In West Point, Virginia, local school administrators discriminated against, attempted to coerce, then (after a four-hour hearing) wrongly dismissed and defamed Christian teacher Peter Vlaming. On December 6, the day before Pearl Harbor Day, the West Point School Board voted unanimously to violate Mr. Vlaming’s constitutional civil rights because he refused to go against his faith and conscience and start calling a gender-confused female student by male pronouns.
As a well-regarded French teacher, who served in the high school for seven years, Mr. Vlaming taught the student when she previously (and accurately) identified as a young woman in eighth grade. Over the summer, she reportedly decided she wanted to “present” as a young man and changed her name in her enrollment for ninth grade.
Mr. Vlaming respectfully agreed to use her new name but avoided using any pronouns, male or female, to refer to her directly. That is until Halloween when she nearly had an accident while using virtual reality technology that obscured her vision. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported, he called on the young woman’s classmates to keep “her” from running into the wall. In a little over a month, Vlaming was dismissed because he supposedly “created a hostile learning environment” and “discriminated” against the student by NOT using incorrect pronouns.
Sadly, the outcomes for children whose parents indulge (or even promote) gender confusion are not promising. By contrast, when children get the help they need, gender dysphoria resolves in a large majority of young adults becoming comfortable with their biological sex.
As Christians, we must stand courageously for biblical reality in the face of government coercion. The world needs us to be salt and light. And if we don’t stand for our right to proclaim the absolutes of God’s Word today, we risk losing them for a generation or more—much to the detriment of those around us. We cannot accept the culture forcing mass compliance to a warped ideology that silences followers of Christ and the Good News.
You and I will likely be persecuted for our beliefs because of our unwillingness to reject biblical truth. Thank you for joining the National Center for Life and Liberty in respectfully “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) in the courtroom, the classroom, and in the public square. Please pray for a change of heart for West Point High School Principal Jonathan Hochman, Superintendent Laura Abel, the school board, and of course for this young woman and her family.
