An unnamed freshman from Exeter High School in New Hampshire got himself into a bit of trouble in September while riding home from school on the bus. It wasn’t for sticking gum under his seat or pulling some girl’s ponytail, however. He had been in the midst of a conversation with friends where they discussed the difficulty they had using plural pronouns in Spanish class because the Spanish language uses masculine and feminine plural words. A female classmate reportedly interrupted the conversation to say that there are more than two genders. The boy responded in the negative, saying that there are only two genders. A debate ensued that continued via text messages between the two students. When the boy returned to school, a printout of the text debate was shown to him and he was suspended from the school football team for the following game. And now he and his family are going to court, claiming the school violated both his right to freedom of religion and also free speech because they are attempting to force him to use plural pronouns. (NY Post)

A New Hampshire teenager is suing his school district after he was allegedly suspended from athletics for saying there are “only two genders.”

The Exeter High School freshman said in the suit that he was hit with a one-game football suspension in September stemming from a text conversation he had with another student off school grounds.

The lawsuit was filed Nov. 4 through an attorney with the Christian organization Cornerstone Action with the claim that he stated a Catholic-based belief that there are only male and female genders, The Portsmouth Herald reported.

The kid’s lawsuit also claims Exeter’s policy on non-binary gender identity and pronouns infringes on his First Amendment rights.

I’m old enough to remember when they used to teach science in high school. And those classes included (at an appropriate age) the fact that the human species consists of two genders, each of which is required for procreation and the continuation of the species. But that’s apparently “old-fashioned thinking” in the 21st century.

It’s bad enough that we have adults fighting over this in the workplace and during political debates. When we start pushing this nonsense off on children who are still learning to find their way in the world it’s even more problematic. Suspending a high school athlete from a sports team, even briefly, and having that suspension remain on his record will very likely impact his ability to be accepted to a good college, particularly if he’s pursuing a sports scholarship. But the Exeter High School administration is apparently more worried about political correctness than helping the students succeed.

It’s more than a little distressing that the school has already indoctrinated a class of freshmen to the degree that they are now raising a young generation of Karens who not only buy into these transgender theories but are acting as an enforcement agency to ensure that everyone else complies with these progressive decrees. What’s worse is that they are training a new generation to believe farcical “scientific” theories about sex and gender that would have been laughed out of any academy less than a generation ago.

And what sort of message is the school sending when it comes to questions of free speech and the free practice of religion? Obviously not a very good one. The school shouldn’t be telling the students what they can and can’t call themselves. But by the same token, they shouldn’t be trying to squelch the speech of students who may disagree.

I don’t know how this lawsuit is going to play out. The rights of children in public schools have traditionally been more limited than those of adults. But if the courts find in favor of the school it’s going to be yet another disappointing loss in the ongoing culture wars.