The 3 - December 24, 2023

This week's edition of The 3, focusing on three stories of relevance to the Christian community, includes a significant ruling out of Connecticut that provides hope for girls being able to compete in sporting events without boys being allowed.  Also, there are school board induction ceremonies that have occurred that feature the inductees begin sworn in on objectionable books, rather than the Bible.  And, a Virginia teacher who would not use requested "gender" pronouns has won a court victory.

CT ruling in favor of boys playing in girls sports back in play after appeals court ruling

The issue of boys presenting as girls playing in girls' athletic competition continues to be an issue across the nation.  A premier case in the courts regarding the issue has essentially been reinstated by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.  CBN.com reported that:

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a lawsuit filed by four female track and field athletes who are challenging their athletic conference's policy that allows males who identify as females to compete based on their gender identity.

Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools claims the conference's policy violates Title IX and the Second Circuit ruling now allows the case to proceed in federal district court.

Christiana Holcomb of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is providing the legal representation for the young ladies, is quoted as saying: "Forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics," adding, "Connecticut's policy violates that law and reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women."

The backstory, according to CBN:

In 2017, two male athletes began competing in Connecticut girls' high school track.

In just three years, those two males broke 17 girls' track meet records, deprived girls of more than 85 opportunities to advance to the next level of competition, and took 15 women's state track championship titles, according to ADF.

Elected school board officials exchange Bibles for objectionable books for swearing in

Even though responsible parents are objecting to obscene, even pornographic material being made available to students, there are those who are doubling down.  One such instance occurred recently in a large school district in Pennsylvania.  The Daily Signal reported that the new President of the Central Bucks school district, Karen Smith...

...chose to place her hand not on a Bible but on a stack of frequently banned books, including “Flamer,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Beyond Magenta,” “Lily and Dunkin,” and “The Bluest Eye.”

“I’m not particularly religious,” Smith explained. “The Bible doesn’t hold significant meaning for me, and given everything that has occurred in the last couple of years, the banned books, they do mean something to me at this point.”

The article notes:

In fact, all of the books Smith used for her swearing-in ceremony (with the exception of Elie Wiesel’s testimonial Holocaust novel “Night”) have been subjects of recent controversy and many have been banned from classrooms or libraries for their sexually-explicit and ideologically-charged content.

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at Family Research Council, commented to The Washington Stand, “People and political forces who would use children to advance their evil ideologies may have momentary successes or seem to win the day, but in the end we know that God wins.”

New board members were recently elected in the school district, and the Daily Signal article states:

First, the new board suspended the ban on sexually explicit books. Although “Gender Queer” and “This Book Is Gay” were already removed, Smith said that the other 60 books or so flagged for sexually explicit content are “definitely not going to be reviewed at this point.”

Next, the new board undid the policies barring biological boys from participating in girls sports and forbidding teachers from flying LGBT Pride flags in classrooms.

In Virginia, new Fairfax County School Board member Karl Frisch acted in a similar way.  The Washington Examiner reported that...

...Frisch, the first openly LGBT member elected to local office in Fairfax County, Virginia, was seen last week getting sworn into office by putting his hand on a stack of the five LGBT-themed books that have commonly been challenged in libraries and schools — Gender Queer, Flamer, All Boys Aren’t Blue, Lawn Boy, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

VA teacher who lost job for lack of pronoun usage receives court victory

A lawsuit filed by a Virginia teacher who was fired because he would not use the requested "gender" pronouns of a student has been allowed to move forward, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom website. It says: "...the Virginia Supreme Court ruled... that it would reinstate a lawsuit alleging the West Point School Board violated a high school teacher’s rights protected by Virginia law when it fired him for avoiding the use of personal pronouns to refer to one of his students."

The teacher's name is Peter Vlaming; the website states:

The West Point School Board fired Vlaming after he stated he couldn’t in good conscience comply with the superintendent’s demand that he refer to one of his students using pronouns inconsistent with the student’s sex. Vlaming tried to accommodate the student by consistently using the student’s new preferred name and by avoiding the use of pronouns altogether. But school officials ordered him to stop avoiding the use of pronouns to refer to the student, even when the student wasn’t present, and to start using pronouns inconsistent with the student’s sex.

ADF Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel is quoted as saying, “Peter wasn’t fired for something he said; he was fired for something he couldn’t say. The Virginia Supreme Court rightly agreed that Peter’s case against the school board for violating his rights under the Virginia Constitution and state law should proceed..."

The article notes:

In its opinion in Vlaming v. West Point School Board, the Virginia Supreme Court correctly recognized that the Virginia Constitution “seeks to protect diversity of thought, diversity of speech, diversity of religion, and diversity of opinion.” The ruling continued, “Absent a truly compelling reason for doing so, no government committed to these principles can lawfully coerce its citizens into pledging verbal allegiance to ideological views that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.”