Denver Newsroom, Nov 16, 2021 / 16:01 pm
A Virginia teacher who was placed on leave for objecting to a proposed policy requiring transgender-affirming pronouns has agreed to a settlement with the Loudoun County public school board.
Under the settlement, the school system must reinstate the teacher, remove any reference to his suspension from his personnel file, and pay some attorney’s fees.
Byron “Tanner” Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School in the Loudoun County Public School District, spoke at a May 2021 school board meeting in opposition to proposed policies requiring teachers to refer to students by their preferred pronouns, rather than the pronouns which align with their biological sex.
Cross said he could not “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl, and vice versa,” because of his Christian faith. Using such pronouns would entail “lying to a child” and “sinning against God,” he said, according to the Washington Post.