A former Virginia teacher who refused to use a transgender student's requested pronouns is suing his own school district for firing him, and alleging that his freedom of speech was violated.
Peter Vlaming, who taught French at Virginia's West Point High School, said in a complaint that school board officials tried to force him to "express an objective biological falsehood" by urging him to use the student's male pronouns.
The lawsuit alleges the school board "punished Mr. Vlaming for not communicating a message about gender identity, a message that he does not hold, that he does not wish to communicate, and that conflicts with his religious beliefs and conscience."
The school board did not respond to Insider's request for comment, though it defended the termination last year by saying that Vlaming had violated its policy against discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
"Mr. Vlaming was asked repeatedly, over several weeks and by multiple administrators, to address a student by the pronouns with which this student identifies," the board said in a December 2018 statement. "The issue before us was not one mistaken slip of the tongue. Mr. Vlaming consistently refused to comply going forward — including in a statement made at the hearing — a willful violation of school board policy."
Multiple local LGBTQ and civil-rights groups declined or did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Vlaming said in his complaint that he had tried to accommodate some of the student's requests last September when the student informed Vlaming that he was transitioning. For instance, when the student told Vlaming he wanted to be called by a different name, Vlaming allowed his entire class to choose new French names for the semester, so as not to draw undue attention to the student.
Vlaming said he also avoided referring to the student by female pronouns while the student was present.
Though this strategy seemed to work well for the first few weeks of school, in late October the student confronted Vlaming and said he heard from others that Vlaming was still referring to him by female pronouns behind his back.
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From there, the situation escalated, the school's principal and assistant principal got involved, and Vlaming was formally reprimanded.
The situation soon boiled over shortly afterward, when Vlaming organized a classroom activity where students divided into pairs, with one student wearing virtual reality goggles and the second giving directions in French.
When the transgender student appeared to nearly walk into a wall, unbeknownst to his partner, Vlaming shouted out, "Don't let her hit the wall!"
The student later confronted Vlaming, telling him, "You may have your religion, but you need to respect who I am."
Later that day, the student withdrew from Vlaming's class. Not long after that, Vlaming was suspended, and the school board ultimately voted unanimously to fire him.
The move divided the community, with roughly 100 students staging a walkout in support of Vlaming shortly after he was fired. The school board chairman, Paul Diggs, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that his inbox was deluged with hateful messages over the board's decision, and with emails from parents of transgender students who thanked the board.
But Vlaming has maintained that he was simply handling the situation the best way he could, in accordance with his religious beliefs, and should not have been forced by the school board to use pronouns he viewed as untruthful.
"Mr. Vlaming believes both as a matter of human anatomy and religious conviction that sex is biologically fixed in each person and cannot be changed regardless of a person's feelings or desires," the lawsuit said. "Mr. Vlaming's conscience and religious practice prohibits him from intentionally lying, and he sincerely believes that referring to a female as a male by using an objectively male pronoun is telling a lie."
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