The problem came to light by an effort to help a student, which is generally considered the sort of thing one would want a high school teacher to do. But Peter Vlaming did it wrong.
Witnesses described a “slip-up” when the student was about to run into a wall and Vlaming told others to stop “her.”
The problem is that the school had been informed that the student was no longer a “her.”
Over the summer, the ninth-grade student’s family informed the school system of the student’s gender transition to male.
There doesn’t appear to be doubt as to the sincerity of the student’s transition. This wasn’t a student, or family, who demanded people use some peculiar made-up pronoun for the sake of being special. It would not have been the end of the world had Vlaming, as a matter of minimal courtesy, adopted the words that would respect the student’s choice, for no better reason than it reflected respect for the student’s decision.
Had it merely been one slip-up in an exigent moment to save the student from harm, it might have been the end of discussion. But it wasn’t, as Vlaming made clear.
When discussing the incident with administrators, Vlaming made it clear he would not use male pronouns, a stance that led to his suspension referral for disciplinary action.
Vlaming told superiors that his Christian faith prevented him from using male pronouns for the student. Vlaming said he had the student in class the year before when the student identified as female.
Whether it’s about being Christian, or Vlaming’s idiosyncratic view of Christianity, which are similarly unquestioned as to his sincerity, he refused to accommodate the student. As he was directed to do so and refused, he was fired for insubordination.
“I can’t think of a worse way to treat a child than what was happening,” said West Point High Principal Jonathan Hochman, who testified that he told Vlaming to use male pronouns in accordance with the student’s wishes.
Hyperbole aside, it surely wasn’t a courteous or respectful way to treat the student, and it’s certainly not the way one would hope a teacher would react to a student going through the extremely difficult transition. Nor did Vlaming choose the more generous path of his religion, choosing instead to be unkind in the name of Christianity. He did, however, try to compromise.
Vlaming’s attorney, Shawn Voyles, says his client offered to use the student’s name and to avoid feminine pronouns, but Voyles says the school was unwilling to accept the compromise.
“That discrimination then leads to creating a hostile learning environment. And the student had expressed that. The parent had expressed that,” said West Point schools Superintendent Laura Abel. “They felt disrespected.”
What constitutes a “hostile learning environment” isn’t entirely clear, given that Vlaming was not the student’s teacher. He had been, without incident, before the student transitioned, but now it was just a matter of Vlaming being a teacher in the same school as the student, and that was enough for the student, family and school to find anything short of full accommodation unacceptable.
But Vlaming is a public school teacher, and as a public employee, is entitled to constitutional rights under the First Amendment.
Vlaming said he loves and respects all his students but when a solution he tried to reach based on “mutual tolerance” was rejected, he was at risk of losing his job for having views held by “most of the world for most of human history.”
“That is not tolerance,” Vlaming said. “That is coercion.”
Under the First Amendment, the government cannot compel speech. It can’t make you say “Trump is the best thing since sliced bread.” Can it make you use pronouns against your will?
Nondiscrimination policies were updated a year ago to include protections for gender identity, but didn’t include guidance on gender pronoun use, according to Vlaming’s lawyer, Voyles, who notes Vlaming has constitutional rights.
“One of those rights that is not curtailed is to be free from being compelled to speak something that violates your conscience,” Voyles said.
There is an enormously simple solution to this conflict, if Vlaming would simply choose to be accommodating of the student’s wishes, though even the word “wishes” may be problematic as it would be a matter of right from the student’s perspective, not merely desires. There is a similarly simple solution if the student would accept Vlaming’s compromise, but then if it’s the student’s right to not be subject to a “hostile learning environment,” then why should the student be compelled to compromise?
Short of choosing to not make this a problem, as apparently neither side is prepared to do, the clash of rights presents an untenable situation. As a litmus test, it will likely prove easy for many to decide that the student is right and Vlaming is just a horrible person for his refusal to accept the student’s pronouns. But that ignores Vlaming’s right to free exercise of his religion, and right not to be compelled to use words that violate his conscience.
As unfortunate, if not ridiculous, a conflict as this is, it’s neither surprising nor easily resolved. Sure, if you’re on Team Religion, then Vlaming wins. If you’re on Team Transgender, then the student and school win. But if you’re on Team Constitution, there is no simple solution.
