It Shouldn’t Take Two Years To Teach Vermont Officials A Lesson About Religious Freedom, Even In The Transgender Era

“Obviously Mid Vermont is unhappy with the outcome. The court accepts without reservation the sincerity of the school's commitment to traditional views of gender and sexuality.” -- Judge Geoffrey Crawford, U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, opinion denying of Mid Vermont Christian School’s motion for a temporary injunction, June 11, 2024 “… whether someone truly has a sexual identity that's different from their sex that they're assigned at their birth …”-- Unidentified judge from a three-judge panel of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, oral arguments, Mid Christian Vermont School vs. Bouchey, Wednesday, April 9, 2025.The language someone uses when describing gender identity is a clue as to whether the person has lost his mind.No one is “assigned at their birth” a sex; sex is observed at the time of birth, because it’s obvious – and noted, because it’s important.“Traditional views of gender and sexuality” – in this case, that boys are boys and girls are girls – aren’t irrational positions to be merely tolerated in a pluralistic society; they reflect reality. To go against such “views” isn’t merely a choice; it’s a deviation from sanity.Insane choices have consequences.Take, for instance, the continuing persecution of a Christian school in Vermont by state officials.Earlier this week, Mid Vermont Christian School in lovely Quechee asked a federal appeals court to allow it to compete in sports against other schools in the state while forfeiting in advance any games against girls teams that have a male.Mid Vermont Christian will probably win the case, as their lawyer seemed to get a better reception during oral arguments from the three judges on the Second Circuit panel on Wednesday, April 9. State officials will probably press on to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the current pro-religious-freedom majority will probably let the appeals court decision stand.So that’s a possible happy ending in the offing.The real question is: Why did it come to this?As is clear from a timeline New Boston Post published earlier today, state officials have abused Mid Vermont Christian for more than two years for doing the right thing.In February 2023, the Mid Vermont Christian girls basketball team was matched up in the state tournament against a team from a private secular school consisting of girls and a 6-foot-1 boy who identified as a girl. Mid Vermont Christian refused to play. The forfeit meant the other team moved on without having to play the game.That’s unjust. The Mid Vermont Christian girls deserved a chance to play against another all-girls team in their quest for a state championship.But it got a lot worse than that.Around the same time, state education officials started playing games with the public tuition money Mid Vermont Christian is legally entitled to -- because the school wouldn’t bend its knee to transgenderism.The day after the forfeit, the head of the Vermont Principals’ Association, which controls interscholastic sports in the state, delivered outrageous testimony before a legislative committee.Jay Nichols, the executive director, referred to religious schools as adhering to a “religious construct” – as if religion isn't real but rather is something human beings made up.Noting that certain religious schools had refused to bow to the state’s insistence that they endorse transgenderism, he said, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these schools and their far right supporters are gearing up for another lawsuit.”So apparently it’s “far right” to insist on being able to practice your religion without giving up the ability to function in society.But that’s not all.Nichols floated a hypothetical situation in which the transgender-identifying player who caused the forfeit in the basketball game was a student at Mid Vermont Christian. “Would we be okay with that blatant discrimination under the guise of religious freedom?” he said.There’s no “guise” here; like religion, religious freedom is real, and must be defended from attacks.And another thing: this student would be in far better hands among believing Christians than with the likes of Nichols.For Christians are more likely to tell such a student the truth: Each of us is born a male or a female, which is immutable, and confusion about that is a form of mental illness. The right approach to gender confusion isn’t trying to bend everything around you to conform to your misunderstanding of yourself, it’s seeking healing of mind, emotions, and spirit so you see clearly who you truly are.In a way, it’s a shame that Mid Vermont Christian has to make a free-exercise-of-religion argument in court. Recognizing boys as boys and girls as girls isn’t specifically religious. Accepting that it makes sense to separate boys and girls in competitive sports doesn’t take a rocket scientist. It’s the sort of thing that virtually everyone acknowledged until not that long ago.When it comes to gender identity, who are the hyper-secular educrats serving?It’s obviously not religious schools that live by their moral standards, or the students who go to them.It’s not the female players in any school who have to compete with males, which is uncomfortable and unfair.It isn’t even transgender-identifying students. As fellow human beings, they deserve dignity and respect. Their difficult condition calls for compassion, charity, and love.But true compassion requires telling them the truth.Instead, they get false advocates who tell them lies, abuse their authority to try to force their false world view on nonbelievers, and make everything worse for everybody else.

It Shouldn’t Take Two Years To Teach Vermont Officials A Lesson About Religious Freedom, Even In The Transgender Era

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