A 12-year-old boy's free-speech rights to say "there are only two genders" on a T shirt is trumped by classmates' rights to feel "secure," a judge has ruled.
Liam Morrison, 12, was sent home from Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, was sent home for wearing the "two genders" shirt and again for wearing an altered shirt saying “There are only censored genders.”
The family has appealed.
“This isn’t about a T-shirt; this is about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from the school’s orthodoxy,” said Logan Spena, council for the Alliance Defending Freedom, in a press release. “Public school officials can’t force Liam to remove a shirt that states his position when the school lets every other student wear clothing that speaks on the same issue."
At a School Committee Meeting, the boy stated:
What did my shirt say? Five simple words: “There are only two genders.” Nothing harmful. Nothing threatening. Just a statement I believe to be a fact. I have been told that my shirt was targeting a protected class. Who is this protected class? Are their feelings more important than my rights? I don’t complain when I see “pride flags” and “diversity posters” hung throughout the school. Do you know why? Because others have a right to their beliefs just as I do. Not one person, staff, or student told me that they were bothered by what I was wearing. Actually, just the opposite. Several kids told me that they supported my actions and that they wanted one too.
Students have free-speech rights at school, as long as their speech is not disruptive, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled during the Vietnam War.
Logically, under transgenderism, gender is simply a synonym for human being. Any of the X number of gender terms convey nothing more than human being since there is no objective criteria to differentiate them.
If any human being can be any of the X genders, they're all the same thing and again, only communicate human being.
T-shirts with variations of the slogan "There is only One Opinion" might be popular.
Pure text: There are only Two opinions, Mine and Who Cares?
Image of ring from LOTR movie standing in for capital letter O: 1 Opinion to Rule them All, and in the Darkness, Bind Them.
Image of Highlander with sword standing on words Male and Female: There can be Only One.
Serial Strikethrough texts "There are only Two (corrected, Five; Re-corrected seven, Re-re 13) Genders.
Superimposed over the cover image of Orwell's novel: There have always been 1984 Genders
Text: When we're allowed only one opinion, it's not an "opinion" anymore.
I respect exactly one more gender than you respect opinions.
etc
It seems to me that the 1969 Tinker decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ought to have made this an open and shut case for the Morrisons. We are living in a clown world.
I'd love one of those t-shirts. Kids like that will be one of the reasons our Republic survives.
It's interesting that "pride flags" and "diversity posters" are hung throughout the school, much less a middle school, as they are clearly political messages. In earlier times, the only messaging that would've been championed was for the school's sports teams--by the students, and yet, not everyone was expected to join in by expressing school spirit. There was no controversy by those students who abstained from engaging in school spirit--much less those sour pusses who opposed school spirit.
Now, expressions of "pride" and "diversity" as political speech are sponsored by school authorities, making such speech official policy. Clearly satisfying any definition of indoctrination. And yet it's pretty clear that neither political speech nor conformity thereto can be enforced by the govt--at…