Whether Vlaming will sue for his job remains an open question. It’s unclear whether he will prevail, and bringing suit will prove expensive and time-consuming. And there is a question of whether the remedy, restoration to his position, is really a viable solution, as he’s unlikely to be welcomed back with open arms even if a court orders the school to do so. It will be a hostile environment for Vlaming as well should he return.
There are issues that demand address, such as transgender students, but while the sides may be clearly drawn, the rules of battle are not. How these conflicting rights will ultimately play out is a mystery at this point, and the people involved are all in untenable positions without knowing what the correct “simple solution” should be.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Whatever the elusive solution is, at least we can rest assured that it will be arrived at by careful reexamination of our principles followed by measured application — instead of ensuring our desired outcome, which will cause havoc in other areas.
There’s a third universal school rule which this situation smacks into: NO RUNNING IN THE HALLS!!!
If a coach happened to see a male do that, said male got a smack to the back of the head, intermingled with a string of epithets (the kindest of which was ‘dumbass”). There were no problems for a coach to determine who was a male.
Ahhh, the good old days.
My high school gym teacher always called us “ladies.” In fairness, we called him Wimpy, from the Popeye cartoon.
Suppose the teacher wins on a freedom of religion argument.
Then, suppose next year a different teacher has a student who identifies as non-binary and wants to be referred to as “they.” The teacher is a mild agnostic and has no religious objection to the pronoun. However, the teacher does have a sincerely held belief in the gender binary, and while fully tolerant of transgender students who identify with a different pole of the binary, this teacher doesn’t believe people can be off the binary entirely.
What then?
Have you ever noticed that these are called “comments,” not random rhetorical questions? What are the chances that everyone else is constrained to stay on topic and be either illuminating or funny (and, occasionally, musical) except you?
Speaking up for Team Constitution, I don’t see this as a religious issue. Essentially, a subcultural group has injected the state into a debate as to whether “gender” is determined by the subjective perception of the person asserting a gender or by that person’s physiology and genetics. Without particularly persuasive evidence (and, as Vlaming points out, against the common view of humanity over millennia), they have convinced a state agency to declare that subjective perception controls. Not only that, but they have maneuvered the state agency into the position of prohibiting its staff from using words that reflect a non-conforming belief, and even beyond that, of mandating that staff use the exact words that will show they believe the state-imposed position is right.
It is where this train has always been headed. It is where ABA and Rule 8.4(g) have always been headed. Of course using the student’s name was not good enough. It is a “compromise” in the sense of not using the exact words required to further the [Ed. Note’s] emotional comfort. It doesn’t sufficiently subjugate Vlaming to the district’s declared truth, and it doesn’t sufficiently subordinate his personal beliefs or acknowledge their basic wrongness. In short, it isn’t bowing to the hat on the pole, and “progressives” can’t accept that.
Whether Vlaming’s beliefs are religious or just his personal beliefs, the state has no business demanding that he speak specific words evidencing his conformity with their state-declared truths. No more for the comfort of [Ed. Notes] than to please people who would see their neighbors forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or take loyalty oaths. It is unconstitutional compelled speech. It violates the First Amendment without regard to the religion clauses. A contrary resolution is not a slippery slope, but a sheer cliff. If the state can declare and impose state-mandated pronouns to enforce its opinions on “gender,” the state can declare and impose state-mandated words to enforce any other opinion on any other topic. Once that is established, there is no more First Amendment freedom of speech.
Before replying, kindly confirm that your preferred pronouns are “Xim, Xis and Peep.” TIA.
Is Xim one of your Peeps?
I think there is some Johnny Cash song about a Peep named Xim.
The privileged male cut out,
When his Peep was two,
And didn’t leave much for the Peep or Xu,
Just an old sitar and a page from a papist hymn,
Now, they didn’t much care that he hit the trail,
Or was, as a parent, a total “fail,”
But still they were pissed that he named the damned Peep “Xim.”
