossible standard.
So, everyone within the school, including staff and students, must ideologically agree with every view of every book within the confines of their taxpayer-funded walls? Is this Communist China? No dissent allowed?
It’s endemic.
All of this is painfully and locally familiar. I live in northern Virginia, where yet again, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) are using taxpayer dollars to defend their unconstitutional policies that silence speech among staff and students, hide crucial information from parents, and punish those who don’t submit. My friend Tanner Cross, a former educator at LCPS, refused to bow. He dared to speak against Policy 8040 which required him to falsely call a girl a boy and a boy a girl. He spoke up at a school board meeting saying he loves his students too much to lie to him. Well, lying is what they demand. And so, they took his job.
Thankfully, both a state judge and the Virginia Supreme Court reinstated him, despite millions spent by LCPS to smear and to silence. They lost. With an insanely astronomical $1.8 billion budget, they simply don’t care how much they squander our tax dollars. They will do anything to keep things woke and educationally a joke.
LCPS’ attack on basic biology is what inspired Bethany and me to write these books about pronouns and binary gender identity.
IMESD Superintendent, Mark S. Mulvihill, accused Theis of bringing materials (our books) to the school that “undermine the inclusive environment.” Less than 0.5% of Americans identify as “transgender” and 0.4% as “non-binary” (there’s clearly overlap with these categories). Those dubious stats are brought to you by the Williams Institute, a radically pro-LGBT think tank. So, He Is He, She Is She and Johnny the Walrus speak to 99% of adults and children. How is that not “inclusive”?
Hypocrisy anyone?
Oh, the tangled web nonsense weaves. Theis is assigned to a couple of schools within IMESD including La Grande Middle School (LGMS). This is where they — gasp! — teach a “binary view of gender” in both Science and English classes according to the lawsuit. For instance, ADF shows evidence that one LGMS genetics lesson “teaches students that females have ‘XX’ chromosomes and males have ‘XY’ chromosomes.” The material goes on to explain how DNA dictates one’s sex traits and characteristics. You know, science.
Sounds awfully similar to the He Is He and She Is She children’s books. Where are the woke patrol? Don’t follow the science, people; follow the feelings.
LGMS also commits transphobia, it seems, in English classes where students use “he/him” or “she/her” when addressing an individual’s gender. The lawsuit points out that “they do not teach students to use non-binary ‘they/them/their’ pronouns when referring to single, gendered individuals.”
The same people who’ve been sounding the false alarm about book bans across the country (aka parents not wanting material promoting racism, porn and pedophilia peddled in our public schools) are the ones banning books that simply tell the truth.
Courage doesn’t need a crowd. It just needs someone with conviction. Rod Theis is that someone in the far-left state of Oregon. Fellow social workers, staff and children could benefit from his moral clarity and compassion. It’s tragic that a local government entity is wasting time and money blatantly discriminating while falsely claiming devotion to inclusion.
Public schools across the country, like in Oregon’s InterMountain Education Service District, are failing in civics. There’s no America without free speech and religious liberty. That’s a fact that’s quite elementary.
Ryan Bomberger is the Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of The Radiance Foundation. He is happily married to his best friend, Bethany, who is the Executive Director of Radiance. They are adoptive parents with four awesome kiddos. Ryan is an Emmy Award-winning creative professional, factivist, international public speaker and author of NOT EQUAL: CIVIL RIGHTS GONE WRONG. He loves illuminating that every human life has purpose.
The views expressed in opinion articles are solely those of the author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by Black Community News.
