Eric Reed
Several years ago, I asked our graphic designer to help me with a project. There was such a proliferation of pronouns at the time that I wanted him to take all the new ones and make a word cloud of them. There were 15 on the list. I planned to use the cloud with a column, saying that my preferred pronoun is “y’all.” I meant it tongue-in-cheek, of course. After all, Southerners know y’all is never singular.
But there was suddenly such an escalation in the pronoun debate that I was concerned my essay about the meanings of words would not be understood. More to the point, for some people it might seem personally hurtful. That was not my desire.
With the slew of executive orders concerning gender designations and what is acceptable for federal government usage, there is in the past month some sense that the pendulum has swung. The test of that theory might just be a junior high boy from Massachusetts whose lawsuit defending his right to support traditional gender designations could make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a July 2023 report on minors and sexual transition surgeries, we included a sidebar on Liam Morrison. He wore a T-shirt to school reading, “There are only two genders.” School administrators forbade him to wear the shirt. He taped over part of the wording and wrote in “censored.” The school forbade that one too.
A whole school year has passed, and it appears the U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether to hear Liam’s case.
The case isn’t about T-shirts, said David
Cortman, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the student. “It’s about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from their own,” he said.
The school can flood its hallways with Rainbow/Pride imagery, Liam’s parents said at the time, but stopping him from expressing a counter opinion is a violation of their son’s First Amendment rights. They went to court. And lost.
A lower court in Boston upheld the concept that a school is a special environment where what might be free speech elsewhere could be personally damaging or disruptive there, and could be prohibited.
“The question here is not whether the T-shirts should have been barred,” David Barron wrote for a three-judge panel. “The question is who should decide whether to bar them—educators or federal judges.”
Or, if they choose, the nine highest justices in the land.
If the high court takes up the case, some will choose to read it not only as a case about First Amendment rights, but also as indicating a shift in the culture around gender issues. That M or F but not X are accepted gender designations on government documents. That diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are being dismantled. That major corporations are leaving DEI in the dust, even as some big box retailers have removed pride products from their shelves.
Times, they are a’changing, y’all.
—Eric Reed is IBSA media editor