(Kind of goes downhill from there, as I recall, like a good night of drinking)
Does it not? He is a teacher at a public school – Not a public University attended by nominal adults on a voluntary basis, but a high school serving minors whose attendance is (at least to a certain point) mandatory. Surely, if the state can compel minors to attend instruction, it has some say as to the content of that instruction, or the point of the whole exercise is moot. See, for instance, teachers disciplined for teaching Creationism in the classroom.
Is every word of every teacher in the school “their instruction”?
But, you raise another good point that, given the “public school” context, the state is not only oppressing the teachers on staff but also indoctrinating all the students with its state-declared truths. Surely that poses no problems.
The state is constantly “indoctrinating” – which means literally “teaching” – state-declared truths to public school children. It’s just that most of those truths are uncontroversial, like the sum of 2 and 3 or the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. Public schools have a fine line to tread when it comes to controversial subjects. This is not the first idea to come into conflict with the religious beliefs of some teachers or students. If the state is to have public schools at all, they must have some rationale for deciding when it can and should maintain a position on a question when that position conflicts with religious beliefs, since almost everything, from the shape of the earth to the value of pi conflicts with somebody’s interpretation of their religion.
Currently when such challenges occur, schools justify their stands by referring to a consensus of secular scholarship. We can teach that the earth is round as a “state-declared truth”, despite the religious objections of some, because we can point to scientific arguments from observations of the sun, time zones, the visibility of distant objects depending on elevation, and maritime or air navigation, none of which depend on any religious viewpoint. Since the state can show the roundness of the earth is well-grounded in secular science, it can teach it as secular science without needing to placate religious dissenters. Indeed, it would seem impossible to placate all of them, no matter how much we wanted to.
As a didactic comment….
The earth isn’t round, it’s an oblate spheroid.
IANAL, but IIUC the government, as employer, has wide latitude in compelling job-related speech, and can probably compel teachers to address students however they want. But under Title VII, the teach might be able to claim a religious exemption to this requirement, unless the school can show that accommodating the teacher’s beliefs imposes more than a de-minimus cost to the school.
You posted this to see who would bite, didn’t you? You’re mean and dress funny, SHG.
I always find it curious when non-lawyers see simple solutions that elude lawyers, and don’t ask themselves “what am I missing” rather than deciding to lawsplain to the lawyers.
Just because ShelbyC is anal doesn’t mean Xe is not a lawyer.
No, not “just because.”
The article specifies that this is only about conversations where the student isn’t even present. If that now rises to the level of “discrimination,” maybe Christians should start taking action against teachers who won’t acknowledge their salvation and immortality in conversation with others. How dare they express an opinion that erases a student’s identity and denies their lived experience?
I left that out of the post because it made no sense in the context of the story. I don’t know what to make of that.
Wait, the students have “lived experience” of immortality?
I thought only Shirley MacLaine had that.
I asked one of them about this. He said, “So far so good.”
What? A petty official tries to force citizens to confess, by word, their faith in the prescribed orthodoxy? Has this ever happened before?
I see the confluence of at least three objects of the class unstoppable force or immovable objects on a collision course. Two of them (student or admin and teacher) will lose; the legal process is very destructive. Teacher has a religion that goes against the (semi-) liberal religion holding that odd gender and sex situations should be respectfully accommodated as a matter of liberty. Splitting babies, anyone?
My money is on the teacher winning in court; the school admin seems to be dumb (or rabidly orthodox) enough not to be willing to find a way to sidestep the issue.
You may be willing to bet. I wouldn’t.
Mr. Vlaming is a teacher of FRENCH which is a gendered language. It’s not only about pronouns.
Can he argue that the requirement creates a de facto English only environment for bilinguals like him, and prevents him from efficiently teaching French to his students? Pronouns can be replaced by names in English but a French speaker can’t avoid gendering people in every sentence. So, if his religion or conscience prohibit him from using male or female forms for some students, he’s effectively prohibited from speaking French at school (somebody who’s not religious but suffers from anxiety, ADD or such, also might be afraid of speaking gendered languages for a greater risk of slip-ups). If his students are constantly afraid of misgendering because they make errors, they will be afraid to participate and hence will not be learning.
While I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, it’s not up to you to give Vlaming’s reasons. He gets to make his own choices for his own reasons.