An Indiana school board has decided to proceed with the destruction of a teacher who refused to participate in the dangerous fiction that boys and girls can change “gender” at will. The case sets a troubling precedent in which discrimination and bigotry against people of faith — or even those who simply acknowledge biological reality — becomes institutionalized in government. Parents are outraged.
John Kluge, a 28-year-old music teacher who is Christian, was ordered by the Brownsburg School District to refer to students by opposite-sex names and pronouns if they requested it. Parents, even of children claiming to be confused about their gender, were never notified. Kluge initially reached a deal with authorities to refer to confused students by their last names. But eventually, even that option was removed.
“I really care about kids and I don’t want to do any harm to them,” the embattled teacher told Fox News personality Todd Starnes. “I was talking to my pastor about the scenario of calling a student by an opposite sex name and what harm I believe that would do to them. I remember breaking down and weeping at that scenario. I cannot in good conscience do what I believe will cause harm.”
He is hardly the only one who believes that encouraging such dangerous and objectively incorrect fantasies is harmful to young people. Indeed, the American College of Pediatricians considers encouraging gender confusion in children to be “child abuse.” Virtually all gender-confused children grow out of it unless they are encouraged in their delusions by adults.
Speaking to the Indianapolis Star, Kluge again objected to encouraging the confusion. “I’m being compelled to encourage students in what I believe is something that’s a dangerous lifestyle,” he told the paper. “I’m fine to teach students with other beliefs, but the fact that teachers are being compelled to speak a certain way is a scary thing.”
At a school board meeting this week about the issue, a number of self-declared “transgender” students ranted against the gentle teacher, claiming that calling them by their last names was “disrespectful” and “hurtful.” Former and current students, though, described him as respectful to all, caring, genuinely concerned about his students, and a skilled musician.
None of that mattered to the politically correct Brownsburg School Board. Instead of re-instating him, as requested by Kluge and many local families, the board refused, and accepted the resignation he was coerced into submitting with threats of total ruin.
Veteran educator Mary Black, a key figure in the founding of FreedomProject Academy, was among those who attended the school board meeting this week. And what she saw was troubling, to put it mildly. Some of the parents, she said, were furious about being kept in the dark about the fact that children are able to use the wrong bathroom or locker room simply by claiming to “feel” like the opposite sex. But they should have known.
“While their anger and concern was understandable, these parents were likely among those in the ‘it’s not happening in my school’ camp,” Black said. “Parents, no matter the school district, can no longer absolve themselves from involvement in their child’s education. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a federal law, now controls the policies of all schools receiving any government funding.”
Black urged parents and taxpayers to remind school boards across America of their duty to resist outlandish state mandates designed to implement the ESSA, Common Core, and other unconstitutional federal policies. Opposition at the local level is key, she said.
Finally, Black lamented that a “seemingly excellent teacher” has been and will continue to be “persecuted for adherence to his Christian faith.” “I pray that God will guide him to a position where the fullness of his beliefs and talents can be realized,” she concluded.
Government-backed persecution of Christians in America is here. It may not be on the magnitude of persecution that Christians in other nations and in other times have endured and continue to face — beheading, being fed to lions, torture, imprisonment, enslavement, and so on. But with anti-Christian forces becoming more vicious and hateful by the minute, it may only be a matter of time before the situation deteriorates further.
Parents must act to remove their children from these hostile environments, before it is too late.
