Christian University fires staff for pronoun use

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Wilmot uses “he/him”. Zelaya calls herself “she/they”.

Her previous employer, Houghton University, wanted her to drop the identifiers under a new email format policy introduced in September. Both refused and were released.

“My name is Shua. It’s an unusual name. And it ends in a vowel, ‘a,’ which is traditionally feminine in many languages,” Wilmot said in a nearly hour-long video he and Zelaya posted youtube shortly after they were released last month. “If you get an email from me and you don’t know who I am, you may not know how to determine my gender.”

Ongoing culture wars in the United States over sexual preference, gender identity, and transgender rights have engulfed politics, school campuses, and many other aspects of public and private life. At least 17 Republican-led states have done so severely restricted gender-affirming care. Debates continue to rage in some communities about mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity in school curricula. And pickets have sprung up outside public libraries Hosting Drag Story Hours.

Meanwhile, controversy erupts at universities with religious affiliations. The recent layoffs prompted more than 700 Houghton alumni to sign a petition in protest.

In the Northwest, 16 plaintiffs are suing Seattle Pacific University, a Christian liberal arts college, to challenge the school’s employment policy that bars people in same-sex relationships from full-time jobs.

In New York City, LGBTQ students are challenging Yeshiva University’s decision to expel its student-run club from campus.

Paul Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, a two-year advocacy group for LGBTQ students at publicly funded religious colleges and universities, said actions like this are a cause for despair.

“There’s a backlash against the rise of LGBTQ rights,” he said, not just among “white evangelical Christianity in the South … but also in places like New York and Oregon, which we don’t think have that backlash.” would experience.”

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed a lawsuit brought by LGBTQ students against the US Department of Education, saying it does not protect them from discrimination at denominational universities that receive federal funding.

Houghton University, an 800-student campus 60 miles southeast of Buffalo, says it offers a “Christ-centered liberal arts and sciences education.”

In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, the university said it is not permitted to speak publicly on personnel matters, but has “never terminated an employment relationship based solely on the use of pronouns in employee email signatures.” was based”.

The university said it previously asked its staff to remove “anything superfluous,” including Bible quotations, from email signatures.

The university also shared an email with the AP outlining its new policies and sending them out to staff. The memo warned employees against using politically divisive and inflammatory language in communications bearing the Houghton name. Also, they were instructed to use standardized signature styles and the use of pronouns was forbidden.

Also included with the statement was a copy of a letter that University President Wayne D. Lewis Jr. had sent to the students.

“I would never ask you to agree or support any decision I make,” Lewis wrote. “But I humbly ask that you resist the temptation to reduce Houghton’s decision-making to the simple and comfortable political narratives of our time.”

Zelaya said she received an email from administrators in the fall saying the school was requesting changes to colors, fonts and other aspects of emails to help the school maintain consistency with its brand.

She complied, she said, but kept her pronouns on her signature, calling it “standard industry practice” to do so.

In the dismissal letters, which were personally delivered to Wilmot and Raegan Zelaya and copies of which they shared on social media, the university wrote that the dismissals “were the result of your refusal to remove pronouns in your email signatures, which is a… violates institutional guidelines”.

In a video posted on FacebookZelaya said she already has another job in the pipeline. In their joint YouTube video, she and Wilmot urged their supporters to push for policy change, but constructively and with courtesy.

“Having all this controversy and having my pronouns in my email signature,” Wilmot said, “has given me the opportunity to educate people on this topic.”