In middle school, I had a classmate who wanted to change his name. Everybody knew him by his first name, but he insisted that everyone start calling him by his middle name. After about three weeks of teachers and classmates forgetting which name to call him, one teacher finally asked him, “Why are you trying to use a different name from what your parents wanted to call you?” He didn’t have an answer, and he stopped insisting on everyone using his middle name.
That was nearly 40 years ago (gulp) and a totally different world. Today, kids want to change their names because the left’s gender nonsense has infected them. Thankfully, sensible legislatures in red states are fighting back.
One of those states has been at the forefront. With Gov. Ron DeSantis at the helm, Florida has led the fight. The left slammed the Sunshine State for 2022’s Parental Rights in Education bill — remember the “Don’t Say Gay” moniker the left ran with? — but a subsequent law in 2023 forbade educators from playing along with the new gender name and pronoun madness.
DeSantis signed HB1069 into law in the spring of 2023, and it reads in part:
The bill prohibits an employee, contractor, or student, as a condition of employment, enrollment, or participation, at a public K-12 educational institution, be required to refer to another individual by a personal title or pronouns that do not align with the person’s sex. Similarly, a K-12 public institution employee or contractor may not provide a student with the individual’s preferred personal title or pronouns if they do not correspond to the employee or contractor’s sex. A school may not require a student to provide his or her preferred personal title or pronouns and may not apply any penalty or adverse action against a student for not providing this information.
One teacher is losing her job after she violated this law. Brevard Public Schools is refusing to renew Melissa Calhoun’s contract because she used a student’s “preferred name” that reflected “the student’s gender identity,” according to the Associated Press.
The AP adds that Calhoun “was acting out of compassion, according to the supporters,” but the school system says that “compassion” doesn’t allow teachers to break the law or go against the expectations of parents.
“The parent is our partner in this education endeavor that we have with our children,” Superintendent Mark Rendell told Click Orlando. “This law was actually put in place to make sure that partnership was maintained.”
Good for the school system for upholding the law, but you know what’s going to happen next. The left will turn Calhoun into a martyr in the fight for wokeness and permanently damaging children.
Calhoun’s story is similar to that of Katie Rinderle, a teacher at an elementary school in Cobb County, Ga. Rinderle read her students a gender propaganda book when she was supposed to be teaching them math. A year before, she had read her class a book by Stacey Abrams while Abrams was campaigning for a chance to ruin Georgia.
The gender propaganda book was Rinderle’s second offense, so the school board chose not to renew her contract. The meeting had barely ended before Rinderle had activist-lawyered up and begun receiving support from leftist outfits like the Southern Poverty Law Center. You can bet the same thing will happen to Calhoun.
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